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President's Letter By this time of the year, we are all eager for warmer weather and summer activities. With faith in this future, Randolph Mountain Club volunteers are preparing the traditional schedule of events, which are listed elsewhere in this Newsletter, and a great variety of hikes and outings, to be announced in The Randolph Weekly this summer. Don’t forget to bring money or checks to the Fourth of July Tea so you can purchase the new Randolph Paths and an updated RMC map of the Randolph Valley and Northern Presidentials. Some of these maps will be available rolled for display on a wall. We also will be selling copies of our 2004 Directory for a reduced price. We also hope to have a new tee shirt of Crag Camp and a reprint of an old Randolph poster drawn by Leroy Woodard in 1938.
The speaker at the Annual Meeting will be Dave Govatski, naturalist and recently retired Forest Service employee. This year we will experiment with handling the business part of the Annual Meeting in a more streamlined fashion, while still conveying the information members need. The minutes of last year’s meeting will be available at the Fourth of July Tea and, after that, at the Randolph Library. Please pick up a copy and read them before August 13 so we will only need to vote on whether to accept them. Reports on Trails, Camps, Events, and Trips are now published twice a year in the Newsletter so we plan to have the chair of each committee say only a few words and be available for questions. The financials for the first half of the year will still be presented at the meeting and a vote taken to accept them or not. And, of course, the Nominating Committee will present its slate, take any nominations from the floor, and ask for a vote on new board members and the president for the next year. Thank you, our members, for all your support, in both money and volunteer hours. We are also deeply appreciative of the many supportive comments and suggestions we've gathered during the process of planning for reliable, permanent housing for our hardworking trail crews and caretakers. This support is very meaningful to all of us who volunteer for the RMC and encourages us to redouble our efforts to secure the future of the club. See you this summer,
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The
Board of the RMC is continuing to work on a permanent solution
for housing its trail crews and caretakers. The Base Camp Building
Committee, chaired by Paul Cormier and Doug Mayer (and including
local builders John Tremblay and David Salisbury, along with
structural engineer and former RMC President Jeff Tirey and 7
others) has been following up on the many thoughtful suggestions
made during one-on-one interviews and at the Annual Meeting last
summer. They succeeded in significantly revising and simplifying
the original plan, getting it down to the essentials. The design
was then brought to modular, log and conventional builders, and
the Timber Framer's Guild for estimates. On April 3, they presented
four preliminary estimates to the board. All were significantly
lower than previous estimates. Needless to say, the RMC Board
is delighted with this result and very grateful to the Base Camp
Building Committee for its many, many hours of dedicated and
thoughtful effort. At the April meeting, the board gave the Committee's
work a unanimous vote of confidence. By the time of the Annual
Meeting of the membership on Saturday, August 13, we will have
more news to share with you.