BYCC Season Wrap-Up

BYCC crew works with Kris, BSP Trail Specialist, on water bars along the Abol Trail.

Our Baxter Youth Conservation Corps (BYCC) program, now in its 8th year, had a wonderful season this summer and has since wrapped up at the beginning of August. The BYCC is a job training and service learning opportunity for local youth in the Katahdin Region and provides the experience of working with Baxter State Park trail crew on important trail projects. This year, we were able to hire 12 local students, and our crew donated a combined total of 2,560 hours of service to the park over the course of 8 weeks. They completed over 10 miles of corridor definition, cleared drainages and water bars along 4 miles of Katahdin trails, spent 15 days on the OJI Trail completing 2 new reroutes, building more than 10 turnpikes, installing 13 large stepping stones, and building abutments for what will soon be a new 50ft bridge in place of old bog bridging.

The crew worked alongside the Baxter State Park trail crew for much of the summer, and gained valuable knowledge and training from their guidance and teaching. They were given the opportunity to perform more technical tasks and learn the process of building new trails. We can't thank the BSP trail crew enough for the work they do and for all of the time they spent mentoring our BYCC crew this summer. We also had two of our own wonderful trail leaders who made all of this possible, and of course our youth participants who completed some great work this year!