I’ve received a number of comments and messages expressing frustration over the number of downed trees that have yet to be cleared from Hurricane Helene that passed through over a month ago. So, why is it taking so long? The answer can be thought of as responsibilities, resources, risks, and rules. Notice I started each word with ‘R’? Neat.

Responsibilities. First and foremost, public land managers are tasked with a great number of responsibilities; tree clearing is just one of them. National Forest managers, for example, have the widest range of responsibilities that includes everything from timber inventory to water quality monitoring to environmental studies to trash pickup to public comment monitoring to Forest management planning and implementation to parking enforcement to law enforcement to fire suppression and the list goes on and on and on. National Forests are the ‘Land of Many Uses’, and that also means they are the land of many responsibilities. Trail clearing is just one of many items on the list.

Resources. Sticking with the National Forest example, in Red River Gorge at last count, there were a total of 9 employees including part-time workers who are responsible for tens of thousands of acres of land, about 90 miles of trails, miles of Forest Service roads, and at least a half million visitors annually. There is no dedicated, exclusive trail clearing team, and trail maintenance is somewhat of a shared responsibility between Forest Service and volunteers. When a large storm comes through, there simply aren’t sufficient resources to cut and remove trees from trails quickly. After storms, the priority is first to clear roads, then utility lines, then parking lots, campgrounds, picnic areas, and as resources allow, trails.

Kentucky State Parks, as another example, has a Trail Crew that will come in and clear trees after storms, but this is in addition to other work they complete including trail repairs, campground maintenance, tree inspections, replacing staircases and footbridges, etc. Spread this crew across the 45 parks in the Commonwealth, and it’ll take a good while to clean up the trails after a large scale storm event.

Risk. Cutting down trees involves a chainsaw and a falling tree that can weight between 1,000 and 3,000 lbs. with obstructions (more trees) all around. YouTube has a rabbit hole dedicated to tree removal failures - mostly in open spaces in the burbs where things are a helluva lot easier. It’s dangerous work and only properly trained employees are able to conduct this work. Volunteers are generally relegated to moving cut sections of trees off the trail or using a handsaw with training and supervision. In short, there are few who are qualified to do this type of work because of the high level of risk involved.

Rules. And then there are our two federally designated Wilderness Areas - Clifty and Beaver Creek. These have special rules that require trail clearing by hand tools. That means crosscut saws, handsaws, and axes. This labor is also shared with volunteers and two days of trail clearing are coming up this weekend in conjunction with Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards and Forest Service. If you’re interested, hit this link.

And keep reading past the Instagram post for more.

Know the Difference Between Officially Marked and Maintained versus User Created Unmarked and Unmaintained Trails. And then there are ‘trails’ listed on map apps like AllTrails, Gaia, OnX, etc. Many of these ‘trails’ are user created and are NEVER cleared because they’re not official trails. Rather, they are unmarked, unmaintained user created trails. There are about as many miles of unmarked and unmaintained user trails in Red River Gorge as there are officially marked and maintained trails. I’ve seen countless complaints over the years with trail users bitching about downed trees or degraded trail conditions imploring the ‘park’ to clean it up. These commentators seem to have never compared their map app to the official land manager map.

If you want to know what’s marked and maintained, start with the map provided by the land manager, not the crowd sourced maps in the apps.

In the end, having some widow-makers overhead or downed trees across the trail can make hiking a little more arduous. I don’t mind such things, but it does add some risk to your hike from falling hazards, but also from a time/planning perspective - it takes longer to hike through blowdowns, so plan your time accordingly. When you hike after a major storm - even months afterward - keep your eyes active for overhead dangers, and do what you can to scramble up and over downed trees. Avoid creating side trails as much as possible.

AND, of course, sign up to volunteer for these trail clean-up projects. That’s that whole ‘be the solution instead of the problem’ or something like that.