NEW PROJECTS, NEW ATTITUDES  The ATC is working to expand its public outreach in the hopes of creating greater awareness of the trail’s ecological and aesthetic value, as well as fostering grassroots advocacy for its protection.

In one such venture, the ATC has started meeting with “trail towns” to discuss how the trail can boost local economies. This Gateway Community Program kicked off in two towns where the trail traverses the main streets: Hot Springs, N.C., and Boiling Springs, Pa.

Hawk Metheny, AMC’s backcountry management specialist, also serves on the ATC board of directors as chair of its Stewardship Council, which acts as a policy board on everything from trail maintenance to lobbying lawmakers on trail threats to teaching the public about climate change—and even attracting people to the trail.

Metheny said the board believes that the AT interests enough people to lure both backpackers and day hikers into Nearby towns. The ATC has started talking with officials in Woodstock, Vt., and may approach some towns in Maine in the future. (This would probably please AT visionary MacKaye, who was interested in overnight stays that weren’t always primitive.)

The National Park Service’s Appalachian Trail Park Office and the ATC have initiated a project to train elementary through high school teachers as hike leaders. The Trail to Every Classroom program seeks to inspire children to get outside both for exercise and to develop an environmental ethic. Programs in 2007 in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maine trained 35 teachers who took about 1,500 students hiking or on field trips to view wildlife. AMC recently hosted Trail to Every Classroom educators at Medawisla Wilderness Camps. In 2008 the program will continue in all of the states that were involved in 2007, except Maryland, and expand into New Hampshire, New Jersey, Georgia, and Tennessee. AMC and other hiking clubs were integral to the program’s success in 2007.

Another way to advocate for the trail is to document its biological diversity, which Startzell says is probably the greatest for any area overseen by the National Park Service. “We’ve got more than 2,000 occurrences of threatened and endangered species,” he said. “Once you know about them, you’ve got to take care of them.”

In response, the Mega-Transect program was hatched at a November 2006 meeting of about 75 scientists and trail advocates in Charlestown, W.Va. AMC and other groups will help the ATC inventory the fl ora and fauna of the trail. Ken Kimball, AMC’s director of research, helped plan the meeting and sits on subcommittees for this initiative. AMC has worked on such research for years through the Mountain Watch program, in which citizens assess visibility (a sign of air quality) and record the timing of “bud burst” in alpine flowers. Pilot studies of water resources and wildlife along the AT are now being conducted. (See “Candid Cameras” in the March 2008 issue of AMC Outdoors.)

AMC ON THE TRAIL In addition to helping the AT confront new challenges, AMC continues to maintain long stretches of the trail. AMC’s trail crews based in Pinkham Notch, its hundreds of volunteers, and three AMC chapters together are responsible for more than 279 miles of the AT between Pennsylvania and western Maine. Members of AMC’s New York-North Jersey Chapter work with the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, a separate club, on sections of the trail in New York.

Trail work fights erosion and minimizes trampling around campsites and shelters. AMC Deputy Conservation Director Heather Clish, who oversees trails, calls it “the big fun stuff”—building and maintaining shelters and privies and distributing information about Leave No Trace backcountry ethics. The work also includes clearing brush; painting blazes; building bridges and other structures; ridgerunning (walking the trail and educating the public about its proper use); leading hikes; and conducting nature surveys.

In the White Mountains, AMC’s professional trail crew handles major reconstruction projects. Last season, this crew rebuilt the Kinsman Pond Shelter. In the Berkshires, AMC will host two one-week teen trail crews this summer. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, AMC hires seasonal ridgerunners, who are assisted by volunteers. In the White Mountains, volunteer alpine stewards do similar work.

The AT, true to MacKaye’s idea, has always provided an oasis from the crush of modern life. The long, green corridor protects plants and animals and transforms people into conservationists. But gone are those days when the AT community thought only about the trail. Today’s trail advocates must also think about coal-fired power plants contributing to low visibility; the warming climate’s effect on which trees thrive or die; the creep of housing developments into the high country; and how children might learn to love the mountains.

That’s why the ATC had to change its name and why member clubs such as AMC are helping to expand its vision.

“We were at the risk of becoming left behind, in some ways—becoming almost archaic,” Metheny said. “The focus of the old ATC was the hiker with blinders on not seeing either side. I think these days, that’s very risky.”

PREVIOUS PAGE

1 | 2 | 3