TRAIL TREK CHALLENGE 2021-2022 TO KICK OFF WITH KIDS DISCOVERY CHALLENGES

Mississippi Valley Conservancy’s free Year-Round Hike/Walk Program Offers More Family Fun With “Find Nature’s Treasures” For Every Trail

There’s more outdoor fun in store for hikers of all ages with the Trail Trek Challenge 2021-2022. The year-round hike/walk program at nature preserves protected by Mississippi Valley Conservancy will be launched with an online kick-off event that includes an overview with new program features and a prize drawing at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 24th. The first 100 people to sign up online, beginning on April 24th, will receive a Trail Trek Challenge bandana.

Sarah Bratnober, Communications Director for Mississippi Valley Conservancy, joined Mike Hayes this week on La Crosse Talk and said that participation has been growing over the years of this program, especially last year.

“The Challenge is to hike at least 5 of the 16 trails over the course of a year,” Bratnober said.

With their free registration, participants receive an email with a downloadable trail guide for hikes in 5 counties. The trails are all on Nature Preserves protected by the Mississippi Valley Conservancy and are ranked by challenge level. Individual trail maps for each hike are available on the Conservancy website.

“The real reason we do it is for people to become aware of these beautiful places that are available to the public for low impact recreation. If you’re going to ask people to help you take care of beautiful places, you have to make them aware that they’re even there and why they’re so important.”

Participation in the Trail Trek Challenge is free and open to everyone who wants to get outdoors and walk in the beauty of nature and the 2021 program has a new family-friendly feature to help engage youngsters with nature discoveries.

The 365-day program works for people who like to hike with family and friends, or solo, and it allows them to hike and walk when it’s convenient for them. The program includes trails that are in or close to La Crosse and trails that are in surrounding counties. Inspirations for day trips and sight-seeing are included in many of the program updates throughout the year.

The new learning feature for Trail Trek Challenge 2021 is called “Find Nature’s Treasures.” In the same place where participants download trail maps for their hikes, they’ll be able to download a unique discovery challenge for each nature preserve in the program.

Registration for this free program and more information can be found here.

There are currently more than 700 people participating in the Trail Trek Challenge 2020 which officially closes on April 16, 2021. Participants who complete at least 5 hikes and submit their hike log by April 16 are eligible for drawing prizes at the Earth Fair kick-off event.