January Newsletter 2025

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2024 IN REVIEW

The New Year is finally here, and we extend greetings to our members for a safe and healthy year to come. We thank you for renewing your membership and supporting the work we do to maintain our signature trail, the 37-mile-long Taconic Crest Trail (TCT), and to partner with other organizations to preserve and protect the Taconic Range. We hope to see you on an outing or a volunteer work effort in 2025.

The Taconic Hiking Club (THC) has been very productive in 2024. Here are the highlights of our activities and achievements.

We held a highly successful End-to-End Challenge in May 2024. All twenty-three entrants finished the hike without mishaps.

We completed the year with a strong 237 members.
Our outings volunteers offered 72 outings during the year, including hikes, snowshoes, cross-country skiing, cycling, and paddling. This was similar to the 70 we offered in 2023.
Our trail workers worked extremely hard on the trail and recorded a total of 850 trail work volunteer hours. This is well above average for a typical year.
The Club held its annual Gathering at Grafton Lakes State Park and held the annual Luncheon at Moscatiello’s Italian Restaurant.
Thirty-six hikers earned a cumulative End to End TCT patch in 2024. See the “Who Finished Hiking the TCT” article below for more details.

The club is fortunate to have some terrific volunteers who make all this possible. Many thanks to all THC volunteers and we welcome anyone to come out to join us!!!

RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP now for 2025, click here Membership — Taconic Hiking Club

CAVING - HIGHLIGHTS

At our annual Luncheon on November 3, we were thoroughly entertained by Kevin Dumont, a middle school science teacher who is an avid caver. Besides being a trustee of the Northeastern Cave Conservancy (NCC), Kevin has pursued his caving passion in the local area and beyond for the past forty years and even did his Master’s thesis on the newly discovered cave system in Cobleskill.

In a presentation that included pictures of some of the cave preserves held by the NCC, Kevin answered many questions from the audience who were generally entranced by his lively and informative presentation. Most caves in this area are karst formations, a type of landform caused by the dissolving of the underlying bedrock, mostly limestone and marble. The rocks are dissolved by water charged with carbon dioxide that creates a weak acid.

**Clarksville Cave, Gregory room, pic NCC**

Each cave has its own unique characteristics that require particular caving skills, and each cave has its own story of discovery and exploration. He brought in gear that cavers use and talked about preparedness and safety. He explained that even with only one bat in a cave it will be closed for the winter so any bats can rest undisturbed to conserve enough energy to survive the winter during hibernation. To map a cave, cavers use a tape measure, compass, and altimeter, noting numbers as they are taken and then later inputting them into a program to create or enlarge a map. Our local Clarksville Cave is both the most used and the most abused due to the numbers of people who enter it. When crawling through a narrow cave to explore it, the experience is often laced with some risk because one either hopes to find a new exit or a at least a place big enough to turn around. If not, the caver must back out! Sometimes too caves are filled with water, a condition that requires the use of scuba gear to get through. Very few cavers are experienced enough to risk doing that.

If you want to know more about caves and local caving, check the NCC website at http://www.necaveconservancy.org/ While you’re out hiking watch for openings in the landscape, springs, sinkholes, disappearing streams, and enlarged bedrock joints. Maybe you can get involved in local caving and even find a new one!

**Onesquethaw Cave, Spider room, pic NCC**

WHO FINISHED HIKING THE TCT IN 2024?

Those who apply for TCT trail patches are just a snapshot of those who use the trail. Most hikers enjoy day hikes on various sections of the trail and trail runners use the entire trail for practice. The Snow Hole continues to be the most popular day hike, followed by Berlin Mtn.

Thirty-six hikers and trail runners reported finishing the trail in 2024. Of these:

Twenty-five completed the trail in one day while eleven completed the trail in sections. Each of the twenty-five that hiked the entire trail in one day were hiking the trail as part of the “Northeast Ultra 8”.
The majority of the hikers were from NY and MA, 15 and 11 respectively. Two of the hikers traveled from Canada. The other hikers were from the Northeast: NH, NJ, CT, VT, and ME. It is nice to see that the TCT is a destination hike!

Two trail runners, not included in the count above, ran the entire trail on December 22, 2024, in 14 hours 52 minutes. They reported it was extremely cold, and with 4 to 6 inches of snow they wore micro-spikes for traction. We believe this may be a record time for winter.

If you are interested in taking on the fun challenge of hiking the entire trail in sections and enjoying the beauty of the various access trails or prefer to power though in one day, be it winter or summer, click here Trail Patches . If you just want to hike and explore some sections of the trail, click here for a TCT Trail Map & Guide.

Congratulations to all finishers!

OUTINGS: Refer to the THC website outings page for details about the outings and how to register. We schedule on a monthly and short-term basis, so check the website periodically.

Thursday, January 2: Berlin Mtn. B
Saturday, January 11: Huyck Preserve loop trails B
Wednesday, January 15: Valentino Family Community Forest B-
Wednesday January 22: Sarah Tenney, Bob' Ski Trail Loop C+/B-

“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.” –Alice Walker