Local hiking club hosts weekly excursion into the outdoors

ALLISON COLLINS

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

For decades, the Susquehanna Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club has offered a weekly chance to hit the trails.

The club, based in Oneonta, hosts an accessible, all-levels hike each Tuesday.

“The chapter provides opportunities for members to get involved in ADK’s conservation, advocacy, recreation, education and stewardship work in the local area and statewide,” according to the chapter’s website. Members come “from all walks of life, and participate in many outdoor activities in the local area and Adirondack and Catskill State Parks.”

The chapter, one of 27, boasts hundreds of members throughout the Southern Tier and lower Mohawk Valley.

Walton resident Tom Austin, a legacy club member and its treasurer, said the chapter’s Tuesday hikes are a highlight.

“I grew up in Oneonta and my mother, Mary Lou Austin, was a longtime member,” he said. “Back in the day, when I was still working, she bought my first year for me with the expectation that I would continue my membership, and she did that for my older brother, Jim, who is also in the club. That was May 22, 2007, but I wasn’t active until I retired four years ago.

Austin is the former superintendent for Walton Central School District.

“One of our best activities is the Tuesday morning hike,” Austin said. “Working folks usually can’t schedule to get to those, which is unfortunate, but we are highly successful with the niche of who we serve. Because of the Tuesday hikes, we are primarily attracting retired folks. We typically get between 20 and 40 hikers as a regular count of those who actually participate each Tuesday.”

Club member Sarah Patterson, of Oneonta, serves as a chapter representative to the advisory council of the ADK. “The advisory council is kind of like the chapter’s voice to the overall board of the ADK,” she said.

Patterson said she joined the Susquehanna Chapter “eight or 10 years” ago, also in retirement, though began hiking with the group before that.

The Tuesday hikes are designed to be doable.

“Our niche is walks, strolls and hikes that are about two hours long,” Austin said. “They’re all at the lowest level of what the ADK has for hike rating. Their lowest level is below six miles and below 1,500 feet of elevation.

“Because we have a wide variety of ages and a number of retirees, the leader will say, ‘this is going to have 300- to 600-foot elevation,’ so some might pass or, for instance, I’m leading the Jan. 7 hike on a rail trail and that’s synonymous with flat, so away we go,” Austin continued. “Most of them are very family- friendly and you just need the basic walking ability for two hours. It still takes a little bit of fitness. We had one bike outing last year and, in June, we have a paddle at Goodyear Lake where one group hikes around the lake and a long-term member hosts a picnic after. On occasion, we’ll snowshoe, cross-country ski or paddle, and at least once — though we’re thinking of offering it more often — a bike alternative.”

“All of our hikes in our club are Level 1,” Patterson said. “We’re fairly elderly. There are some clubs that have lots of younger members and they’ll do Level 2s or 3s. We always welcome everybody, but that’s sort of what it’s morphed into. This is just how our chapter evolved. We’ve had a couple newer members join up, and I think as we get older that’s what we need, more activity and socialization.”

Monthly meetings with presentations, Austin said, are another member favorite.

“We have a monthly potluck dinner on Wednesdays,

See HIKING on C2

Susquehanna Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club hike sweep Jim Austin pauses on a bridge along a wintry trail at Robert Riddell State Park in this undated photo.

Contributed photos

Members of the Susquehanna Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club pose for a group photo on the bridge near the S curve at the end of Wilber Park in this undated photo.