People from the Allentown Hiking Club and Lehigh Gap Nature Center, along with other volunteers, joined Wildlife Conservation Officer Kevin Halbfoerster of the Pennsylvania Game Commission to help clean up Bake Oven Knob on June 14. The Knob is a well-known hawk watching site during the migrations.

Unfortunately, it is also a well-known party site, Halbfoerster said.The area in which he is the conservation officer has been halved with his area being only the northern half of Lehigh County. That gives him more time to work on projects. He was also given money to pay for supplies and equipment for a cleanup."We looked for an access to the trash lower on the mountain but could not find any," he said.The Appalachian Trail runs along the top of the mountain near Bake Oven Knob. Much of it is rocky.Along with bags for trash, he brought cans of paint: green, tan, gray and black. The rocks are covered with graffiti. He tells people to work in the middle of the lookouts because there was not enough paint to do everything.He said he worked 77 hours on cleanup last year. "I kept a log. It is going to become a high priority with a signboard on each parking lot."There is parking on each side of the Bake Oven Road that goes from Heidelberg Township to East Penn Township by crossing the Blue Mountain.The signs will make clear the rules and regulations.People come from all over because they hear about the area on the Internet, he said."All I ask is that people respect the property. That's all I ask because otherwise I'll be handing out a lot of tickets," Halbfoerster said.He told those who were going to paint that the paint should be chosen for as close to the natural stone color and should be feathered on the edges to give it as natural a look as possible.Jim Gabovitz of the Allentown Hiking Club and the Nature Center said the graffiti is absolutely atrocious. It's not just on Bake Oven Knob.Gabovitz was pleased that some places the paint looked almost natural. He said they had been there six weeks ago to investigate, and since then someone had used a golden paint that was difficult to cover."I don't know what the answer is," he said.Dan Kunkle, director of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, said, "It was great to see the Hiking Club and Nature Center members out helping. Officer Halbfoerster works very hard, and we are glad to support him."John Becker, who posted pictures on a blog, says he really hopes the public awareness cuts down on the amount of trash people leave in the future.