Hiking trails ‘never looked better’ thanks to Friends trail management team
By Andrea Milam St. John Correspondent in Virgin Islands Daily News
Anyone who’s been hiking in Virgin Islands National Park lately will surely notice how clear and passable the trails are. It’s no small feat keeping 27 miles of hiking trails cleared, and that’s just one of several tasks the Friends of Virgin Islands National Park’s trail management team is charged with. Volunteers also work to clear ruins of damaging vegetation and plant native trees on park beaches. These initiatives are managed by Friends Program Director Mark Gestwicki and Trails Coordinator Taylor White, who direct the many volunteers who sign up to help.
“I’ve never seen the trails looking better,” said Gestwicki. “It’s partly because of a lack of rain, and there were no hurricanes this year so there isn’t a lot of recovery work. We’ve had consistent volunteers coming to stay at the camp, a mix of service groups and individual volunteers. We’ve been able to hit the ground running this year.”
Volunteers are invited to stay at the Friends campground, located at Cinnamon Bay, for seven nights in exchange for four days of labor and a suggested donation of $100 per person per week. The offer has proved to be enticing for many, as this season’s campground schedule is full.
“People come for one week or sometimes for up to six weeks,” said Gestwicki. “We had a young guy who was taking a break from college and came for six weeks, working on the trails every day, and we get a lot of retirees as well. It’s a great way to introduce people to the island.”
When Gestwicki took over the volunteer program in 2016, the camp at Cinnamon had no electricity and was more of a “rustic experience,” he said. Now, the campground has flush toilets, refrigerators and a coffee maker, offering volunteers a more comfortable stay.
In 2021, the Friends logged 225 trail crew volunteers who contributed 3,825 hours. They planted 500 trees on the north shore and spent 724 hours on archaeology work at the recently reopened Cinnamon Bay Campground, adjacent to the Friends volunteer camp.
Gestwicki said his focus now is on connecting with more service groups for the campground volunteer program. This week, the Conservation Volunteers International Program led by former VINP Superintendent Mark Hardgrove is on island working with the Friends. Giving back to the park he once managed is a meaningful experience, Hardgrove explained.
“When I retired from the park, we had a $21 million maintenance backlog,” he said. “We were trying to decide which historic resources we could preserve and which ones we would let go back to nature. I couldn’t participate in that discussion; it was beyond my ability to let things that were built by such special people fade away into the jungle. One of the most important things to me is to work on the ruins, especially the grave sites.”
Michigan resident Cindy Thompson was working alongside Gestwicki, Hardgrove and other volunteers this week on her second service trip to St. John with the Conservation Volunteers International Program. Like the former park superintendent, she said she found the work to be purposeful.
“Clearing the ruins at Annaberg made the biggest impact on me,” said Thompson. “We were clearing the ruins of the slave quarters. Looking down on the beautiful ocean I thought, ‘It doesn’t matter what your view looks like if you’re not free.’ Giving back is just what I want to do.”
Although the Cinnamon Bay camp volunteer crew’s schedule is full for the remainder of the season, the Friends still accepts walk-up volunteers on Tuesdays and Thursdays through May. The start time is usually between 8 and 8:30 a.m., and the meeting spots and times for the week are announced on the Friends Facebook page every Monday. For more information, visit www.friendsvinp.org/trails.
