DENNING – Students from Longwood Preparatory Academy in the Bronx are used to the sound of sirens, car horns and the bustle of the city. But on Tuesday, 20 teenagers from the school traded concrete streets for rocky mountain trails in the Catskills, where laughter, conversations and the occasional yelp over a bug that turned out to be a leaf echoed through the woods.
For many of the students, this school trip was a first. They rarely spent time in nature and many had never been hiking before.
Hoping to change that, their English teacher, Julie McGuire, began organizing annual hikes with her students to the Catskills three years ago.
When she’s not teaching in the Bronx, McGuire, 47, spends her weekends at her home in Durham, where she’s become somewhat of a known figure in the outdoor recreation world – her nickname is “the queen of the Catskills.” An avid skier and adventurer since her late 20s, she became the third person and first woman to ski all 33 of the Catskill Mountains’ 3,500-foot-plus high peaks in 2024.
McGuire has led these school trips ever since. This year’s group was the biggest since she started, with 23 students in total.
There is a catch, however. The students don’t go on a relaxing stroll through the woods – the goal of these trips is to repair and maintain the trails, remove downed trees from the paths, trim overgrown branches and roots and clear waterbars. McGuire’s vision is twofold: students get a break from their routines, spend a day outdoors feeling fulfilled by work well done, and get college credits, while the trails are maintained and improved for more people to enjoy after them.
Many of her students are now repeat participants.
“It gets to a point where you get tired of those tall, gray buildings, the loud honking of cars, the bright lights. … You don’t even get to see the stars,” said high school junior Brandon Racine, who joined the trip again this year. “So when they offered me to come here again, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, especially since last time I liked the view a lot.”
The idea is also to help increase access to nature for populations that have historically had little or none because of segregation laws or discriminatory practices. Although people of color represent roughly 37% to 42% of the total U.S. population, they make up about 22% to 23% of national park visitors, according to 2018 National Park Service data.
COVID-19 restrictions on indoor gatherings spurred many New Yorkers to visit the Catskills, but many disadvantaged communities lacked access to outdoor recreational and natural spaces critical to keeping people safe and healthy because of systemic barriers such as a lack of transportation.
And while the population of outdoor recreationists has grown more racially and ethnically diverse in recent years, particularly among Hispanic and Black Americans, white participants still account for about 70% of outdoor recreation participants, according to a trends report by the Outdoor Industry Association, a national trade association that represents companies and nonprofits in the active outdoor recreation business.
Today, financial constraints, transportation, accessibility and other barriers continue to limit outdoor recreation opportunities for many New Yorkers, a 2025 state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation survey found. To address those disparities, the office recommends creating targeted outdoor programs, partnering with community organizations and expanding transportation access.
For 16-year-old Krystal Perez, spending time in nature brings back memories of her family’s home in the southern Dominican Republic. Surrounded by lush vegetation, the area also offers sweeping views of the ocean from higher elevations, she said.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I want to climb a mountain,’ but – I don’t know – who was going to take me there?” she said in Spanish. “My dad works so much; he works the night shift and gets home the next morning, so I can’t just say, ‘Dad, take two hours off. Let’s go.'”
The trip is free for students and McGuire has been able to secure funding through the school district in the past, but this year, the trip almost did not happen due to a lack of funds. So McGuire asked Run Wild, a nonprofit that raises money for land conservation in the Hudson Valley and beyond, for a donation to help make the fall trip possible. The organization ended up donating $2,000, which allowed McGuire to afford the $2,700 bus to bring the students upstate.
“I feel grateful that I was able to facilitate an experience where the students were able to find a path or learn more about themselves and have a deeper understanding of what they want to do and what they want their future to look like,” McGuire said. “I just see myself as a facilitator, and then the universe guides them from there.”
McGuire wasn’t alone. She was joined by fellow teachers Wendy Nathaniel and Arisi Peña, who encouraged and motivated the students throughout the hike. Clint Sikes, a volunteer with the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, which organizes trail maintenance events, provided the tools and supervised some of the day’s most demanding work, including the removal of a tree that had fallen across the trail. As Jaylen Brunson, Jayden St. Fore, A.J. Cardona, Sammy Acosta and Natalie Echandy helped saw through the trunk, Racine found his own way to stay entertained, gently playing with a caterpillar he named Jared.
The students, particularly the first-timers, arrived at the Denning Road Trailhead with some reservations: some were afraid of running into a bear or finding snakes, some doubted their ability to take on the elevation gain.
“I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how much they’d appreciate nature. I wasn’t sure what their stamina would be like walking uphill,” McGuire said of their first trip to Slide Mountain three years ago. “But when I took them there, they loved it. Do they complain about walking uphill? Yes, they do, but they really got into it. Like every single thing on that trail, they thought was, like, the most precious thing. They were so excited by bugs. They were like, ‘Oh, Miss, Miss, look at this caterpillar! Oh, let’s put it to the side so no one hurts it.'”
McGuire has also taken the students on skiing trips to the Catskills with the help of New Jersey nonprofit Winter4Kids, which has become another of her popular initiatives.
Anthony Adams, 17, is a veteran of these trips, having participated in every single one since McGuire started offering them. By the time 3 p.m. rolled around, many of the students had turned around to head back to the trailhead, some sooner than others, but Adams stayed back, helping clear a waterbar, digging to remove the roots and picking up the fallen leaves and brush with his hands.
The quietness he experiences on these hikes has helped him reflect on his next chapter “and what else you actually want in life instead of what was already given to you.” Adams thought he wanted to become a chef, since he enjoyed working with his hands and it’s a profitable career in New York City. But once he began taking part in McGuire’s trips, he began considering becoming a forest ranger.
“I definitely have a lot more creativity in my mind than I thought I did. My father’s always said I would (be) more creative in life, mostly because when I was younger, I used to have like five shoeboxes of Legos. I would always create the most interesting thing. I didn’t really understand that at the moment; I was like 7, maybe 8 years old, but now, while doing this, I really understand what my father meant by that.”
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This article originally published at Bronx students find adventure – and purpose – on Catskill mountain trails.