From Ramona Venegas of the Forest Service - The North Country National Scenic Trail (NCT) has been rerouted between High Bridge and Sawdust Hole, due to bank erosion.  When heading north from High Bridge visitors will be rerouted to travel on Forest Road 8580 for approximately 1 ½ miles before returning to the trail.  The reroute is signed at both ends.

Trail clearing on the Kek

Additional volunteers are needed for a couple trail clearing trips being led by experienced Kekekabic Trail Club volunteer leaders. This is a great way to see the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, experience the Kekekabic Trail, and to volunteer on the NCT!

Information on the Terry Bernhardt led crew trip from 5/16 – 5/20…

We will drive up to Ely the afternoon of Wednesday, May 16, stay at the US Forest Service bunk house the evening of May 16, paddle in to our campsite in the BWCAW Thursday morning, and paddle out Sunday morning.

We will  be working on the west end of the Kekekabic Trail, entering at Snowbank Lake, camping near the Kek on either Parent Lake or Disappointment Lake.  The Forest Service will provide canoes and hand tools (nippers, bow and cross cut saws).  We provide our own food, tents and other gear. The gear and food will be planned at least a week before the trip.

I hope you can join us. There will be a combination of trail clearing activities and time to relax, fish, etc.  Only requirement is that crew members be in good health and able to use hand tools and able to lift/roll  branches and cut logs. We work in teams and do not tackle trees that are beyond our capability with hand tools.

Contact Terry ASAP at 651-226-6546 cell phone or tbernhardt1@comcast.net if you are interested in joining his crew.

Information on the Derrick Passe led crew from 5/23 – 5/29…

My crew is also at 5 currently. I would welcome any NCTA volunteers that want to help out on the Kek (and also get a tour of the Pagami Fire Area). Here are the pertinent details:

Wed. May 23 – Crew Assembly in Ely at Kawisihwi Ranger Station (I haven’t heard back from Cory on the Bunkhouse yet) I do have drivers coming from Mpls/St. Paul Metro Area and one via Central Wisconsin)

Thurs. May 24^th – Put in from Snowbank Entry Point  around 10 am (option for Later Arrival).

May 24^th – May 27^th – Clear from a base camp on Thomas Lake East and West based on feedback from other Clearing Trips.

May 28^th – Leave base camp on Thomas and head South into Insula Lake (the north edge of the Pagami Fire).

May 29^th – Exit the BWCAW from Lake One, stay that evening at my cabin in Brimson (or go directly home).

Contact Derrick ASAP via email at Derrick.Passe@co.lake.mn.us if you are interested in joining his crew.

The North Country Trail Association will once again be participating in the Outdoor Adventure Expo hosted this weekend by Midwest Mountaineering in Minneapolis, MN.  The Star of the North Chapter will be hosting the NCTA booth along with the Kekekabic Trail Club and Border Route Trail Association.  Our Superior Hiking Trail Association friends are usually nearby too!

Be sure to check out the full slate of programs, including:

• Saturday, April 28th – 192 Miles of Hiking / Backpacking in the BWCAW by Matt Davis (9:15am @ Hanson Hall, Room 106).  Download the PDF version (0.6 MB) of the presentation (Hiking trails of the BWCAW 2)
• Sunday, April 29th – The NCT in ND, MN, and WI: What’s New in Our Neighborhood on the Nation’s Longest Hiking Trail? by Matt Davis (11:45am @ Hanson Hall Room108).  Download the PDF version (0.8 MB) of the presentation (Whats New on the NCT show).

Others include:

The latest issue (PDF, 1.4MB) of the Call of the North, Minnesota’s NCTA newsletter is now available.  In it, you’ll find…

• An update on the Laurentian Lakes Chapter’s busy trail-building year using a DNR Legacy Trail grant
• An update on the new effort to jumpstart the development of the NCT in Otter Tail County (Frazee to Maplewood State Park)
• Our featured partner: Minnesota DNR Division of Forestry and Mark Carlstrom, Park Rapids Area Supervisor
• Chapter updates: LLC, STN, and ITM (including trail sections in the Chippewa National Forest in need of adopters)

LLC Volunteer Karen Stenberg hiking in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness, AZ

• Volunteer profile: Karen Stenberg of the Laurentian Lakes Chapter
• The spring-summer 2012 events calendar

Bridge Closure in Parker PA
The bridge over the Allegheny River in Parker will be closed for 8 months. Follow Route 268 north from Parker and cross the river on Route 58 at Foxburg. 58 will rejoin the route of the NCT at Callensburg.

By Bruce Matthews, NCTA Executive Director

9:00am

Andrea Ketchmark, NCTA’s Director of Trail Development and I wrapped up our 2012 participation in Hike the Hill this week. See the previous Blogs and Facebook postings for the specifics. Here are some of our takeaways from this year–what we learned, what we might do about it. In no particular order:

• We hope the American Hiking Society and the Partnership for the National Trails System work out the bugs next year that impeded cooperation this year. Too much to gain by working together not to be doing it!
• We were discouraged by the commonly expressed sentiment, by both Congress and administration representatives, to “not expect much” out of the rest of the 112th Congress. Frankly we haven’t seen much of anything yet so far except partisan bickering and a lack of ability to even pass a budget. The forecast calls for more gridlock, and more election-year jockeying and one-upsmanship. Feels like the ship of state is dead in the water. For sure the prevailing attitude in DC is depressing.
• The above bullet point notwithstanding, there are still islands of hope and faith among our elected representatives, and the cool thing is that our trails, their story and that of the folks who volunteer to bring national trails to America are a real antidote to this DC malaise we’ve observed. Staffers light up when we tell them our stories. They remind them of what’s still very good and right and valuable about America, and in our case about our rugged red plaid nation in America’s northern heartland. I don’t think I could stress enough how important this message was in our meetings, and how important it is to be getting out there. We bring hope.
• We may, with a lot of hard work and some political legerdemain,possibly get an Arrowhead Re-Route Bill introduced in this congress. But almost no one believed it would go anywhere. We will keep trying .
• NCTA needs to dramatically ramp up its advocacy efforts at the state level. We need to grow our advocacy capacity so we sustain our current momentum year-round. One lesson from the Cravaack debacle (refusing to introduce the Arrowhead Re-Route) is that the more we can frontload the discussion with constituents from the same district as the Member of Congress, the more doors open, and stay open.
• There are administration initiatives underway (America’s Great Outdoors, Federal Interagency Commission on Outdoor Recreation) that may yet generate benefits of consequence for the National Trails System.
• The Congressional re-districting going on in this election year will have important implications for future NCTA advocacy. Not only will some of the Representatives’ faces be changing, but representation on the trail as well. One example is MI-01, which adds about 200 more miles of the NCNST to its already 600 miles!
• Our Federal Agency partners are more focused on working with partners than ever before. As budgets shrink, they understand the value our organizations bring to the table. The USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service are listening to our concerns and needs and trying to find creative ways to get the job done.
• We will continue to communicate with our Representatives about the importance of keeping Transportation Enhancements and the Recreational Trails Program in the Transportation re-authorization. RTP and TE funds have been instrumental in completing sections of the NCT.

By Bruce Matthews, NCTA Executive Director

10:00am

Wednesday featured another busy day of Hill visits and federal agency meetings for NCTA Director of Trail Development Andrea Ketchmark and myself. A beautiful day in DC–sunny, cloudless and low 50′s–as a contrast to our rugged red plaid north country winters…well, maybe less so this year!

Anyway, visiting Members of Congress is an interesting thing. Every year I get to visit 20 to 30 offices of Senators and Representatives from the 7 states and 43 Congressional Districts through which the North Country Trail passes. This is my 5th Hike the Hill. In my previous job I lived in DC (7 years) and got to know the drill pretty well.

Some folks think we go to DC to meet with the Members themselves, which in my experience is a pretty rare thing. And, as I’ve learned, probably a good thing. You meet with “staffers,” individuals from Member staffs with job titles like legislative correspondent or assistant, and occasionally the legislative director. They’re the ones doing the legwork formulating the Members’ positions on legislation, issues and so on. You get the right one who handles
environment/conservation/recreation/natural resources policy issues, you build a relationship (hoping they stay in their job long enough to make it matter) and you work at it like any other relationship, with good communication, honest sharing of views, and eventually requests for action from their boss in supporting legislation or appropriations.

You do these visits long enough and you start learning some things. You learn which Members value constituent input enough to adopt a real customer service attitude. You learn who truly respects the democratic process and the citizen involvement/engagement necessary, and who just gives it lip service. You learn who respects people. You learn who you can count on, if not for support all the time at least for an honest response. You learn who is interested in a relationship, and who really values the work we do as an organization of volunteers committed to citizen stewardship and a legacy activity that’s more likely to benefit our grandkids than ourselves. You learn who cares.

We’ll leave DC with a greater understanding of today’s political landscape and what its going to take to get the job done for the NCTA and NCNST. Tomorrow I’ll blog about our takeaways, what we learned and what we’re likely to see regarding NCTA’s agenda.

By Bruce Matthews, NCTA Executive Director

7:00am

Highlights of Tuesday’s Hike the Hill include meetings with the offices of 8 Congressmen representing districts through which the NCNST passes, a meeting with Vermont Senators Leahy and Sanders staff about the eastern terminus extension, and a meeting at Interior with Will Shafroth, who heads up the President’s America’s Great Outdoors program among other things.

The main strategy with our House visits yesterday was to try to keep the Arrowhead Re-route alive in this Congress. We hoped we might persuade a Member to introduce the legislation even though Congressman Cravaack declined. Understandably no one want to do so, which in this political environment built on party politics and ever-shifting allegiances you’d never want to do to another Congressman what you don’t want to have done to you. Maybe that’s Washington’s version of the Golden Rule, and the bottom line is, while I got lukewarm support for a bipartisan introduction from a couple of Michigan Congressmen on the Natural Resources committee, we’re going to have to at least get Rep. Cravaack to agree to not oppose the introduction of the Re-route bill. So, we’ll work on that,

The President’s budget proposal is being dissected, and the topline is that Trails made out OK; at least it appears funding levels have been maintained and there are some new possibilities within the NPS budget that are trail targeted. No one expects next year’s budget to look like the President’s proposal, widely regarded as more of a political statement in this election year. In fact, prevailing opinion seems to think there won’t be a budget until after the November elections, and we will see government-by-continuing resolution, well, continuing.

Today we’ve got more Hill visits, plus Andrea will be representing NCTA in a meeting with National Park Service officials. Stay tuned!

From Dave Adams:  The Parker Truss Bridge will be closed from March 1 through mid-November for rehabilitation and painting.  Northbound NCT hikers normally use this bridge to access the Allegheny River Trail on the East side of the river and then hike north to Foxburg,  etc.  Trail detour is to hike north along W berm (not along river side) of  Rt 268 for 2 miles and cross Foxburg Bridge to access the Allengeny River Trail.  Southbound hikers cross the Foxburg Bridge and hike 2 miles South along East berm of Rt 268 to Parker.