How to Become a Trail Adopter in New Hampshire
Over the past six years I’ve spent the majority of my free time hiking all over New England. I’ve seen amazing trail work and I’ve seen trails that are extremely hard to follow and in need of significant help. While I am often torn between wanting to keep these special locations in their rugged and overgrown state because, to me, it just adds to their beauty, I’m very aware that the less traveled trails that I love are all at risk of being abandoned completely.
In 2017, I got the urge to give back and asked a local about how to adopt a trail. Fast forward to 2021, and with a bit more free time on my hands, I feel not only an obligation to devote more time to trail work, but to encourage and educate other people on how to help maintain our trails in New Hampshire.
I can appreciate that working full time and having a limited amount of free time can make volunteering on our trails extremely difficult, but I get the feeling that another reason that less people volunteer is because they don’t know how. In fact, I have had more than one person reach out to me to find out how to adopt a trail, which is what has led to me creating this post.
As someone who isn’t the fastest or strongest hiker, I’ve always been a bit nervous in the past about doing trail work. I wondered, am I strong enough to carry the tools out into remote areas and perform maintenance? Thankfully, there are a lot of ways you can give back that don’t require you to lug tools into the backcountry. So, without further ado, here are the many ways you can help out our local trails.
Trail Adoption/Trail Work
If you have Facebook, the best place to start to find out about how to adopt a trail is through the NH Trail Workers Group. Another great place to check out is the Appalachian Mountain Club. There are myriad opportunities to work with the forest service as well both as trail adopters and in other equally as important roles such as backcountry stewards.
In terms of trail adoption, there are many different organizations throughout the state that you can work with. Here is a list of the most popular ones. Each organization has their own requirements so be sure to check out the links below for further information. To see a comprehensive list of all of the different organizations that are active throughout New Hampshire click here.
Randolph Mountain Club (Facebook Page)
Randolph Mountain Club (Website)
Waterville Valley Athletic & Improvement Association
The Cohos Trail Association (Adopt a trail)
The Cohos Trail Association (Volunteer)
Lakes Region Conservation Trust Chocorua Lake Conservancy
Cardigan Highlanders Volunteer Trail Crew
Other Ways to Volunteer
If you’re not up for trail work, a lot of these organizations have other ways to volunteer, but the WMNF in particular has some really amazing opportunities that I highly recommend checking out here. Other opportunities nationwide can be found by going to volunteer.gov. The first Saturday of June every year is National Trails Day and a lot of local organizations have additional volunteer opportunities on this day once a year.
