Dig In Details

Due to COVID-19, the Pine Hill Partnership needs to replace approximately 2,500 lost volunteer hours to complete the Pine Hill Park Trail project. The plan is to address the backlog of trail maintenance and new trail development by hiring the VT Youth Conservation Corp.

PHP’s mission is to build trails in the Park for use by the whole community. We do not have a target population in the technical sense, but more in general sense. The park has become the vehicle for many activities and programs, none of which are run by PHP. Many outdoor and physical fitness programs utilize these trails, but those programs are run by other groups. That being said, there are some problems that the trail system in the Park address indirectly:

As is well known, the rates of obesity in the United States have tripled in the last 40 years. Data from the CDC show that nearly 1 in 5 preschool and school-age children from the ages of 2 to 19 years of age is obese. In creating graduated trails we intend to encourage physical activity of varying levels within the Park’s trail system. PHP’s next phase of trails will allow easier access to the lower trail system by creating a stacked loop system, with graduated grades, on the same topography that would normally be used for steeper trails.

The Park, in earlier years, experienced challenges with vandalism and other unwanted behavior. With the increase in local people using the Park the vandalism has decreased significantly over the last 18 years; encouraging even more local residents to use the Park and adjacent lands for positive behaviors, instead of negative ones.

In 2019 Youth Mountain Bike Group was it's 10th year with over 70 kids. The ages range from 6-18. Gritty Girls is a girls only program that in 2019 it's first year program had 32 kids. Plus a women's only clinic for the last 10 years that has seen over 200 women in the program. For 2020 these programs are on hold thanks to COVID-19.