Trash—and even human waste—piled up along hiking trails in the White Mountain National Forest last summer as a rush of people sought refuge in the outdoors during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tiffany Benna, public affairs officer for the US Forest Service in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, told New Hampshire Public Radio in summer 2020: “We’re seeing human waste along trails. We’re seeing graffiti which we haven’t really seen, on boulders and rocks along the trails, not just on our signs. And we’re also seeing a lot of people, like 100 volunteers, you know, go into the forest and pull out, you know, 300 pounds of trash.”
The problem was complicated by the challenges of putting volunteer trail workers in the outdoors at a time when the coronavirus was rampant in the Northeast.
“Many AMC trail volunteers are older individuals and were choosing not to volunteer to limit their potential exposure,” says Alex DeLucia, Assistant Director of Trails for the Appalachian Mountain Club, which maintains trails in the Whites and elsewhere in the Northeast. “The boom in outdoor recreation led to many more people on trails, often not masked, and overcrowding outdoor spaces. Our volunteers were concerned about putting themselves at risk.”
Now, as a second summer season of hiking nears, trail organizations are coming to grips with crowded trails and delayed maintenance. And because many trails cross federal lands, they are required by federal order to wear masks when social distancing is not possible.
“Undoubtedly, hikers in 2021 will see the impact of the boom in visitation to their public lands from 2020,” DeLucia says. “There was a noticeable lack of volunteers and reduction in staff trail crews across the country in 2020. We are hopeful that we can provide the AMC volunteers and staff the resources they need to get back out and address the basic maintenance needs (and plan for more extensive restoration projects in the future) this coming field season.”
The AMC will continue with fairly strict Covid guidelines through most of 2021, with groups limited to fewer than 10 for most of the 2021 field season and masks and social distancing indoors and outdoors. Training will be offered for trail maintainers, who will be able to work alone in the backcountry. Some day, weekend, and weeklong staff-led volunteer programs in the Northeast are scheduled for late summer and fall.
Professional trail crews will be working on projects from Pennsylvania to Maine in 2021, and AMC ridgerunners will return to the AT in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and southern Massachusetts.
Still, the AMC and other trail organizations do not expect to be fully staffed on trails in 2021.
“Many other trails organizations are gearing up to get their staff and volunteers back on the trails,” DeLucia says. “We will not yet see the volume we might have seen pre-Covid, but far more engagement is expected as compared to 2020.”
Among the Triple Crown Trails, the Pacific Crest Trail Association limited work on the Pacific Crest Trail last year, and expects to do the same this year.
“We do not expect trail work to fully resume in 2021. We’re hopeful that more volunteer crews can get out there than in 2020, but as you know it all depends on how the pandemic trends—as well as the existence of state restrictions (such as stay-at-home orders),” says Scott Wilkinson, Director of Communications and Marketing for the PCTA.
The PCTA has safety guidelines for trail workers that include sanitizing shared equipment, and how to give emergency care to a hiker who might have Covid.
Although the Forest Service decided to issue long-distance permits for the Pacific Crest Trail in 2021, the PCTA is still recommending against long-distance hikes this year.
“But we know many will go regardless—and they’re likely to find the trail in rougher condition that it would normally be (think endless trees across the trail to climb over in some sections),” Wilkinson says.
On the Continental Divide Trail, another Triple Crown trail, 11 field projects were completed in 2020 while following local, state, and national guidance on Covid safety procedures, says Allie Ghaman, Communications Coordinator for the Continental Divide Trail Coalition.
The CDTC will continue those measures while doing field work this year in the Gila Wilderness, Teton Wilderness, Yellowstone National Park, and other areas, Ghaman says.
Trail work has continued on the Florida Trail, popular with winter hikers, and volunteer workers are asked to follow safety guidelines. Some longtime volunteers did not work last summer because of the pandemic, but Kelly Van Patten, Trail Program Director for the Florida Trail Association, says that all necessary trail work was done.
Volunteers are asked to bring masks when doing trail work, and wear them when they can’t social distance. Crews are limited to five people, sharing of tools is limited, and volunteers are asked to bring hand sanitizer and use it often.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy suspended Appalachian Trail work on the country’s third Triple Crown trail in late March 2020 before resuming in June. Volunteers were required to follow health and safety guidelines set by the National Park Service and the ATC.
But the ATC advised hikers that because the trail had not been maintained for weeks, sections could be overgrown, downed trees could block the trail, and heavy rain might have caused erosion.
Likewise, the Green Mountain Club—which maintains the AT and Long Trail in Vermont—started late in the 2020 season with its volunteer trail maintainers, and canceled professional and volunteer trail crews for the season, says Keegan Tierney, the club’s Director of Field Programs.
Shelter and campsite caretakers in the field were at 75 percent in 2020, and the club expects to return to 100 percent staffing in 2021.
Some volunteers considered vulnerable during the pandemic did not work on trails, but Tierney says the annual maintenance was covered “through good communication and coordination with other volunteers.”
Still, many projects were delayed, leading to a backlog of work that Tierney says will take a couple of years to get through. Most of the backlog is what Tierney calls long-game work so a typical trail user won’t notice that the work wasn’t done.
The GMC estimates that trail use rose 35 percent in 2020 over normal years, with large impacts to the LT and AT as people spread out to avoid shelters and limit contract with others.
“We still encourage people to use designated overnight sites and remedying the impacts at those sites will be easier than if people begin stealth camping at various points along the trail,” Tierney says. “Most of our overnight sites will accommodate people while still allowing for appropriate social distancing.”
The club followed Vermont’s Covid safety guidelines for staff and volunteers in 2020 and expects to do the same in 2021. Tierney says the GMC is updating its Covid safety guidelines for 2021, but in general they will remain the same as in 2020.
Jim Fetig, a Potomac Appalachian Trail Club volunteer who works on a trail crew in northern Shenandoah National Park, says that aside from some government-imposed work stoppages in 2020, individual maintainers continued routine trail work on the AT, such as cleaning water bars, removing small blowdowns, and weeding with hand tools.
But assembling trail crews is a challenge, he says. Large work crew meetings have been suspended, and work parties have been limited to four. Workers do not share rides to trails, they wear masks, and they maintain a safe social distance.
“We do not work on weekends because then the trails then are too crowded,” Fetig says in his blog for July 2020. “Working weekdays only essentially eliminates those not retired. Smaller work parties make big jobs more difficult.”
And hikers on the AT in 2020 raised other problems.
“…Far too many hikers are not following commonsense on the trail,” Fetig says in his blog. “A generous guess would be that 10 percent of them are masking when other people approach, even when six feet of separation cannot be maintained. Worse, they are sleeping in shelters, which can be very crowded as hikers sleep shoulder to shoulder surrounded by three walls and a roof. Some insist that you can’t catch the COVID-19 virus outside.”
And as a new hiking season nears on the AT, Fetig says there is plenty of work to do.
“Do we have a backlog? Yes,” Fetig says. “Some lower priority work did not get done, including some blue blaze trails in Shenandoah National Park. We didn’t have the number of people needed to get to everything. Larger projects such as building or repairing stone steps and the like. We will have plenty to do in the spring.”
Featured photo by Jim Fetig