Mount Jo, which is managed by the Adirondack Mountain Club, gets a lot of traffic — around 15,000 visitors annually, according to ADK Director of Communications Ben Brosseau. A 2020 assessment found that Mount Jo’s Long Trail — the longer of two trails that wind up the mountain — “had exceeded standards for sustainability and safety,” according to a release from ADK. In Brosseau’s words, the trail was “heavily eroded and heavily falling apart.”

ADK started work on a three-phase project to almost entirely reroute the trail, and the first phase — constructing a new path on the lower third of the trail — wrapped up in October. The new trail, built with sustainability in mind, follows an overall 10% grade. It’s wider to better accommodate families and groups, Brosseau said, and it’s built to handle high hiker traffic and weather events.

“Through sustainable trail design, the new Mount Jo Long Trail increases hiker safety and reduces impacts to surrounding vegetation and soils,” Charlotte Staats, ADK trails manager, said in a statement.

The new trail is now open for hikers taking the Long Trail. ADK broke ground on the new trail in 2021. ADK hopes to finish rerouting the trail all the way up to Mount Jo’s summit by fall 2023.

Adam Nasta crushes rocks and works on the new section of the Mount Jo Long Trail in Lake Placid. (Provided photo — Adirondack Mountain Club)

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Rewilding

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When ADK opened up the new lower section of the Long Trail, they “brushed in” the old lower section. They want the old trail to “rewild” and recover as soon as it can, so they’ve made sure to install new trail markers along the new route so hikers know where to go and reroute the trail on mobile hiking apps.

Recovery of the old trail will take a “really long time,” according to Brosseau. He said there are some old roads in the Adirondack forests that are still visible despite being more than a century old. Plus, there’s not a lot of data on trail recovery times, Brosseau said — this is the first time ADK has done a full trail reroute. Brosseau said that ADK will be able to monitor the trail’s recovery and do some “intentional acts” to speed up the healing process.

Trail work can be labor- and money-intensive, Brosseau said, but ADK shored up a lot of volunteer and grant support to help make the Long Trail reroute happen. The project was financially supported by private donors and a $50,000 Local Enhancement and Advancement Fund grant from the town of North Elba. Brosseau hopes ADK’s Long Trail reroute could inspire other sustainable projects on trails across the High Peaks.

“Because what we have right now is falling apart,” he said.

Brosseau said ADK is eyeing a couple more trail projects at Heart Lake and Cascade Welcome Center. He said starting any projects outside of those areas, on forest preserve land rather than land managed by ADK, would require some cooperation between ADK and the state to get trail work moving.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly paraphrased Adirondack Mountain Club Director of Communications Ben Brosseau as saying that ADK is eyeing a couple of trail projects for Heart Lake and Cascade Welcome Center, but that starting those projects up could be “tricky” since those locations are on the state-managed forest preserve. ADK owns Heart Lake and Cascade Welcome Center; they are not owned by the state — Brosseau said ADK doesn’t have more sustainable trail projects planned outside of Heart Lake and the Cascade Welcome Center because it would take more time to plan them alongside the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The Enterprise regrets the error.