In many aspects of life, the old ways are the good ways. Building a path to hike up a mountain is not, however, one of those aspects.
“We love our old historic trails but there are better ways to lay them out,” said Erik Samia, Trails Training Program Supervisor for the Appalachian Mountain Club, during a recent session for members of conservation commissions from towns throughout the state. Some three dozen people showed up, ranging from towns on the Massachusetts border to the North Country, to get tips from Samia and colleagues Craig Heinselman and Jon Szalewicz about developing and maintaining places for people to walk on conservation lands.
The discussions during the day-long training at AMC’s Cardigan Lodge dove into details like side-hill design, fall-line trails, the 50% rule (don’t ask), water bars and whether to use old logging roads. The overarching context, however, was straightforward: Minimize the two forces that destroy trails, flowing water and careless hikers
“It’s maddening how hard it is to get people to go where you want,” said Szalewicz, who talked a lot about “hiker human psychology” when designing a trail. “You have to coerce people; you can’t force them.”
That psychology includes not making trails too straight or wide, which feels like a road, or with bits that are so rough people will take shortcuts around them. They tend to design trails around “anchors” such as a big rock or a handsome tree that will draw attention and keep people focused. The whole process isn’t straightforward and requires what they called “trail eyes.”
Our trails are old
The big problem in New Hampshire is that our trails were created long ago. Sometimes really long: The Crawford Path was cut in 1819, making it the oldest hiking path created just for recreation in the country and maybe the whole world.
“Pretty much anything outdoors-oriented started here in New England,” Samia said.
The original idea was to get people to scenic views as fast as possible, so our paths tend to go straight uphill. That’s good for fast hiking, but terrible for erosion. A straight-up-and-down trail will channel rain and snowmelt until all the soil is washed away, which is why you’re always tripping over exposed roots and rocks in the White Mountains.
Add the growing popularity of hiking, especially post-COVID — the lines to Artist’s Bluff at Cannon Mountain can rival those at a lunchtime Chik-fil-A — and something has to be done. That something is rebuilding or redesigning hiking trails, or even building trail alternatives, with a mindset more like highway design than bushwhacking through the forest.
You should think of the trail as a designed structure,” Szalewicz told the conference.
Working on trails is hardly a new idea: The AMC created what it says is the world’s first professional trail crew back in 1919, led by former New Hampshire Gov. Sherman Adams. The AMC oversees 481 miles of trails with the help of more than 200 volunteers who act as adopters, keeping an eye on sections of trail. Many other groups, from land trusts to conservation commissions to trail-specific organizations, do the same.
But the idea of upgrading trails has gone up a notch recently. The AMC is spearheading a five-year, multi-million-dollar reconstruction of parts of the Franconia Loop, one of the world’s greatest day hikes. This is badly needed, since it’s not unusual for more than 1,000 people to hike the loop on a nice day, passing through fragile alpine ecosystems.
Plenty of other groups are doing serious trail work, too. As a small example, I recently worked with Friends of the Wapack and Nature Conservancy to install a rope handrail along a slippery ledge on the Marion Davis trail leading up Pack Monadnock, which gets a lot of inexperienced hikers. There are even ADA-accessible trails being built to help more people get into the woods, including one at Cardigan Lodge that cost something like a quarter-million dollars for a bit over a mile.
How good is too good?
Years ago, I wrote an article spurred by a letter to the editor from an out-of-state hiker who complained that our trails are too hard and need to be tidied up with more switchbacks and leveled surfaces. The essence of the article was that trails out west are easier than here because they were built later and usually with horses in mind, so they rarely get as steep or as rough.
I mention this because the overwhelming response to the article from readers was: Don’t make our trails like western trails — they’re boring! This issue came up at the session as Szalewicz walked through the woods as if he were laying out a trail. He avoided the obvious spots and weaved between trees: “The easiest place to walk in the woods is not the best place to put a trail.”
But he also cautioned against the macho Northeast hiker attitude of “If it’s not unpleasantly difficult, then it’s not really hiking.”
I confess to falling into this mindset at times and Szalewicz admitted that he felt this way in his youth, building trails that challenged him regardless of how others felt, until he realized it was counter-productive.
“Our original trails were too hard. People stopped using them,” he said.
He mentioned a recent descent from one of the high peaks in which he never got to look around and enjoy the scenery because he had to watch his footing every step of the steep, rocky trail — a drawback that I have noticed, too.
It isn’t easy to thread the needle between having trails that are so easy they don’t feel like the outdoors in New Hampshire and trails that are so hard they interfere with the whole point of hiking.
Sania listed an intriguing quartet of attributes that he said make a good hiking trail: Safety. Efficiency. Playfulness. Harmony with the surroundings.
I hadn’t heard that list before, but I really like it, especially the “playfulness” part. After all, hiking in New Hampshire’s mountains is a form of play. Why else would people have been doing it for at least 207 years?
To learn a lot more about building trails for hiking and other outdoor recreation, check American Trails (americantrails.org), the Professional Trail-Building Association (trailbuilders.org/), or N.H. Fish & Games’ Trails for People (wildlife.nh.gov/get-outside/trails-people-and-wildlife)
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