As I often share with people on Franconia Ridge, being in the alpine zone feels like time travel—experiencing a landscape reminiscent of what one might have seen at the foot of glaciers 12,000 years ago. The highest northeastern mountains hold the last remnants of a tundra ecology, ecological refugia cradled in stone and embraced by clouds.
Hiking on different trails in the White Mountains is its own kind of time travel. Lightly visited trails still look like the paths my great-grandfather built and maintained: meandering, sometimes barely discernible indentations in a soft forest floor, narrow ribbons bordered by moss and lichens. Or when I bushwhack (explore without a trail), I time travel even further back, to the days before trails, when routes were first explored.
Above: Smart’s Brook Trail
Franconia Ridge Loop trails, with their more than 45,000 annual visitors, look entirely different. On the Old Bridle Path and Falling Waters Trail, the tread is deeply incised in some areas—erosion has carved trenches up to five feet deep. In the alpine zone on Franconia Ridge, there are sections where trampling on both sides of the trail have destroyed many square meters of alpine plants, significantly widening the trail and with extensive trail braiding (multiple trails). The ascent up the south side of Lincoln, for example, has sections with trail widening and braiding forty feet wide.
Above: Old Bridle Path
So much of my hiking time and attention these days is spent on these devastated trails. I needed a break, so I decided to spend the day in the Sandwich Range Wilderness, much of the time off of formal trails, my attempt to travel back to the landscape of 100-150 years ago.
I say “formal trails” because there are many bushwhack routes that are used repeatedly, so there are traces of past travel, and sometimes even signs of minimal marking and maintaining. Usually this consists of a few rocks piled here and there. Sometimes these begin as wildlife trails, routes are shared by people and animals, and one sees scat and animal tracks.
In Costa Rican Spanish there is specific word for this sort of trail: trillo. A trillo, as distinct from a sendero (a maintained trail), can be an animal track, a hunter’s route, or simply a lightly used path that forms as people repeatedly walk the same way between locations.
Waterville
When I bushwhack I am repeating what my great grandfather, grandfather and great aunt and uncle did as they explored the forests and crags around Waterville, planning future trails. The first trails in the White Mountains were essentially trillos, ways to get to places that people found and identified as attractive destinations: outlooks, summits, rapids, waterfalls, ponds. Making these into marked trails made them easier to find. The first trail work was simply clearing and blazing these routes. In the spirit and style of exploration, these were often as direct as possible (straight up the slope) or followed along or even in stream beds—one trick to navigating difficult terrain is to use a stream bed when the water level is low. Another strategy is to use land slides to access summits that are so densely packed with krummholz it is almost impossible to make any progress. I recall a bushwhack to the east peak of Osceola, crawling on my hands and knees for the last quarter mile through thick spruce and fir. The original Tripyramid loop in Waterville had no access trails. One simply bushwhacked to and up the north side, and then over to and down the south slide two peaks away. The challenge was crossing to the south peak by way of the middle peak without getting lost—a fourth peak to the northeast was known as the “fool killer” because inexperienced trampers sometimes hiked there instead of to the middle peak.
Early trail makers
Critics sometimes dismiss early White Mountain trails as amateur constructions by inexperienced hikers. However, this critique overlooks that the very concept of a “trail” has evolved significantly. Trails are a blend of empirical features and social constructs. In the past, they were simpler routes shaped by the needs of a relatively small number of “trampers” (a term often used in New England for walkers). Today, our modern recreation “industry” brings millions of visitors to national parks and forests, with increasingly diverse “uses” and “users”—runners, mountain bikers, rock climbers, and more. Designing and building trails to accommodate these numbers and diversity requires substantial tread work and highly skilled rock masonry.
The knowledge and skills of early White Mountain trail makers were equal to their modern counterparts, but with a different attention. Early trail builders were experts in orienteering and cartography. Their focus was not on carving out a trail tread or concern over unimaginable crowds of people. In Waterville, where my family has its roots, the idea was to build a trail network connecting a collection of attractions—summits, waterfalls, rapids, vistas—whose center was the old Waterville Inn. As similar trail systems developed around other communities, the new project became to connect these separate networks so that it was possible to traverse from one end of the the White Mountains to the other. In Vermont trail makers embraced an even more ambitious idea, the Long Trail that traverses the length of Vermont, completed in 1910. The next step championed by the New England Trail Conference (NETC, established in 1916): connect trails across all of New England. And this, of course, helped along the vision of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, articulated by Benton MacKaye at the 1921 New England Trail Conference.
Above : Nathaniel Goodrich exploring in Waterville, 1900
It is mistake to dismiss trails made in this era as amateur constructions by inexperienced hikers. These were skilled woodsman with an understanding of landscape-level trail design. They are responsible for creating the first recreational trail networks and long trails in the United States.
With these thoughts in mind, on Sunday I decided to venture into a place where I could experience the spirt of an earlier time. Three others joined me. This crew of four set forth to traverse a nearby ridge and its rocky summits without a trail.
Immediately upon leaving a blazed path, I felt myself relax. Instead of encountering the 1,000-plus hikers and runners typical of Franconia Ridge on a sunny weekend, we saw no one else. We followed what was clearly a trillo—we could see traces of previous travel—but it was faint enough that we lost and rediscovered the track multiple times. We went straight up the fall-line, wanting to get to the ridge as quickly as possible, but there was no sign of significant erosion: too few people travel this way. Sure enough, along the way we saw deer, moose and bear scat. We finally made it to the ridge and then followed along until we reached a rocky outcropping with spectacular views.
To return we scrambled off of the peak and followed a high contour to a the Smart’s Brook Trail, still in the Sandwich Range Wilderness. And I was still in the past: the tread soft and narrow, with undisturbed moss on each side. We encountered one other hiker on the trail in the Wilderness. Things were as they should be.
Afterwards
It was not all pristine while off trail. There was, of course, the presence of the trillo itself, but, as I said, this was just a trace. We found a scrap of rubber and ribbon on the ridge—remnants of a released helium balloon that had floated from a nearby settlement. Somebody had tied a colorful, braided string on a short tree on the summit. We dismantled a fire ring built on subalpine vegetation on the ledge. And there were two climbing bolts screwed into rock, someone’s private climbing route
If time travel to the past is possible, perhaps so is time travel to the future. What will this wilderness route look like in 100 years—or only 10 years? It takes a small increase in traffic for a trillo to start to erode. With GPS in everyone’s phone and photos share ubiquitously on social media, trail-less ridges, summits, waterfalls, ravines, landslides, etc. are being discovered and shared and are easy to find by following GPX tracks. No need for the orienteering skills of yesteryear. You might notice that I did not name the ridge or summit. That was to make it a little bit less likely it is identifiable, though it will not be difficult for people familiar with the White Mountains to guess where it is.
Above: New climbing bolt screwed into ledge in the Sandwich Range Wilderness
As for the aforementioned Smart’s Brook Trail, it has likely been spared the fate of many other trails to lesser peaks because Sandwich Mountain is 3,983 feet high, just shy of 4,000 feet: it is not a trophy for the 4000 footer club.
Balance
My imaginative use of time and history has an analytical purpose as well. We can still find trails and pristine terrain that harken back to 100 and even 200 years ago. We also have trails like those found on the Franconia Ridge Loop that are severely eroded and where hiking and running threaten the alpine ecology.
Just as I resist professional trail builders and recreational ecologists dismissing the work of past trail makers, I encourage those who reject new trail work to reconsider. If a trail is to handle more than 40,000 hikers and runners a year, it needs to have a design that can accommodate these numbers. This means a wider tread and substantial side-hill sections. Rock steps built in this wider tread may have stones that are split and pieced together, with a very different aesthetic than those only wide enough for one person.
Above: new trail work on the Old Bridle Path
I also ask that we not insist that all trails conform to these new designs and trail engineering. Each trail has its own character and biogeography, and most important to this discussion, its own volume and types of visitors. Trails like the Smart’s Brook Trail’s meandering and mossy way can persist. There are some trails in the Sandwich Range that go straight up the fall-line (anathema to recreational ecologists and professional trail builders) that are sustainable at the current number of visitors.
This is the crux: at their current number.
Systemic and network thinking
On a single high-use loop like Franconia Ridge we are struggling to manage 45,000 visitors a year. On White Mountains-wide scale, we are talking about millions of visitors. With a growing population and outdoor recreation becoming more and more popular, the number of people visiting the White Mountain National Forest, whether to hike, run, bike or scramble off trail, is only increasing.
Limiting use through permits may seem an immediate and easy answer, but to limit use on some trails—like the Franconia Loop—will likely displace people to other trails. This could recreate the same problems at new locations. Even if the USFS had the administrative will, funding, and popular support, to implement a forest-wide permit system, it would be logistically impossible to manage. Unlike many national parks that have a handful of monitored entrances, the White Mountain National Forest has hundreds of access points.
Redesigning and rebuilding high-use trails will not solve the problem alone. We need the skills of modern professional trail builders, recreational ecologists and trail specialists with the same skills as the old trail masters with their understanding of trail systems and networks. We should to analyze how visitors flow through an entire trail system. This can be influenced by parking and shuttle policies, as well strategic additions and subtractions to a trail network.
If we are open to adjusting our aesthetics and expectations on some trails, and we think systemically about the White Mountain trail network, maybe we will will be able preserve fragile biotic communities alongside high-use trails like the Franconia Ridge Trail. And maybe we can continue to time travel, to preserve the spirit of wildness in some places.
A version of this essay first appeared in the Raven newsletter. The Raven provided news to volunteers and supporters of trail work and alpine stewardship in the White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire. You can subscribe here.
