| Green Mountain Club adopts new
trail tactic
(Note: Beware the word deception in the multiple use of words such as 'protection,' 'protected,' 'easement,' and many more. This is an article that requires careful reading!) August 24, 2002 By David Gram The Associated Press The Rutland Herald 27 Wales Street P.O. Box 668 Rutland, VT 05702-0668 802-747-6121 Toll free in Vermont: 800-498-4296 Toll free outside Vermont: 800-776-5512 Fax: 802-885-5138 To submit a Letter to the Editor: david.moats@rutlandherald.com JAY — From the summit of Jay Peak, the Long Trail heads north by first heading southwest, toward the view of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. After a short section of ski trail there's a gap in the wooden fence that marks the Jay Peak Resort's border. From there, Vermont's 270-mile, state-long, north-south hiking path descends steeply through dense coniferous forest, winding around the mountain and eventually assuming its northerly direction for the last few miles to the Canadian border. Along the way, the trail seems well protected, the woods pristine. The state of Vermont and the private, nonprofit Green Mountain Club have been working for more than a decade to keep it that way. Their goal has been to buy up land along the route to provide for a corridor, a buffer zone of 500 feet on either side of the trail. In many areas, they've succeeded, finding landowners willing to sell pieces of property outright, much of it steep, rocky and much more ideal for a mountain hiking path than for development. There are still a few holdouts, particularly in northern Vermont: landowners unwilling to sell for a variety of reasons. The Jay Peak ski area was one. But now the Green Mountain Club has adopted a new strategy, looking to acquire rights of way where outright land purchases aren't possible. That, Jay Peak was willing to donate. The easement — or granting of the right of way — formalized an informal relationship in place for the four decades the Long Trail and the ski resort have coexisted on the mountain, said Bill Stenger, general manager of Jay Peak. “We've been acting as if it's their trail all along,” he said. The easement provides a permanent guarantee that even if the resort is sold or some other big change comes about, Long Trail hikers will be able to climb and descend Jay Peak on their trek. “It's basically the right to walk through there on the existing route,” said Ben Rose, executive director of the Green Mountain Club. Stenger said, “The Long Trail will be here for every citizen of Vermont and visitors to the state to enjoy. That's a pretty (deleted) good goal.” The easement doesn't ensure that there will be no development around the trail, and doesn't provide the 500-foot buffer zone on either side of it, so it goes just part of the way toward meeting the Green Mountain Club's goal for the 1.8-mile stretch of trail in question. Both Stenger and Rose said the resort and the club had been talking for a decade or more about providing greater protection for the Long Trail. They originally talked about an outright land swap, under which the club would get ownership of the trail corridor and Jay Peak would get clear ownership of the land under its base lodge complex, which now is leased from the state, Stenger said. But the resort concluded that at least for now, it didn't want to forego the possibility of future development near the trail. Much of the Green Mountain Club's trail acquisition efforts have been focused on the northernmost 100 miles of the foot path, from the Mad River valley to the Canadian border. Farther south, most of the trail is protected by virtue of traversing the Green Mountain National Forest. Rose said as the years pass and deals have been completed, opportunities for outright land purchases have become less frequent. He said the club is changing its strategy now, and that he is in the process of writing to landowners to tell them the club would be happy for now with trail easements. “It does mark a change in the program,” Rose said, one that doesn't please all the club's members. Rose said an easement granting permanent access to land the trail crosses is “better than nothing.” It doesn't protect the trail experience from future development or logging. But the easements mark progress, and Rose said the club is putting out the word: “We're ready to talk to people on their own terms.” Parts of the trail's northern length are on protected state land. Of the remainder, the 9,000-member Green Mountain Club and the state each have chipped in about $4 million in the past 16 years to purchase or gain easements on 55 miles. About seven miles remain unprotected, said Susan Shea, the club's director of land protection. The Legislature didn't provide any new money in this year of state budget problems. But Shea said that wasn't the reason for the new willingness to settle for easements rather than outright ownership. Rather, it was merely dwindling opportunities for deals, at least for now. Rose said he hoped that at least in some cases, easements would mark an interim step toward an eventual purchase of the land. Of the Jay Peak donation of its easement, Rose said, “It's not a home run for the Green Mountain Club. But it's a very important step. We really can count this 1.8 miles as protected from closure. And it's in the right place. It's a beautiful trail.” |