Goats and Greenways: A Riverside Walk

Date: July 12th, 2025.
Time: 9:45 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m., with about an hour spent at a festival celebrating the return of Riverside Park’s weed-eating goats. Note that we will start walking at 10 a.m. sharp.
Total distance: about 5–6 miles at a moderate pace.
Location: NW corner of Broadway & West 145 Street, at the exit of the #1 train’s 145 St station, in front of McDonald's.
Bring: Water, sunscreen, hat, snacks, lunch (there will be vendors at the festival, but not sure if and what food will be available).
Restrooms: We will use the restrooms in Riverbank Park before heading over to the festival area, about a mile north along the river. After leaving the festival, there will be restrooms along the way as we walk south on Hudson River Greenway.

About
Our walk will start at a welcoming celebration for an unconventional team of eco-warriors: a group of several weed-eating goats. After spending some time at the festival, we will walk south along the Hudson River Greenway to West 59 Street and up to Columbus Circle, where our walk will end.

The festival will start at 11 a.m., just north of Ten Miles River Playground by the river (at the height of West 151 Street), but we are meeting earlier, to have a better chance of getting a spot from where we’ll be able to see the goats arriving. The festival will feature the first-ever competitive eating competition between goats, light refreshments, local vendors, live music, Goatham merchandise and educational activities for all ages.

If we find a nice spot in the festival area, we’ll have an early lunch there, but if it is too crowded, we’ll start walking south along the Hudson River Greenway and stop for lunch along the way, most likely by the West Harlem piers.

Background
The Goats Are Baaaaack! For the past five summers, the Riverside Park Conservancy has enlisted the services of several goats from upstate New York. Their mission? To clear the park’s hard-to-reach slopes of poison ivy and invasive plants, making way for native understory growth. The goats successfully cleared the slopes at West 120th Street in 2023 and were given a new job in 2024 at West 143 Street (they can devour up to 25 % of their body weight in vegetation each day!). This summer, the hard-working goats are being assigned to a site close to West 143rd Street.

Rain date: July 19th.

The goats we will meet are Romeo, Mallomar, Butterball, Kash, and Rufus.

See more details at https://riversideparknyc.org/goatham/.

Hike leader: Brigitte, 646-651-3911 (day of walk only).