Trailhead
New Boots • Gathering • Grapevine • Springer Fever
A.T. Companion • Headlamp Material • Work Trips • Side Trails
When we hear the term “hiker ethic,” it is usually in connection with some aspect of “low-impact hiking.” Note that the word is “low” and not “zero.” Zero-impact hiking just does not happen, and cannot be made to. The closest we can come to that is to counteract the negative impacts of our hikes by also making positive corrections. Any hiking wears down any trail. What builds it up is maintenance. And who does maintenance on most trails today? Volunteers, that’s who. Any hiker who is not also a volunteer trail builder or maintainer cannot be a nearly zero-impact hiker. But anyone who has the time and energy to wear down trails by hiking on them certainly has the time and energy to do volunteer work repairing trails. It may cut into the hiking time, but that’s fair — others are doing it, and enjoying the experience. Every hiker should. So a hiker eithic needs one addition to the things mentioned in the past. That is a commitment to pay for one’s use of the trails by helping to maintain them. What is a fair rate of pay? I suggest one day’s trail production for each six days of trail consumption. That does not mean going out on your own and flailing away at brush, widening a path into a road or throwing some dead trees into bog-holes. It means contacting an organization responsible for building or maintaining some trail and asking what you can do within their system. There is no need to do your share on the same trails you have hiked. It’s even better to help on some new one that will help spread the hiker traffic over more miles, making everyone’s hiking experience less crowded and giving all of us more choices of places to go hiking. Organizations such as clubs, camps and guide services that take groups hiking on volunteer-maintained trails (and those include most trails in state and national parks) should coordinate with some maintaining organization to plan some of their trips, or part of each trip, to be a work trip, not necessarily using the same persons who were in their hiking groups but in the right ratio of person-days. Then, when telling our tales about how much trail we have stomped on, we can also add our bit about when and where and with what group we helped to create or preserve a few miles of some trail. And when we meet and chat on a trail, be sure to ask me where I did, or am planning to do, my positive correction. Maybe you can suggest a deserving trail I don’t know of. Pass the word.