Amateur trail volunteers are dumbing down Belknap Range

To The Daily Sun,

Mountains are perfect creations, and the less we mess with them the better. They are not about our convenience, ease or safety, but the drama they add to the world and the demands of rising to their challenges. There would be little satisfaction to hiking, if we didn’t have to invest heavily in mountains and feel a responsibility to protect their dignity.

The public lands of the Belknap range are a treasure, but the problem is that a small group of amateur trail volunteers see themselves as exclusive arbiters of the mountains and have made major changes to trail networks without any input whatever from the local community.

The Belknap Trail Tenders have illustrated their contempt for the views of area hikers by not holding a single meeting, issuing a single press release, or posting notices to introduce sweeping changes to the trail system on public lands.

The discontent with the new trail construction and closings of some of the most popular trails in the Belknaps is growing. The Saddle Trail relocation has proved very unpopular, and the unblocking of a closed section of trail by hikers is a forceful expression of their views of the changes. There is no reason at all that the old section of trail could not be left open, but the BRATTS are tone deaf to public sentiment and responded by building bigger blockades.

Closing the top section of Klaus’s Trail for “safety” reasons is totally arbitrary and unnecessary. The trail stewards cite one report of an injury on the trail and a “cliff-type” ledge which requires hand-over-hand climbing. There is no cliff, or need to haul yourself along by hand. I have hiked the trail more than 1,700 times, without a scratch.

The only dangerous thing about the closed section of trail are those who labor under the illusion that they possess the authority to tell people where they can and cannot hike, absent negative environmental impact of any sort.

Making “safety” one of the whipping boys of their controlling ambitions, the trail menders are participating in the dumbing down of our trail network. We don’t need trails made into contrived garden paths. We need to know the true nature of mountains, and rise to the challenges.

The BRATTS insist they have not changed from the traditional Belknap model, yet have implemented numerous high impact trail projects with long stairways on trails where there were none before. Stairways are appropriate on large mountains, with long, steep pitches but totally unnecessary, unnatural and aesthetically jarring on the moderate slopes of the Belknaps.

The differences between local trail groups are stark. The WOW Trail advocates are about communication and collaboration, the BRATTS about a closed circuit. Mountains are about freedom. Resist oppression!

David Buckman

Gilford