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Date: 1/25/2023
WILBRAHAM – After a long hiatus, the Wilbraham Hiking Club (WHC) is back with some new changes. The club has joined forces with the Wilbraham Parks and Recreation Department, with Parks and Rec. posting their hikes and registration. Hike leader Sue Burk has been a member of the club since 2014. She asked the Parks and Recreation Department if the club could restart within the Rec Department website, and everything proceeded from there.
“What we’re trying to do is to streamline the communication and make it very easy for people to find things about the Wilbraham Hiking Club without having to do it redundantly,” Burk said. “This gives us a very easy way to track and manage members; knowing who’s going to be attending hikes.”
The purpose behind the Wilbraham Hiking Club is to allow recreational hikers of all abilities to join in and experience Wilbraham’s gold mine of exciting trail lore, wildlife, flora and fauna.
Founder Jay Taylor was a new member of the town’s Open Space and Recreation Plan Committee. He saw that Wilbraham had a lot of services for children and seniors, but at the time not much for adults in midlife. Taylor has been an active hiker most of his adult life and thought Wilbraham could use a hiking club. He got the go-ahead from the Open Space Committee to develop it and spent late 2011 to the next spring scouting area hikes and talking to different towns and locals about their trails. The club’s first hike was in the spring of 2012.
“I was looking for something I could do and encourage others to do as well,” Taylor said. “For the first five years I managed the club it grew rapidly. We hiked mostly locally and regionally, and had trips to national parks out west and other states."
He went on to say, “I’ve stayed in touch with Sue through COVID [-19] shutdowns and she’s done a remarkable job of getting the club started again.”
The Open Space Committee was the original sponsor of the hiking club. Burk told Reminder Publishing the club grew organically to a tremendous extent and it got so popular among non-residents as well as residents that one of their members established not only a Facebook page, but a Meetup page for the hiking club. At that point the club took off on Facebook and as far as the Meetup page, the number of people who signed up as being members of the hiking club was over 3,000. With that, the club had a wide variety of hikes, sometimes almost 20 hikes a month of different levels and abilities. The Meetup page and the Facebook page stayed in sync, but with the advent of COVID [-19] the group came to a halt.
“When the club originally started, there was no formal registration process,” Burk explained. “In trying to restart the club, we started rethinking about how the club could work best going forward.” She continued, “We still offer free hikes, but now the club members register through the Wilbraham Parks and Recreation Department, which represents a simplification for hike leaders. Moving it under the Parks and Recreation Department when people register for our hikes, the hike leaders get a list of everyone who signed up.”
Parks & Recreation Director Bryan J. Litz added, “We have worked with the club since 2012, and have worked with the various club leaders year in and year out to offer the program. The benefits are immense to the residents, primary two being socialization and exercise. The benefit to the department is to be able to offer a program that is free, while also offering a program that appeals to folks outside of the youth sports we primarily focus on.”
He continued, “It is great to be able to offer a club that folks can join, free of charge, get some exercise, make some friends or just get together with current friends and enjoy a great passive recreational activity like hiking.”
Burk’s goal for the hiking club is to see everybody continue enjoy being out together and be able to enjoy Wilbraham’s wonderful trails and trails from the surrounding towns. She wants to have more leaders lead hikes for the club because the more leaders they have the greater variety of hikes they can offer. She also would like to see someone step up who wants to be the coordinator for the program so that it will be in good hands going forward and it doesn’t depend upon any one person to keep on going.
“By offering a wide variety of hikes, folks of all different interests can find something that will be enjoyable to them,” Burk said. “To see that unexpected delight people experience when they are hiking in a new area for the first time is the most rewarding part of this club.”
To sign up for hikes with the Wilbraham Hiking Club, go to https://wilbrahamma.myrec.com/info/activities/program_details.aspx?ProgramID=30174. The Wilbraham Hiking Club Facebook page was deactivated on Jan. 20. The Meetup group will continue with its 3,000 plus membership. It has been renamed The Valley Hikers. It is still on hold, and hopefully will restart soon. Anyone who was a member of the Wilbraham Hiking Club Meetup is now a member of The Valley Hikers Meetup and is welcome to also join the newly restarted Wilbraham Hiking Club at wilbrahamrec.com. You can find news about the Wilbraham Hiking Club on the Wilbraham Parks & Recreation Facebook Page and the Wilbraham Open Space Committee Facebook Page.
The next hike is slated for Jan. 31 at the Springfield Reservoir in Ludlow at 10 a.m.