Mad River Path Newsletters

On June 12th, Fred and I met with two of the members of the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps who will be Crew Leaders for the construction of a new bridge and trail across from the Fayston Elementary School. This one week of work will begin on July 9th, with the 10 person crew setting up camp on July 8th. They will welcome visitors and encourage community members to stop by or join them for dinner (bring something to share and let them know a day in advance that you are coming.) On Tuesday July 10th there will be a public presentation by the crew members relating to their experience with the VYCC. Crew member families, donors, project sponsors, community members and guests are welcome to attend. The presentation will be at 7:30 p.m. in the field across from the school with a rain location at the Fayston School.

On June 15th I met with Heidi Schmidt, another Mill Brook Trail property owner. She recently removed a section of trees that adjoined the Path and has cleared and seeded the site. She owns an herbal business and would eventually like to offer tea and goodies to folks who are walking past her house on the Path!

On June 16th we had a very productive work day on the Mill Brook trail. Fred, Rocky, Dori, Laura and I all worked to demolish several of the deteriorated bridges and were able to connect with Robert and Lara Hoopes, adjoining landowner (who were VERY helpful with the trail work). They have not yet signed a landowner agreement and are hoping that the trail can be re-routed so it does not pass so closely to their house. We looked at possible alternative routes and will be working with them in the future. Their house is above the “clay slide” and approximately 60’ of old boards and pressure treated 2 x 4’s were removed from the trail. Another bridge near their property was covered with chicken wire to make the surface slip-proof and a coat of the water-proofing mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine was applied to the bridge with rollers. There were some boards on this bridge that will need replacement in the next couple of years. We also completely removed the deteriorated bridge in the photos that were shown at our last board meeting. I would anticipate that this trail will be reopened soon – although there are still a couple of bridges that need some work.

On June 19th I met with Linda Lloyd, Steve Gladczuk (CVRPC) and David Raphael (Landworks in Middlebury) to discuss the Mad River Byway. We looked at the Path map with current and conceptual routes – adding several new possible routes to the map. We talked about a possible information center at the old Top Gas site. We then visited areas where the Byway could serve us well by providing funding and expertise on signs and possible trail locations (Village Path at Valley Rentall and the Skatium, new kiosk by Chamber of Commerce).

Carl and I have been meeting weekly to put together letters and sponsor forms for the top sponsors for the Mad Dash. Joe Grant from Back to Action has agreed to be our top $1000 sponsor this year and into the future until he decides he no longer wants to be the top sponsor. I will send along a copy of the sponsorship levels and the list of people Carl has contacted as well as other businesses who have either not been contacted or have not contributed to the Dash in the past couple of years. Please look these over and see if any of them are folks that you do business with and would like to talk to about becoming a Dash sponsor. Carl and I also put together a list of all of the Dash tasks, people who might be interested in being in charge of each task and details of what the task involves. Please read this before the next board meeting on June 27th and let us know how the distribution of duties works for you.

Memberships continue to flow into the Mad River Path mailbox and we currently have 65 members for a total of $3163.00. I have put signs up at some of the entry ways to the Path which say, “Did you know… that the path you walking are on is here because of the work of volunteers and a small non-profit organization…” We need more members and I felt that this was a good way to catch people who use the path and don’t know the path is the result of the hard work and dedication of volunteers and a small non-profit. I would like try putting some volunteers at popular Path entry ways (Mad River Greenway and Kingsbury Bridge Greenway) on a busy Saturday, with membership forms and a map of the Path and see how many new members we can recruit. If anyone would like to spend a couple of hours doing this, let me know – I’d be glad to join them! Maybe we could sell maps, lemonade and cookies and make some money!

Speaking of money, I got an amazing phone call last Friday from Tom at Mehuron’s Market. It appeared that one of the folks that Ben and Jerry’s gave a check to for the sale of ice cream seconds was no longer in business and never cashed their check. So Ben & Jerry’s sent a check to the last recipient of the second’s money, which just happened to be the Mad River Path Association. On Monday I picked up a check for $1968.40!

The next months will be a busy one for the Landowner relations committee as we (hopefully) finalize our draft easement and start the process of talking to our landowners about the choices they can make as far as agreements, easements, rights of first refusal and other options for ensuring that the Mad River Path remains a free and accessible trail system forever.