Monthly Cave Country Trail Challenge Winner announced as local principal

BOWLING GREEN, Ky.- This year marks the fifth year of Cave Country Trail Challenges, and the first month has just wrapped up.

Anyone can post a picture from any of the trails listed on the Cave Country Trail website and use the hashtag cave country trails challenge to enter.

Gift cards are given out as weekly prizes, but starting this year, a monthly winner is chosen for a $500 cash prize. One avid hiker has been entering the challenge for the last 2 1/2 years, and this time he lucked out, winning the monthly challenge with a post from Lost River Cave Trails.

Matt Thornhill, monthly Cave Country Trail Challenge winner for May and principal of William H. Natcher Elementary School, says, “We try to take a hike at least once week, usually on the weekend. We call Saturday hike day, so, we try to get out on Saturdays to go take a hike somewhere, whether here in our community here or now we have access to their website, we look at all the different counties that are represented and all the different trails that they’re part of and try to hit one of the trails that we may have not done before in the past.”

The challenge is meant to get people outdoors and on the trails in the area. The challenge will continue with weekly and monthly prize winners until the end of October, and a full list of the trails a part of the challenge can be found at the Cave County Trails website.