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2021 Spring Newsletter
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Volunteer Workday Sat 9/21
Volunteer Workday Sun 8/18
Cresheim Trail Volunteer Workday Sat 7/20
Volunteer Workday Sun 6/9
Cresheim Valley Drive Spring Cleanup – Love Your Park – Sat 5/18

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We encourage you to join our group by making a donation ($50 suggested) online at our Square page or by mail to:

Friends of the Cresheim Trail

PO Box 4341

Philadelphia, PA 19118

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Email: info@cresheimtrail.org

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The early forecast looks pretty, pretty good for t

The early forecast looks pretty, pretty good for this Saturday’s volunteer workday. We’ll have a variety of relatively light tasks to handle in the vicinity south of the Germantown Avenue trailhead, including a little attention to the boardwalk, the usual vegetation trimming, and some other general trail stuff.

We’ll meet at the classic meetup spot, on *northbound* Cresheim Valley Drive opposite Navajo Street. If you’re driving, there’s plenty of parking there (do NOT park on southbound CVD), and if you’re coming from the trail, right on. It’s a 3-minute walk from the Germantown Ave trailhead. That’s THIS SATURDAY, September 21st, at 9am.

ALSO: Be sure to save the dates for our next two workdays: Next month’s, Sun 10/20, will feature some heavier trail lifting, and the following month, Sat 11/16, will be our annual Love Your Park fall planting. Hope to see you at one or some or all!

#cresheimtrail #phillyvolunteer

🚨 NEW MERCH ALERT 🚨 Super duper shoutout to

Hate to do it folks, but we gotta do it. We held o

Hate to do it folks, but we gotta do it. We held out as long as we could to decide, but today’s forecast has too many “storms” and “strong gusts” for us to be working in the woods. So today’s volunteer workday is canceled.

We’ll give it another go next month on Saturday, September 21st, but we’ll be at Supper Sessions in Mt Airy first. Come see us there on Wednesday, September 4th - we’re cooking up some new merch you won’t want to miss.

Stay safe and dry out there today!

#cresheimtrail

Hiya folks, just a quick reminder that our August

Hiya folks, just a quick reminder that our August volunteer workday will be THIS SUNDAY, 8/18. We’ll meet at 9am at the classic Cresheim meetup spot on *northbound* Cresheim Valley Drive, opposite Navajo Street.

Exact tasks will be determined and delegated, but it’ll all be trail related, from clearing fallen branches and brush from Debby to vegetation trimming and other minor trail work. Hope to see you then!

Our next workday after that falls on the last day of summer, Saturday September 21st.

#cresheimtrail

Heyyyyyy folks, two quick things: 1. Our next volu

Heyyyyyy folks, two quick things: 1. Our next volunteer workday is coming up on the 18th; and 2. How about this native beauty, the cup plant. 🌼

For the volunteer workday, we’ll meet at the classic Cresheim meetup spot opposite Navajo Street on *northbound* Cresheim Valley Drive. It’s a 3-minute walk from the Germantown Ave trailhead and there’s plenty of parking space if you’re driving. We’ve got a number of various trail tasks: typical vegetation trimming, potentially some rock work, possibly some boardwalk maintenance. We’ll meet at 9am as usual.

The cup plant, Silphium perfoliatum, is an herbaceous perennial that’s native to eastern North America. It grows up to 8 feet tall and has these pretty yellow flowers that are in bloom nowish. There’s a great stand of them along Cresheim Road coming down from Richard Allen Lane Station where the asphalt sidewalk turns into dirt trail. Two years ago, @independenceyouthcycling and @phillywissmtb helped us build the bike jump featured in this area.

#cresheimtrail #volunteer #silphiumperfoliatum

This one’s for the trail’s namesake, the might

This one’s for the trail’s namesake, the mighty Cresheim Creek.

The Cresheim Trail as we know it got its start in 2012, but Cresheim Creek is a wee bit older than that, taking its sweet time (millions of years) to cut a 3+ mile path through the Wissahickon schist bedrock. The creek’s headwaters are underground near Laurel Beech Park in Wyndmoor, and it daylights a couple blocks away in Mermaid Park – seen in the first photo.

Scroll through to follow Cresheim Creek all the way downstream to Devil’s Pool, where it enters the Wissahickon Creek for the next leg of its journey to the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way, the creek forms a natural boundary between the Chestnut Hill and Mt Airy neighborhoods. Trails follow (and occasionally cross) the creek for nearly all of its course, with a half-mile gap between Mermaid Park and Stenton Avenue that will eventually be the next phase of the Cresheim Trail.

The current “rough draft” of the rail trail parallels the creek between Stenton and Germantown Avenues, while the creek itself passes through Wissahickon East Park. South of Germantown, natural surface trails follow the creek all the way to Devil’s Pool — on both sides of the creek downstream from Cresheim Valley Drive. Along the way, it passes impressive geologic formations, beautiful flora like the large stand of eastern pine trees below McCallum Street, and remnants of old industry that was there *because* of Cresheim Creek.

Kinda like Cresheim Trail — without Cresheim Creek, where would we be? Check out the maps in the last two slides to find out. Cresheim Creek watershed is in blue. The water map is by @stroudcenter’s Model My Watershed, and the trail map is from @alltrails, which has the most up to date alignments for Cresheim and Wissahickon trails.

#cresheimtrail #cresheimcreek #wissahickon

Once again a huge THANK YOU to the 11 volunteers w

Once again a huge THANK YOU to the 11 volunteers who joined us yesterday for some light summertime trail work. We trimmed vegetation along the Cresheim Trail corridor from the crossing at Cresheim Road (next to the outdoor classroom) all the way out to Stenton Avenue, including the thick stuff on the new rail trail portion.

Just a reminder, the rail trail will be in “rough draft” mode for a few years while we plan, design, fundraise, and construct the real thing, which will be part of the @circuittrails network when completed: 10 feet wide, paved, and accessible. There are also two major projects planned for the corridor between Germantown and Stenton in the next couple years (one from @phillyh2o and one from @septaphilly), so there will be necessary growing pains with great results as the trail marches slowly toward Fort Washington.

Our small crew was so busy working yesterday that we forgot to take photos of volunteers in action, but here are a few photos after the fact. The last two pics are a rough before-and-after of the upper end of the rail corridor. And thanks again to @philaparkandrec for the huge assist in mowing the big stuff two weeks ago.

#cresheimtrail

Ain’t no outages on the Cresheim Trail! Slam you

Ain’t no outages on the Cresheim Trail! Slam your laptop shut and join us TOMORROW for our July volunteer workday. We’ll meet at 9am at the old standby CT meetup spot, on *northbound* Cresheim Valley Drive opposite Navajo Street. If you’re driving, there’s plenty of parking in the area (please do NOT park on southbound). And if you’re hiking, biking, or riding the 23, right on. It’s a 3-minute walk from the Germantown Avenue trailhead.

Pictured here, a very happy red maple tree that we planted in the Fall 2022 planting. Tomorrow, we’ll be watering it and all our recent plantings, trimming back summer vegetation from the trail, and handling other various summery trail tasks. Hope to see you there!

#cresheimtrail

(c) 2024 The Friends of the Cresheim Trail

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