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President's Letter The issue of a permanent basecamp to house the RMC’s trail crews and caretakers is once again on the front burner. The club has been offered land in the valley on which to build its own facility. This opens up the possibility for the club to take a huge step. To lay out for you the issues we now must resolve, I would like to start at the beginning of the story. In “the good old days,” meaning the 1960’s and 1970’s, the RMC was able to keep its paths clear of brush and blow-downs by hiring a few teenagers from the town to work for a month or two each summer. But times have changed and pursuing the club’s mission “to further enjoyment of the Randolph area through…trail development and maintenance…” has grown more complicated. Many more people are hiking on our trails and in all seasons, greatly increasing wear and setting up conditions for erosion to further the damage. There are no longer enough interested teenagers from Randolph available to fill out our trail crew. Over the years, in response to increasing usage, the RMC has increased the size of its trail crew and hired experienced workers. At this point, we have two paid crews each summer, one of which is composed of experienced trail workers, working for two months with heavy equipment and chainsaws to repair trail as well as to clear blow-downs. These crews are young people who come from many different places, often outside the immediate area, and need a place to spend the nights and store their clothes and rest on their days off. The RMC camps have also seen changing times and increased usage. The first summer caretaker was hired in 1946. The number was increased to two in 1963. Meanwhile, winter use of Gray Knob grew. By 1971 a weekend winter caretaker was hired. The first full-time winter caretaker was hired in 1976. Now the club tries to have at least one caretaker at the camps every night of the year. These employees are often from some distance away from Randolph and also need a place to rest on their days off. Again, this effort is part of our mission: “To promote the enjoyment of the Randolph area through…upkeep of camps and shelters…”
A temporary solution emerged almost ten years ago, when RMC paid to house one of the crews at AMC's Camp Dodge facility. However, the AMC reclaimed the space for their own uses and that option ceased to exist in 2001. Luckily, Dan and Edith Tucker stepped up with a most generous offer: the trail crews could use the Jones Cottage, on the Tuckers’ property, as a base. It had a kitchen and bathrooms and one bedroom for the field supervisor. The club gladly accepted this offer and easily raised money to buy tents and build tent platforms for crew members’ housing. This arrangement has worked so well that crew morale is way up and we are now able to better retain members from one year to the next – and, incidentally, that means we get more benefit from our training – and coordination is naturally much easier. However, the Tuckers have made it clear to the club that this is not a permanent arrangement and they have asked the club to seek a long term solution. In the summer of 2002, when David McMurtrie made known his interest in selling his Bowman Base Camp on Route 2 across from Lowe’s gas station, we hoped we had found the answer. The board followed up with an analysis of the structure and negotiations with the owner. Unfortunately, the structure was so deteriorated that it would not have been prudent for the club to buy it at the non-negotiable asking price of $150,000. By January of 2003, club president Mike Pelchat was able to inform members that the prospects for purchase of the McMurtrie property were poor. In that month, the board decided not to proceed further. Subsequently the McMurtries have withdrawn the property from the market. The experience of those months, however, helped the board to sharpen its thinking about the club’s future needs. When the Bowman possibility fell through, the board charged the Bowman Base Camp Committee, renamed the Valley Home Search Committee, to look at other options and more carefully define the club’s needs, as club president Mike Pelchat wrote in his column in the May 2003 Newsletter. The Committee made a report at the Annual Meeting in 2003 in which it reviewed this history and described its plans. In that same report, mention was made of another generous offer by the Tuckers, to donate to the club a parcel of land at the edge of their property near the Goetze Workshop. Recently, engineering studies have been completed and have concluded the land is definitely buildable and is suitable for our purposes. The board has just met and decided to tell the Tuckers we accept their offer and want to go on to the next step. We understand the offer holds only if the club in fact uses the land to build housing for its trail crews and caretakers. We also know that building such a facility will be expensive and will require funds to be raised both for its construction and for its maintenance. So when I say “go on to the next step,” I mean the next step of exploration. We are now beginning to research the feasibility of the RMC undertaking such a project. The Valley Home Search Committee – once again renamed as the Basecamp Committee - is now charged with coming up with a detailed list of requirements and the cost of embodying these in a structure. We will be talking with members to get their ideas. We will discuss the project at this year’s Annual Meeting, so I hope many of you will be able to attend. We are at the early stages of planning and all is open for discussion and in-put. Let me share with you now some high points of the tentative program the Basecamp Committee has developed so far. Hopefully, you will contribute your feed-back and ideas to help us refine this draft: “A portion of the building should be unheated and a portion heated. There will be a separate space…for the Field Supervisor in the summer and winter caretaker on his or her days off. This is the heated space…Trail crew and [summer] caretakers would continue to live in their own tents, scattered appropriately around the property…crew kitchen and bathrooms…laundry area…woodstove in large community room…quiet room for reading, writing, and e-mail…” In order to have something concrete to work with, the Basecamp Committee approached Tim Sappington, a local architect, who agreed to donate his time to draw up preliminary sketches so the committee could see how its program ideas would shape an actual building. These sketches have been very helpful but are entirely preliminary. They do not mean the club has settled on a design. After all, we have not yet even decided to go ahead with a building. Feed-back from the membership will be a critical part of this project. You can contact the board through the links on our website, www.randolphmountainclub.org. Also, please feel free to approach any member of the board about this subject. We look forward to hearing from you. And, remember, we will discuss a possible basecamp at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, August 14 at 7:30 in the Randolph Town Hall. Please come. The summer activities schedule is as follows: The Tea will be on Sunday, July 4, at 3 pm at the Kenyons’ barn on Randolph Hill Road. The Gourmet Hike will take place on Thursday, August 5, leader to be announced. The Annual Meeting will be on Saturday, August 14, at 7:30 pm in the Town Hall. After a business meeting, there will be a talk by Dyk Eusden on the geology of the White Mountains. The Picnic and Charades will be on Saturday, August 21, at noon in Mossy Glen. In case of rain, they will be held at the Beringer barn on Randolph Hill Road. Organized trips will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout July and August. They will be announced in the Randolph Weekly, available in boxes around Randolph, and on our website through a secure link. To access the latter, contact the webmaster at www.randolphmountainclub.org to get a password (for members only). If you would like to lead a trip, please contact John Eusden or Jack Stewart to volunteer. They hope to schedule a variety of trips, including canoe trips, camping trips, family hikes, and fast hikes and slow hikes. At last year’s Annual Meeting, a majority of those present voted that the club “address the issue” of over-flow parking at the Appalachia trail head on Rte 2. I met with George Pozzuto and Don Muise of the Forest Service to discuss the situation. They were entirely aware of the problem. They pointed out that other trail heads have even more over-flow. But the solution is very difficult because so many levels of government and different departments have jurisdiction over different pieces of the puzzle. They did say that protests from the public are much more likely to be listened to than suggestions from them. I then brought the issue before the board. They unanimously voted not to pursue the matter, feeling that it was not part of the the club’s mandate to engage in advocacy. However, interested individual members should write to Don Muise at the Forest Service to see what lines to pursue. He can be reached at the Andoscoggin District Forest Service office, Glen Road, Gorham, NH 03581. Thank you to all those that have sent in their dues and thank you for your contributions. We have had a good response so far to our mailing and urge the rest of you to respond soon. I look forward to seeing many of you this summer.
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Providing
housing for the trail crews and the caretakers has been an issue
for a long time, ever since we
have not found enough young people from Randolph or the immediate
area to fill all the positions. For years the RMC housed these
young people as best it could, spending much volunteer energy
trying to find available beds. The crew members were scattered
in different locations. It was difficult to attract the best
from the pool of applicants when all the other clubs were guaranteeing
reliable housing. Crew morale suffered from their scattered locations.
Coordination was extremely difficult.