Backcountry Trail Crews
Join a Trail Crew for a few hours, a day or more...
The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation has contracted with the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference on a backcountry trails program in our Taconic and Palisades Regions. The program creates trail crews who focus on enhancing trail development, maintenance and stewardship of park trail systems while implementing park trail plans.
Trail crews are currently active in Sterling Forest and Fahnestock State Parks and Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve under this program. The goal is to develop a skilled volunteer base at each park for long-term, on-going trail maintenance and stewardship. Additional trail crews are active at many other state parks including Bear Mountain and Minnewaska State Park Preserve.
Trail crews are led by New York-New Jersey Trail Conference staff and trained AmeriCorps members. The Trail Conference recruits, trains, organizes, and manages volunteers through on-site workshops and work projects.
Volunteers Needed
Projects may include: Side-hill trail construction, improving trail drainage and fixing erosion, setting rock steps, building crib walls, bog bridges, revegetation, and invasive species removal.
No experience? No problem! You will be taught on-site by professionally trained staff. Join a crew and feel the satisfaction of team work, physical labor, new skills and becoming a steward of a state park.
For more information and to join a crew, please visit:
- Fahnestock and Hudson Highlands (Taconic) Trail Crew
- Sterling Forest (Palisades) Trail Crew
- Bear Mountain State Park Trail Crew
- Long Path/Shawangunk Ridge Trail Crew
- Invasives Strike Force
- Find a full listing of the Trail Conference's trail crews
The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference maintains over 450 miles of state park trails with a base of more than 1,700 volunteers and has been working in partnership with OPRHP for 90 years.