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 Meet Mary Krueger…….I have always loved the outdoors, especially our wonderful national parks, and over the years, with my husband and family, I have visited and hiked in most of the national parks in the U.S. and Canada and some in Europe and South America. I had been on a few great trips with ADK and thought it would be fun to be an ADK trip leader and take people to some of the places we have enjoyed so much over the years. I started leading trips for ADK in 2008 with a trip to Glacier National Park, MT. I had been to Glacier NP several times before, so it was a wonderful experience sharing my love and enjoyment of this beautiful place with other ADK members. I led trips to Glacier again in 2009 and 2010 and will be leading a trip there again in 2012. In 2011 I will be leading an ADK trip to Yellowstone National Park. I’ve been to Yellowstone 8 times (twice in Winter) and know the Park well, and am looking forward to enjoying it again with a group of ADK’ers. I plan to lead a Yellowstone trip again in 2012 and hope, in the future, to be able to lead trips to some of my other favorite National Parks. As a former teacher and school counselor, I like for my trips to have an educational/interpretive focus as well as good hiking, so that participants get the opportunity to learn about the parks in depth and to see some areas of the parks that most visitors don’t get to. To accomplish this I have enlisted the park experts- Glacier Institute for Glacier NP trips and the Yellowstone Association Institute for Yellowstone trips. Together we plan an itinerary with instructional programs designed to give people a good understanding of the parks- the flora and fauna, geography and geology, natural and cultural history, as well as great hiking amid spectacular scenery. These trips are moderately paced and suitable for reasonably physically fit people of all ages. I like to keep a steady, but fairly relaxed pace that allows time for enjoyment of views, wildlife watching, and photography. We are originally from Maryland and when we lived there, enjoyed hiking and skiing in the mountains of western Maryland, paddling on the lakes and rivers, and sailing on Chesapeake Bay. We have always loved to travel and started coming to the Adirondacks in the late 1980’s after my husband, Frank, took a back-country ski trip in the High Peaks with the Sierra Club. Eventually we bought a vacation home near the village of Jay and in 2001, when Frank retired from his career as a government attorney, we moved to the Adirondacks full-time. We have both been active in ADK since we joined in 1988. Frank has been a volunteer High Peaks Summit Steward since 2001, and is presently Chairman of the ADK Trails Committee. He has also served on the ADK Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. I have been involved in running ADK’s Fall Outing twice, and have enjoyed volunteering at the Heart Lake Nature Museum in the past. In addition to being a trip leader, I am also the Seasonal Outings Coordinator for the ADK Outings Committee. Some of my favorite national parks are Glacier, Yellowstone, Yosemite, North Cascades, Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Zion, Olympic, Mount Rainier, Badlands, Smokey Mountains, Shenandoah, Acadia, Crater Lake, and Denali. We have also hiked in Jasper, Banff, Glacier, and Yoho NP in Canada. We’ve hiked in the Sierras, the Rockies, the Cascades, the North Cascades, the Chiricahuas in Arizona, the Appalachians, including the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Katahdin in Maine, the Alps in Austria and Switzerland, and the Andes in Bolivia, South America. I have hiked many of the Adirondack High Peaks, some several times. I do only the ones with the reward of beautiful views at the summit, so I am not a 46’er, although my husband is. My favorites are Gothics, Algonquin and Colden. I also enjoy many of the “gentler” hikes in several areas of the Adirondacks, some of my favorites being Owl Head Lookout near Elizabethtown, the West River trail to Lower Ausable Lake near Keene, the Jay Range, and Hurricane Mountain, to name a few. Last May I took the ADK sponsored course in Wilderness First Aid presented by Wilderness Medical Associates, and am now certified in Wilderness First Aid. We have two grown sons and two grandchildren all of whom live some distance away, but do come, when possible, to enjoy the Adirondacks with us. One of the things I enjoy most about being an ADK trip leader is the opportunity to meet and get to know people from all the different ADK chapters. Mary Krueger 163 Scenic Point Lane Jay, NY 12941 518 647-8646 FKKMEK@Frontiernet.net |