[pct-l] TRAIL MAINTENANCE

[kmurray at pol.net]

The issue of trail maintenance and re-routing is unending.  There are many
that do much more than I, but I've spent about a month this summer doing
trail maintenance, just coming back from a week in the Mt. Langley area of
SoCal.

The problems are complex:  The trail is there, but may have been
established in the wrong place.....unstable geology, rockfall zones,
avalanche paths, improper construction for the specific situation creating
an unstable trail.  So, do we leave a bad trail where it is, and spend
huge proportions of very scarce funds, volunteer time and effort, even
endangering worker lives......to maintain the unmaintainable?  Yes, our
society has the technology to land on the moon........but wilderness is
about abandoning advanced technology!

We have the bizarre rules that have us spend an entire day cutting out a
log across a trail, where a re-route is actually as good, or better tread.
 Gotta do it, because "that is the trail"........forgetting that trees
falling is NATURAL, that century old trails constantly having slight
shifts due to tree fall is NATURAL, that making one's way through a forest
is NATURAL, and that the exact route of a trail is an imposition by man,
upon nature, of our will.  Who does the NEPA assessment of the impact of
cutting the tree, as opposed to doing nothing??   HA!  Who says the trail
in wilderness is "untrammeled" terrain??

So a trail segment is severely damaged, because it was routed wrong (never
been there, but the descriptions are unmistakable), and a very reasonable,
easily maintained substitute is available, that makes sense, and is where
the trail should probably have been sited in the first place.  Who speaks
for the wilderness, being damaged year after year, with erosion, excessive
traffic for the terrain, by this mistake of humankind?

Move the damn trail to where it should have been in the first place, and
don't use space technology to create an artificial wilderness environment
to prove that we can, once again, impose our will upon nature.