Department of Conservation and Recreation
Conserve. Protect. Enjoy.
Department of Conservation and Recreation
The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) manages nearly 130,000 acres of diverse land across the state, which houses more than 700 miles of public trails. These trails allow millions of visitors to connect with nature, observe wildlife and view the stunning scenery that only Virginia can offer.
Behind the scenes, DCR staff spend countless hours building and maintaining trails to ensure the ones at Virginia’s state parks and natural areas have as little impact as possible on the environment, integrate with the surrounding landscape and serve all types of trail users.
To ensure these goals are met, DCR staff must have a certain set of skills, which they learn from members of the Professional TrailBuilders Association during the yearly DCR Sustainable Trail Building Workshop.
Several years ago, Hungry Mother State Park hired trail consulting and building company Trail Dynamics to develop a trail plan for the park. This process highlighted the need for in-house training on sustainable trail construction and maintenance techniques and led to the first Sustainable Trail Building Workshop being held in 2008 at Hungry Mother.
It was facilitated by Trail Dynamics instructor Woody Keen and DCR’s Resource Management team, which plays a crucial role in the preservation, conservation and responsible management of DCR’s natural and cultural resources.
After the initial workshop, Keen moved out of the area and recommended two new instructors from the Professional TrailBuilders Association: Scott Linnenburger, Kay-Linn Enterprises, and Dr. Jeremy Wimpey, Applied Trails Research.
From 2009 to 2017, Resource Management, Linnenburger and Wimpey held the workshop sporadically. Then, after a five-year break, the workshop was revamped and held in 2022 and 2023 at Natural Bridge State Park.
Across the trail-building industry, “Trail Solutions: IMBA’s Guide to Building Sweet Singletrack” serves as a guide to successful trail building for a variety of land managers and volunteer trail builders. Hundreds of land agencies and recreation providers around the globe have adopted its guidelines as an official policy, including DCR.
For the two-day Sustainable Trail Building Workshop, Linnenburger and Wimpey use their years of experience, along with “Trail Solutions,” to teach a mix of Virginia State Parks, Natural Heritage and Resource Management staff about the ins and outs of sustainable trail planning, construction and maintenance.
Day one of the 2023 Sustainable Trail Building Workshop
Day one starts with four hours of classroom instruction. This is when participants learn that trail building is much more than moving dirt, trees and rocks; it's a science. Some of the topics Linnenburger and Wimpey cover include:
1. The four elements of sustainable trail building:
2. How to inventory and assess existing trails and tools to do so.
3. Common trail-building terms, including:
4. The basics of how to design, construct, maintain and relocate a trail.
5. How to manage water on a trail.
6. Important tools for construction and maintenance.
After the classroom portion wraps up, participants head to the trail, where Linnenburger and Wimpey go over all the tools they’ll use, including hand saws, pulaskis, hoes, shovels, McLeods and rakes.
Then, participants break up into teams and start practicing the skills Linnenburger and Wimpey went over earlier in the day, including corridor brushing and clearing, tread excavation, shaping and finishing, and spoils stabilization.
Day two of the 2023 Sustainable Trail Building Workshop
Day two gives participants the chance to hone in on their skills as they spend eight hours working on a trail. Depending on the park’s needs, this time could be spent starting to build a new trail, redirecting an existing trail or regular trail maintenance.
For example, at the 2022 and 2023 workshops at Natural Bridge, participants worked on redirecting a portion of Buck Hill Trail to cut out a deeply rutted section with a large hill that was starting to impact surrounding vegetation and user experience.
Click through the images to see the current trail
This portion of the trail will remain open while the new section is being built, but once that’s complete, the park will start the trail closure procedure on the original section, which includes scoring the ground so natural regeneration of vegetation can occur and harvesting local trees, shrubs and other vegetation to speed up the process of natural regeneration.
There’s a chance next year’s Sustainable Trail Building Workshop will be held at Natural Bridge again to finish the work on Buck Hill Trail. It will all depend on how much progress the Resource Management team, park staff and volunteers can make over the next year.
Click through the images to see the new trail under construction
The workshops are limited to 20 participants so that everyone can receive a hands-on experience with the different tools and individualized guidance from the instructors.
For many participants, the workshop is eye-opening. At the end of the two days, they leave with a better understanding of sustainable trailing building, a set of skills they can pass along to other members of their team and volunteer groups, and a different perspective.
Natural Resource Field Manager Forrest Atwood helps facilitate the workshops on behalf of DCR, and he knows firsthand the impact they can have on participants.
"I attended my first sustainable trail workshop over 20 years ago. I was amazed at the science involved in properly building and maintaining trails, and I have not looked at a trail the same since," said Atwood. "As I talk to participants at these workshops, I hear the same amazement from many of them, and that’s how I know the workshops are a success."
Here’s what some of the 2023 participants had to say:
“I had two major takeaways from attending the Sustainable Trail Building Workshop,” said Youth Engagement Coordinator Scarlett Stevens. “The first is that I learned many of the state parks’ trails built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 30s and 40s are still in use today. This gives a great perspective on what is meant by sustainable trail building and furthers my appreciation of the craftsmanship of those who worked in the CCC. The second takeaway is that trail building must consider the social elements of who a trail serves, the experience visitors can have in our parks and the impact on trail users when they are able to be immersed in nature. I am struck by the power of trails and the ways in which they unveil the natural world to our park guests, creating meaningful experiences and memories that inspire stewardship.”
“The impact trails have on a park in an ecological, social, physical and managerial sense runs very deep. I was fascinated by how little details can have such a positive or a negative effect on the park and its patrons down the road,” explained Park Ranger Law Enforcement Ian Smith.
“The Sustainable Trail Building Workshop made me realize the importance of taking the time and effort to properly plan the layout of a new trail in order to create the most sustainable and least negatively impactful trail system that you can,” said Ryan Lepsch, a Shenandoah Valley Region operations steward, Division of Natural Heritage.
“The workshop further developed my perspective of Resource Management’s support role in relation to sustainable trail building and state park staff,” explained Natural Resource Management Assistant Caleb Varney. “In some cases, it will be very important for Resource Management to remember that, at the end of the day, the in-house park staff will be responsible for maintaining the trails that we help plan and install. This implies an elevated sense of responsibility for myself and my team to retain key sustainability elements, such as implementing the appropriate trail and drainage features to avoid creating a nuisance maintenance issue in the future for park staff.”
Dr. Jeremy F. Wimpey, Principal, Applied Trails Research
As project manager and research lead with Applied Trails Research, Dr. Wimpey provides trail and outdoor recreation planning, design, assessment and management services to a variety of public land management agencies and private landholders.
Specializing in training, community involvement and geospatial services for planning and management activities, Dr. Wimpey also serves as an adjunct research faculty member with Pennsylvania State University’s College of Health and Human Development, Recreation, Park and Tourism Management Department.
Dr. Wimpey received his Ph.D. in geospatial environmental analysis from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, his master’s in integrated science and technology and a bachelor’s in geography from James Madison University.
Scott Linnenburger, Principal, Kay-Linn Enterprises
Prior to founding Kay-Linn Enterprises, Linnenburger was the director of field programs for the International Mountain Bicycling Association, where he grew the field programs budget by 300% and doubled the programs’ staff size in five years.
Linnenburger has successfully worked on more than 100 trail projects for federal, state, local, and private sectors and previously served on the Board of American Trails and the Professional TrailBuilders Association.
Linnenburger received his Master of Environmental Management from Duke University’s Nicholas School and bachelor’s degrees in biology and secondary Education from Eckerd College.
Categories
Conservation | Natural Heritage | State Parks
