The Blueprint for the Future of Trail Work
From 2022-2024, GMC and partners, including the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, commenced the three-year, top-to-bottom Burrows Trail restoration project. Starting in Huntington, Vermont, the trail is one of the most popular day hikes in Vermont, seeing tens of thousands of visitors each season. It runs 2.1 miles up the fall line of the mountain before intersecting the Long Trail to reach the summit of Camel’s Hump. Burrows Trail was built more than 100 years ago, and has not seen such extensive maintenance before. It had been heavily eroded due to excessive water runoff down the steep trail, and widened by so much hiker use.
The newly rebuilt trail now includes dozens of stone staircases and checksteps, rehabilitated waterbars, and two short relocations on the lower portion of the trail. This all-at-once investment into a trail, which has proven to hold up well to two historic floods in recent years, is a testament to the importance of large-scale investments in our beloved trails.
Historically, due to limited funding and crew capacity, FPR and GMC have taken an ad-hoc, patch-it-up approach to trail work. But the Burrows Trail presented the opportunity to invest unprecedented funding and capacity and rebuild the whole trail at once, improving its durability and resilience to the combined impacts of severe rainfall and hiker traffic. By starting at the top of the trail, the improved drainage structures at the top also protected the lower portion of the trail from more severe damage during the flooding in 2023 and 2024.
This project is a joint effort with Vermont Forests, Parks, and Recreation and other local partners.
Staircase
Waterbar
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