Acadia National Park volunteer trail project

This trail project was under the auspices of the Appalachian Mountain Club in conjunction with the Acadia National Park trail personnel. We stayed at AMC's Echo Lake Camp nestled on a lovely forested hillside at the south end of Echo Lake bordering Acadia National Park. The camp was in its final week of its 9 week season of hosting campers, so we ate breakfast and supper in the dining hall with the other campers, enjoying delicious meals by the chefs and service by the servers -- a rare treat compared to my other 20+ volunteer trail projects where we had to cook our own meals and clean up after each meal -- all before or after an arduous day of trail work. And it was the best food I've ever enjoyed on a project! Thanks, AMC staff!

With 125 miles of trails in the national park -- most with elevation changes, years of stormy weather, and much use by hikers -- the trails require much maintenance, and like other parks, volunteers supply a good measure of the hours devoted to reconstruction and maintenance.

Here's a video that encapsulates all our our activities that week:



Years of rain had washed out much of the Great Head Trail and a rebuilding of the trail was deemed necessary. The National Park Service professional trail crew under the expert leadership of Chris and Jeff had begun the project many weeks earlier and had the assistance of a Youth Conservation Corps team to get part of the work done. We started on a new segment of the trail by digging a deep drainage ditch alongside the trail to divert rainwater and winter melt-off...



Of course, digging in the mountains is no simple task, since you constantly encounter dead trees, roots, rocks, and boulders, all of which are removed to allow water to flow freely without damaging the trail tread...


A deep base of rocks was installed to provide the anchor for the new trail and thus prevent washouts in the future, but rock has to be brought down to the trail from the mountainside above. The rangers had rigged a "grip hoist" system, meaning a cable that a pulley rides down. Rocks can be chained to the pulley and "flown" down to trail level...



...where they are laboriously broken with sledge hammers into usable sizes as seen here with Bill, Eben, and Dick hammering away...


As the six or more inches of base rock are put into place and the drainage ditch dug, holes are dug for culvert pipes to carry the water under the trail and down the mountain slope (notice the big black pipe in the upper left of photo below -- click to enlarge)...

The final step is to put fine rocks over the larger rocks and then dirt over all of it to create the finished trail tread as seen below -- tread which should last against all storms due to its solid foundation of rock and the drainage ditches to control the runoff of water.



A fringe benefit of working in such a gorgeous location was that a brief five minute hike took us to jaw-dropping beautiful lunch spots each day...



Another fringe benefit on the project was a special treat -- Tuesday evening when we all drove to the Thompson Island picnic area for a supper of clam chowder and boiled Maine lobster. Here's our entire hard-working trail crew enjoying that evening meal...

(l to r around the table) Lindsey, Ellen, Bill (our AMC co-leader), Eben, Maya (our AMC leader), Joanie, Marianne, Pam, Michelle, and Dick.

Here's a camcorder movie showing use of the grip hoist and high-line cable to move several tons of rocks down to the trail for crushing and spreading...


For more photos of this project, go here.