Trail work season hits stride Volunteers crucial to success

Today is the day hikers and trail volunteers wait for all year. For the past 15 years, the first Saturday in June is celebrated as National Trails Day. If you hike, chances are pretty good that you’re taking part in the festivities.

The day is organized by the American Hiking Society to raise awareness of the importance of hiking trails to communities.

It’s also a way to increase the ranks of volunteers for trail building and clearing duties. By having a day when individuals and hikers can turn out for work projects or just a day to hike with an organized group, people rally around their local trail networks.

From York in southern Maine to Rangeley, groups are fanning out to participate in the Maine outdoors on the one day of the year when hiking is celebrated. It’s always a great time at any of the events and by the end of it, everyone heads home with a renewed energy to kick off the summer hiking season.

But National Trails Day is only one Saturday in a long summer. Not all the trail work that needs to be done can be done in one day. That’s why volunteers are so important to healthy trail systems. There’s simply too much work in designing, building, and maintaining a trail to finish in one day. Take Acadia National Park, for example.

According to Jonathan Gormely, volunteer coordinator, “National Trails Day really kicks off our volunteer season. Now that we’re into June, at 8:30 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, people can just walk into the headquarters on the Eagle Lake Road and volunteer on trail projects. We’ll try our best to schedule a variety of work to match peoples’ skills, interests, and abilities. Never have the words ‘work party’ been so appropriate. They usually come back from a detail laughing and having fun.”

The type of short-term projects varies from stacking stone cairns to clearing water bars and drainage ways. For instance, volunteer crews, co-sponsored by Friends of Acadia, the primary group for supplying volunteers, can be found today at the earthquake site on the East Face Trail of Champlain Mountain assessing damage. Other work parties will be maintaining trails and carriage paths or working on the trails in the Schoodic District.

With more than 125 miles of trails in Acadia, volunteers are essential to supplementing the work done by the seasonal professional paid trail crew. For everyone who volunteers, the park gets needed work done and the volunteer benefits from the experience of giving back. As Bob Sanderson, a volunteer from Southwest Harbor since 1994, said, “One reason I volunteer is the camaraderie. The other reason is the immediate gratification of seeing your efforts contribute to something long-lasting. When you build a trail, you see it emerge from nothing, like this trail we’re reclaiming near Bubble Pond.”

As far as the skills needed by a new volunteer, Sanderson said, “I had no experience at all when I started. They train you in using the tools safely. Of course, I’m mostly a wheelbarrow and shovel person.”

In Baxter Sate Park today Paul Sannicandro, the trail supervisor, is leading a crew of a dozen or more up to treeline on the Helon Taylor Trail. They’ll be brushing back the low twisted shrubs, called krumholz, which have grown into the trail over the years. They’ll use lopping pruners and hand saws to define the trail corridor.

Sannicandro said, “We’ll be doing that project unless the snow hasn’t melted, then we’ll go to another site that needs work.”

When asked how important volunteers are, he replied, “Our trail maintenance is primarily done by 90-95 percent volunteers. We have a variety of sources that provide help. From May 30 through June 6, the Maine Conservation Corps will be building 1,200 feet of bog bridging on the new Katahdin Lake Trail.”

Other organizations provide volunteers as well. Among them are the Appalachian Mountain Club, American Hiking Society, Sierra Club, Student Conservation Association, and the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. There are more than 145 miles of trails in the park, and volunteers from one of those groups probably helped build or maintain most of them.

The largest trail network in Maine, however, is maintained by the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, an all-volunteer club. With help from other groups, including the ones in Baxter and paid summer trail crews, most of Maine’s 278 miles of trail is designed, constructed, and maintained entirely by volunteers. That includes dozens of miles of shelter trails, views, and side trails to areas such as Gulf Hagas and summits such as Mount Abraham.

Club vice president Lester Kenway made a presentation that really drove home the need for volunteers at the annual meeting in April. An assessment was done in 1993 that identified 244 weeks, with a six- person crew, of trail improvement that needed to be done. To date, the club only has half of the projects done. The rest are ongoing. That’s where volunteers can help.

But, there are plenty of trails near most towns in Maine now. It makes sense in a rural state, especially one with such scenic beauty, where people may want to hike to get somewhere. By volunteering on a trail crew, whether it’s in Acadia National Park, Baxter State Park, the Appalachian Trail, or near your own town, you’ll be joining in the dirtiest job you’ll ever love. You get to work at something that will benefit everyone who walks there and the scenery is outstanding.