Trails are usually part of larger systems that are the result of careful and diligent planning and collaboration and should take environmental and geographical factors into account, such as its: location, soil, climate, and main purpose.
While land managers and other administrators are ultimately responsible for planning and maintaining trails, committed trail users and climbers have important roles to play as well.
- Get the Landowner / Manager Approval - Talk to the landowner / manager, show your plan and get their approval. Asking for permission is much better than asking for forgiveness.
- Survey the area. Plan your trail around the land’s natural features: go around thorny bushes, avoid wet spots, take advantage of ridges. If possible, route trails to positive control points (viewpoints, water, other attractions).
- Take advantage of existing paths made by animals or people; they often indicate the best route through the land.
- Avoid erosion – create trails that follow contour lines. Do not over contour, so you motivate people to actually follow the trail; avoid the Fall Line as it turbo-charges natural and user-created erosion, exposing rocks and roots, creating gullies and damaging the ecosystem; on steep inclines, create lumber hammered or stone steps to reinforce the trail and aid on traction.
- Make sure it can drain properly, keep the water off the path.
- Motivate users to stay on trail with proper signs and maintenance.
- Think sustainability - Make sure to cause the minimal impact possible: producing negligible soil loss or movement, allowing vegetation to grow, and with minimum disturbance of the area’s wildlife.
Check the following pages and documents for useful information:
- Basic Trail Layout Design – a summary of the Pathways to Trail Building handbook (Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation)
- Trail Shorts, a Cursory Look at Trail Maintenance, by the California State Park and Recreation - a document about backcountry /wilderness trail maintenance with great images.
- Trailstobuild.com offers an online library of trail building and maintenance. The two last documents are slide shows with great pictures of trail maintenance.
- Recreation Trail Management – a throughout document about trail building and maintenance, by the British Columbia Ministry of Forests.
View images of trail maintenance examples.
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