by Herb Ogden, Killington Section president
Like almost everything else, the Killington Section has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For a while, all trail work was forbidden. The main reasons seem to have been (1) trail workers sometimes need the RRMC emergency room, and we wanted to save all the ER capacity for folks with the virus and avoid contact with them in the ER, (2) we needed to figure out who could work together relatively safely, and how, and (3) many people traveled over 10 miles to do trail work, but the state guidelines limited non-essential travel to 10 miles.
By the time you read this, probably small groups will be allowed to do all sorts of trail work as long as they routinely stay 6 feet apart, don’t share tools, and don’t carpool with people from outside their own households.
Probably small group hikes will be allowed if distance is maintained and carpools are restricted. It’s doubtful whether general use of shelters and outhouses will be allowed, because present research indicates the virus can linger even on porous surfaces long enough after being touched by a vector to infect the next person who touches that surface.
But all this could change. Maybe Vermont will have minimized the spread of the virus so well that hiking and camping will be less restricted. But maybe we will let down our guard or invite people from highly infected areas to come to Vermont, to the point where the infection rate increases and restrictions will have to be re-imposed.
Please keep up to date by visiting Covid-19 part of the website for the Green Mountain Club at: greenmountainclub.org/covid-19-response.
On account of the pandemic, we postponed the annual meeting that was scheduled for April 19. The directors have not set a new date yet. If in-person meetings continue to be restricted to fewer people than may want to attend, or if the directors decide that an in-person meeting is not safe regardless of what the state allows, we may have to conduct a meeting with a service like Zoom or vote for officers by an email ballot. The Montpelier Section has already done the latter. But we have email addresses for only about a quarter of our membership.
Consequently, to allow electronic meeting or voting if necessary, please send your preferred email address to section secretary Allison Henry, allisonnorton1@gmail.com.
Finally, an item that’s more fun: In 2019, Killington Section volunteers spent about 76.7 hours getting to work sites and about 287.9 hours working on the LT and side trails and preparing for work parties. This does not count a day of work by about 20 volunteers from Wayfair in Boston. There are always ways to improve our part of the Long Trail and our side trails. To help, please contact either of the trails & shelters co-chairs, Larry Walter at lwalter@sover.net, or Wayne Krevetski at wkrevetski@hotmail.com.
