Ever Hiked in Northern NJ? Thank the NY-NJ Trail Conference

BY CHIP M. O’BRIEN STAFF WRITER

Howie Liebmann still remembers the moment that changed his view of hiking trails forever.

He was hiking the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a demanding trek in the best conditions, and springtime snowmelt had swallowed many stream crossings. In order to cross, he had to remove his socks and boots, wade through the frigid water, and dry off on the other side before continuing. It was arduous and exhausting.

“And then you come to a spot where there was a bridge built,” Liebmann says. “And you go: wow. Thank God for this bridge.

I don’t know who built this bridge, but God bless ‘em.”

It’s a familiar sentiment for the 24 staff members and 2,500 volunteers who power the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. “They know bridges don’t happen on their own,” says Liebmann, who now leads volunteers in maintaining 75 miles of trails as the NYNJTC’s Northwest New Jersey Trail Chair. “And they want to pay it forward.”

The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference is a nonprofit organization that builds, maintains, and protects about 2,175 total miles of hiking trails from the Delaware Water Gap in northern New Jersey to just north of the Catskills in New York. About 760 of those miles fall within New Jersey, almost all north of Interstate 80.

“Basically, we do work to make sure that the natural areas and trails in our region are accessible and sustainable for another century, for generations to come,” says Ashley Nester, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Trail Conference.

The Trail Conference knows something about sustaining wilderness trails for generations: in 1923, after changing its name from the Palisades Interstate Trail Conference, the organization built the first completed mile of the Appalachian Trail near Bear Mountain, NY.

While the Trail Conference remains focused on building and maintaining hiking trails, as well as publishing famously authoritative trail maps by Sussex County, NJ cartographer Jeremy Apgar, it has also expanded to include conservation and stewardship work that ties to its mission. “It’s great if we have someone building a trail, but what about the natural areas around those trails?” Nester says. “You can’t really have a healthy trail system without a healthy forest for it to thrive in.”

On the local level, the Trail Conference’s work in NJ focuses primarily on three tasks: ero- sion mitigation, management of invasive plants, and trail upkeep and signage. All three have increased in importance as more people have turned to local trails for recreation and relaxation since COVID: Nester notes that the Conference’s most popular trailheads each saw about 20,000 users in 2022 alone.

The battle against erosion has become increasingly challenging thanks to changing conditions: more intense summertime heat, followed by intense storms with heavy, eroding rain.

“It has forced the Conference, particularly our trail builders, to think a lot more creatively about what a sustainable trail looks like,” says Zachary Cole, Long Distance Trail Coordinator for the Conference. Trail crews can deploy an arsenal of tools to control water flow and erosion: water bars, check dams, puncheon (a low plank bridge), and puncheon’s big brother: the much-beloved bridge.

Though erosion presents a constant challenge, many parks suffer from an even more aggressive enemy. “The biggest problem here is probably the proliferation of invasive botanical species,” says Bob Jonas, currently Co-Supervisor of Morristown National Historical Park alongside his wife, Estelle Anderson. Invasives choked the trails when they first arrived as Co-Chairs of the Central North Jersey Committee in 2008. A three-year concerted effort helped fight back the worst of it, ensuring wider trails and reduced regrowth. “They’re very prolific,” he says. “So it’s a constant job, really.”

The Conference focuses on about a dozen particularly aggressive invasive species in NJ, including barberry, Japanese stiltgrass, and multiflora rose.

Training is also a major component of the Conference’s work: they offer rigorous apprenticeship programs for their certified sawyers as well as practical training and experience for their Conservation Corps members. “We’re really training the next generation of environmental conservationists and leaders,” Nester, the Community Outreach Coordinator, says. All of this work is accomplished in partnership with federal, state, local, and private entities, as the Trail Conference doesn’t own any land itself and must seek permission from land managers in order to service the trails.

In the case of long distance trails, this might require conversation with literally dozens of land owners. The Conference serves three long-distance trails: the NY-NJ section of the Appalachian Trail, which it maintains alongside the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and two trails that it designs and leads: the 358mile Long Path and the 180mile Highlands Trail.

The Highlands Trail is of particular importance to NJ because it passes through the federally recognized Highlands

Region, which occupies less than 15% of the state while providing over 70% of its population with drinking water. By connecting separately owned pieces of the Highlands Region into one landscape, says Cole, the Long Distance Trail Coordinator, the Highlands Trail helps preserve NJ’s water and air quality while offering opportunities for recreation, as well as justification for preserving individual parcels of natural land.

If certain land is considered historically significant, several entities must approve major maintenance projects before the Conference can proceed. Anderson, Co-Supervisor of Morristown National Historical Park, notes the historical importance of the land she maintains: over 7,000 of George Washington’s troops were stationed at Jockey Hollow throughout the terrible winter of 1779-80 during the Revolutionary War. Every pile of rocks “could have been an encampment,” she says. “It could have been a fireplace, it could have been a foundation.”

The result: digging and moving rocks is not permitted in the park without approval from the State Historic Preservation Office, the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, and the Northeast Region Archeology Program. But Anderson and Jonas are undeterred. They’ve made a list of twenty trail signposts that they’d like to replace or service, as soon as approval and warmer weather arrive.

The Trail Conference enjoys a harmonious relationship with land managers and park staff.

As a volunteer-run organization, the conference can perform necessary trail work that parks don’t have the time, personnel, or resources to do themselves.

Liebmann, the Northwest NJ

Trail Chair, recalls asking one park superintendent for her input about a tricky trail maintenance challenge. Her response: “Why are you asking me? You know the trails better than I do. What do you think?”

“And she’s right,” Liebmann says. “We’re on the trails all the time.”

This speaks to the especially vital role that the NY-NJ Trail Conference fills in NJ: our state allocates insufficient funds to its parks, leading to a lack of resources and park staff that many fear is unsustainable. In April 2022, ecologist Michael Van Clef, Ph.D. released the New Jersey State Lands Man-