This article appears in the 2024 Fall Long Trail News and was written by GMC’s Education and Volunteer Coordinator Lorne Currier.
Hey Folks! My name is Lorne Currier, and I’m the Green Mountain Club Volunteer and Education Coordinator. I work with hundreds of volunteers every year, and though I like to think I know a lot of folks, there are still so so many of you that I don’t know. If you and I haven’t yet met on a trail, thank you for your support of GMC!
A bit about me: I’m in my eighth summer at GMC, and held seasonal and AmeriCorps jobs before coming on full time in 2019. I live in Middlesex with two dogs, and enjoy amateur sugar making, and, you guessed it, spending time on the Long Trail.
At work I coordinate the field-based volunteers of GMC, and deliver our workshop, speaker series and school programming. I love my job most when my two focus areas combine, and I get to educate people about volunteer trail work, which is what I’ll try to do a little below on paper.
About 400 individuals and groups perform routine annual maintenance of trails and shelters for the GMC. In recent years the club has spent more resources on developing and strengthening the skills of these volunteers, because we rely on them to do their work at a high level to protect the trail from the effects of climate change and increasing use.
For you lucky volunteers who have joined Volunteer Supervisor Kate Songer or me in the field, we must apologize for burdening you with a set of trail eyes, and I do hope you still enjoy leisure hiking 😊.
I use the term “trail eyes” to mean the knowledge that trail maintainers should acquire to spot all the elements, both good and bad, that make up a trail, and to see what is causing erosion, widening, or other deterioration. For example:
- Trail tread mainly composed of pebble-to-cobble sized stones: This indicates that water flowing down the trail has washed away fine-grained material like sand or humus. The trail might need better drainage above the stony stretch of treadway so water will leave it before reaching the problem spot.
- A social trail around the lower end of a waterbar, showing that hikers have not been going over the waterbar: This indicates the waterbar is too high or inconvenient, and that the waterbar ends were insufficiently obstructed to discourage passage. This encourages hikers to walk down the ditch and then rejoin the trail, which weakens the waterbar. The waterbar might need improved berms to reduce the prominence of the stones of the bar, and stone “gargoyles” at its ends to discourage end runs.
Using their trail eyes, maintainers can understand current problems and foresee future problems. Next they compare potential solutions, choose the best, and evaluate the result. It’s almost like the scientific method.
I sometimes curse my trail eyes on a run or a leisurely backpacking trip, wishing they were as easy to remove as a pair of sunglasses. But becoming confident in my trail eyes was a huge leap forward in my skills, both as a maintainer of trails and an educator of trail maintainers.
If you still see trails through rose-colored glasses, become a trail maintenance volunteer with GMC, and we’ll turn your eyes into trail eyes!
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