Maybe you’ve signed up for one of its guided weekend hikes, or spotted its vintage blue and green insignia stitched onto backpacks throughout the region — but if you haven’t hiked the 35 peaks on Catskill 3500 Club’s list, you’d better start climbing (if you’re so inclined).

“We need to figure out what to do once we get our 3,500th member,” muses Maria Bedo-Calhoun, the Catskill 3500 Club’s president.

With membership currently at 3,323, that milestone member will be something of a triumph, considering its origins: when its founders first planted the idea for a hiking club in the Catskills, membership remained dormant — hovering around zilch – for over a decade.

That was back in 1949, when a jaunty couple living in Greenwich Village, Bill and Kay Spangenberger, decided to climb every mountain in the Catskills that was 3,500 feet or higher (or as they put it, to “try something new”). After entreating close friends and acquaintances to join — but finding them mildly interested at best and idle at most — the couple hiked all the peaks on their own instead.

It wasn’t until 1962 that, after finding a like- minded enthusiast in Brad Whiting, the chairman of a hiking club in the Adirondacks at the time, the Spangenbergers gathered enough founding members to officiate the Catskill 3500 Club.

Membership was, and still is, awarded to hikers who climb the lists’s 35 peaks (bravo!), four of which must be hiked again in winter (brrr).

While early members were drawn by the sense of adventure and accomplishment in completing the punch-list of peaks, today’s members are setting their sights even higher. Beyond the list, the club is figuring out what else it stands for — and for that matter, it’s stepping up.

“We’re ready to do more,” says Bedo-Calhoun. Under her direction, the club is changing from a 501c7 (in essence, a designated social club) to a 501c3 (a more impactful charitable organization). “It’s a major thing for the club to make that decision to move forward because it changes what we do and how we do it,” says Bedo-Calhoun. “It gives us a lot more possibilities.”

In practice, this means the club can make a larger impact on the community, not just its membership. Plans include: bolstering its search and rescue team, rebuilding worn-down lean-tos, and expanding its Summit Stewards program, which places stewards at key mountaintops to educate visitors — and hopefully lessen their impact.

One of its goals is educating new and seasoned hikers alike by giving each the experience and confidence to explore beyond the popular (and sometimes over trafficked) trails. “For some of our experienced hikers, it’s a lot of fun and a challenge to see if they can do a peak a different way by not going on trails at all ... and that comes with experience,” says Bedo-Calhoun.

For the 3500 Club, this means constantly reminding members and visitors to seek the unbeaten path, whether that’s hiking on weekdays (when crowds are thin) or joining one of the club’s guided winter hikes (when the ice is thick).

It’s a sentiment shared by other organizations in the Catskills who walk the talk, too. “We’re about a third of the way through having hiked the 35 at night,” says Jeff Senterman, a 3500 member and executive director of the Catskill Center.

Senterman understands that evening hikes aren’t for everyone, and that’s sort of his point. It’s how he finds an entirely different view of the Catskills (albeit via headlamp).

“There’s over 300,000 acres of public land with close to 400 miles of trails,” says Senterman. “There is a large percentage that, even on a Saturday, you’re not going to run into a handful of people.”

At the Catskill Visitor Center in Mount Tremper, Senterman’s team paints an even broader picture of what the Catskills can offer. “One of our goals there is to introduce the whole park ... to really give people a menu of opportunities to get out, and the tools to recreate responsibly,” he says.

Making the Catskills approachable, after all, only expands the horizon of opportunities the re- gion has to offer.

“That’s what’s really cool about the progression through the peaks,” adds Bedo-Calhoun. “People become more and more comfortable with it, and then they move on and do more and more. I mean, it happened to me.”

If one thing is clear, it’s this: those 35 trails are just the beginning.

By Keith Flanagan

Images of Catskill 3500 Club/Yanina Levchinsky-Grimmond

Volume 5