Out & About: Groups to study trail accessibility

Liz Sauchelli. Copyright (c) Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Liz Sauchelli. Copyright (c) Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Work started in 2023 and was finished this summer to build an accessible, wider, bridge to extend the trail at the Chaffee Wildlife Sanctuary over Trout Brook, leading toward Post Pond in Lyme, N.H. (Courtesy photograph)

Work started in 2023 and was finished this summer to build an accessible, wider, bridge to extend the trail at the Chaffee Wildlife Sanctuary over Trout Brook, leading toward Post Pond in Lyme, N.H. (Courtesy photograph) —

By LIZ SAUCHELLI

Valley News Staff Writer

Published: 10-04-2024 7:01 PM

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vermont’s trails — like many others throughout the country — saw increased use and interest.

As organizations examined how to make trails more durable for that use, another conversation started to gain momentum: Making trails more accessible to people who have varying degrees of mobility, including those who use wheelchairs.

This summer, those efforts got a boost from a $644,000 Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative Community grant to form a Vermont Trail Accessibility Hub, an online database that will compile trail assessments from across the state, as well as resources on how to build accessible trail and grant funding opportunities.

“It’s the first step in helping the hundreds of trail groups around the state of Vermont figure out if and how they can either build new — or upgrade their existing — trails to accessible standards,” said Russell Hirschler, executive director of the Upper Valley Trails Alliance, a Norwich-based nonprofit that assists with trail maintenance projects. “There have been efforts in smaller pockets around the state of Vermont, but this is the first statewide state-funded effort to take a comprehensive view of existing trails that are out there.”

In addition to the Trails Alliance, five other organizations — the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council, Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, Vermont Mountain Bike Association, Northern Forest Canoe Trail and Community Geographics — will join work on the project.

One of the components of the project is to conduct assessments of trails throughout Vermont and offer suggestions on how they can be made more accessible. Another is to update Trail Finder, a website that includes descriptions and maps of trails throughout the Twin States so that people can get a better idea of what to expect before arriving on a hike. (Community Geographics is the company that oversees Trail Finder.)

Trails Alliance staff will conduct at least a dozen assessments of trails all over Vermont before the grant expires at the end of 2025. The assessments, which will consider trail characteristics such as how steep trails are and parking lot access, will determine whether trails can be adapted or rebuilt to be more accessible.

If the answer is yes, staff will put together a project plan and a budget to make those improvements. Then, whichever organization oversees those trails can apply for grants or host fundraisers to carry out the plan.

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“There’s a lot of will in the land management world to meet people where they are and provide access as much as we can,” said Karrie Thomas, executive director of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a 740-mile long trail that goes through water bodies in New York, Vermont/Québec, New Hampshire and Maine.

For water access, that can include making sure a parking lot has accessible parking spaces and that the slope to the water access point isn’t too steep. So far, Northern Forest Canoe Trail staff have conducted more than a dozen assessments including access areas along the White River: White River Ledges Natural Area in West Hartford, an access point near the Sharon Fire Department, Payne’s Beach in South Royalton and Peavine Park in Bethel. They are now working on compiling assessments.

The Northern Forest Canoe Trail already has experience making spots more accessible. This summer, staff and volunteers worked on a project at Churchill Lake, which is part of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in Maine. They made upgrades to a campsite to make it more accessible for wheelchair users, including flattening the ground, putting in picnic tables and widening a trail to a larger privy that the group built.

“The second you make it accessible to someone in a wheelchair pretty much anybody can use it and that just improves life for everybody,” Thomas said.

The Upper Valley Trails Alliance also has experience making trails more accessible on both sides of the Upper Valley, including at Chaffee Wildlife Sanctuary in Lyme.

Over the last two summers, a initial 1,000-foot trail from the trailhead to a bird viewing blind was rebuilt at a cost of about $12,000; this summer an accessible, wider, bridge extended the trail over Trout Brook leading toward Post Pond at a cost of roughly $10,000, Hirschler said. The work was done by members of the Upper Valley Trails Alliance’s High School Trail Corps and was funded by the nonprofit, the town of Lyme and the Lyme Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds projects in Lyme.

Cost can also be a deterrent when addressing accessibility. Hirschler said building an accessible trail can cost “upward of 10 times the cost of just building a footpath through the woods.”

The improvements and the investments go beyond helping people in wheelchairs enjoy the outdoors.

“It’s to provide a level and firm surface for somebody who needs a cane or walker assistance and enables them to get out more deeply into a natural area,” Lyme Conservation Commission Chairman Blake Allison said.

Conservation Commission members are exploring other opportunities to install accessible trails in Lyme, he added.

“The challenge for us, given the topography, is to find places to put them,” Allison said.

For more information about the Trail Accessibility Hub visit http://vermonttgc.org/trail-accessibility-hub/. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.