Volunteer Trail Maine-tainers

AMC Outdoors, November 2005

GREENVILLE, MAINE—Over Labor Day weekend, Maine Chapter member Peter Roderick led a Chapter Trail Work Weekend on AMC’s 37,000-acre Katahdin Iron Works Property, the fifth such gathering that has taken place since AMC purchased the property in December 2003. In addition to helping improve the property’s growing network of trails, participants also had the chance to discover the landscape that is the core of AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative.

One of the primary objectives for the Labor Day crew was to clip back the encroaching brush on the River Trail, a two-mile section that connects Little Lyford Pond Camps with the Gulf Hagas Trail. “We clipped a corridor 12 feet high, four feet higher than normal, so that it’s suitable for skiing even with several feet of snow,” explains Roderick. The group also scouted out a substantial wet area along a lower section of the trail, which leads to the waterfalls and steep cliffs of Gulf Hagas. “We’re looking at some potential bog bridging in the future to minimize hiker impact,” he says.

To date, more than 50 volunteers have taken part in these trail work weekends, many of them contributing for the first time. Participants all room together at the LLPC bunkhouse at reduced rates, and finish each day’s work in the afternoon, with time for paddling, fishing, and relaxing.“They get a pretty good taste of what it’s like up there,” says Roderick, who co-chairs the chapter’s trails committee. “It’s a pretty ideal environment.” Previous outings have helped smooth out cross-country ski trails and completed rock work and side-hilling projects on the Laurie’s Ledge Trail, which leads from near LLPC to the summit of 2,338-foot Indian Mountain.

The volunteers provide assistance to a professional AMC trail crew, which has spent the last two summers expanding and improving the trail network. For more information on AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative, as well as future volunteer outings to the KIW property, visit www.outdoors.org/mwi.