South Mountain Conservancy Annual Meeting report.
Recently a meeting was held in Maplewood New Jersey, The South Mountain Conservancy was having their Annual Meeting on Tuesday March 21, 2006 7:30 PM at the Maplewood Memorial Library. The meeting was open to the public so I was excited to see what I could find out about recent renovations, hikes, trash outs, trail maintenance and other assorted plans. Since the meeting was in my hometown it would be an easy journey. My fellow cycling club members thought it would be a good idea for one of us to attend and represent our club.
I arrived at the meeting at 7:30 sharp; the meeting seemed to be in progress already with a presentation running on a big screen. Looking around at the crowd, they seemed to be in the age group fifty years and up with a handful of people under that. Not that that’s a bad thing, these are concerned community members who love the Reservation and want to do what is best for all concerned, I myself a young forty-five year old was joined by a fellow member of our cycling club who is even younger.
There was a young Botanist doing a presentation on invasive plants and the evaluation of invasive plants in the reservation, as you could imagine this is very interesting material and did capture my attention especially when he said it was caused by disturbances on the edge of trails and paths. My first thought was, great more excuses to ban cycling on the trails. I held that though and said nothing, waiting for the right opportunity to chime if need be. The presentation went on and there were discussions on various types of invasive plants running wild in the Reservation and what should be done about it. Soon the presentation was over and the next presenter was up, here is where it gets interesting.
The next presenter was a fellow from PP & E (Professional Planning and engineering) These are the folks who are doing the year long study to create long term plans for trail restoration designs for green acres in South Mountain Reservation. For more information on the funds they have to work with go to
http://www.somocon.org, I do not want to bore you with those details.
His presentation starts out nice and friendly, The History Activities and plans for 2006 is the title. He goes on to say a survey of the Reservation has been complete and will be available on disk very soon. A short history of the park is presented, a slide show of trail erosion, vandalisms and dumping in the reservation is presented. The PP & E presenter goes on to say that the County Executive Joe Divincenzo is on board and wants to be known as the man who cleaned up the Essex County Park System, so he is making an effort to make the project a success, showing up on site to get a hands on view of what’s going on is not unusual.
I myself have sent emails to Mr. Divincenzo asking what his opinion was on MTB in the Reservation, I have received no replies as of yet, but this still sounds promising to me.
The presenter goes on to say volunteer efforts by scouts and the like are an enormous help but still not enough, then a slide of cyclist appears and the presenter goes on to say that cyclist and cycling clubs have been the doing the majority of volunteerism in the park. That is when I chimed in and said, yet they are not allowed to ride in the Reservation, why is that?
Heads started spinning, I thought one guys head was going to fall off he turned so fast.
The speaker continued and said the trails where not fit for the type of riding I had in mind, the trails are soft not compact enough. He continued, riding in the reservation is being reconsidered possibly on certain trails but this subject has always opened a Pandora’s Box of question and issues. People are riding in the park now he said, however we do not want the park over run with people from New York City and Brooklyn via NJ transit.
I was thinking people from Brooklyn do not even know about South Mountain, I know people in Parsippany NJ who do not know about South Mountain. No one in his or her right mind from Brooklyn would put their bike on the subway, and then transfer to NJ transit just to get to South Mountain. Being born and raised there, I just get that feeling.
I might do it if I lived in the city close to NJ transit, but even then NJ transit only allows two bikes per train and if a person in a wheelchair gets on the train, the bikers have to get off and wait for the next train. This alone is a pain in its self, with only 14 trains coming into lets say Maplewood station on the weekends from 9:00am to 6:00pm the total amount of bikes would be 28 if there are two bikes on every train. That is not over run by any means in an 8 hour stretch and certainly not likely.
As the presenter continued, he remarked that studies need to be in place, multi use trails are being considered and MTB on South Mountain Reservation is not out of the question.
It was also noted to be the largest turn out this annual meeting has ever had, there had to be fifty people there. If the NJ MTB community starts attending on a regular basis, it should make a difference.
Please do not reproduce this anywhere.
(that's him in picture #2).