By Dave Williams
The Indiana Parks Alliance Trails Committee was formed by interested members who love a good walk in the woods and wanted to see for themselves the current condition of hiking trails in Indiana State Parks and Nature Preserves. Accompanied by DNR staff, members assess current conditions and discuss the enormous challenges of keeping 850 miles of trails open for over four million hikers annually in an era of steadily declining State funding support for hiking trail maintenance.
Opinions vary about whether large scale wooden trail structures such as bridges, boardwalks, ladders, and stairs are an intrusion in the natural environment. These structures, many built decades ago, have helped guide millions of hikers safely around natural obstacles and away from unsafe or environmentally sensitive areas. Maintaining and replacing these expensive structures has become fiscally challenging for many Indiana State Park and Nature Preserve properties. Lack of ongoing maintenance often results in hikers creating their own alternate routes and detours, resulting in damage to the resources and potentially creating unsafe conditions for hikers.
A recent site visit to O’Bannon Woods revealed maintenance needs that are shared by many properties. Human and natural erosion on footpaths creates potentially unsafe conditions despite the diligent efforts of staff, volunteers, and Friends Groups. Another challenge is Ohio River erosion on sections of trails, leaving hikers to seek higher ground via steeper, eroded routes into the protected Mouth of the Blue River Nature Preserve.
At Versailles State Park, erosion in steep uphill sections on Trails 1 and 3 has resulted in the need to reroute sections of trail to more stable ground. The trail reroutes are working reasonably well and the use of volunteers is helping but lacking the budget funds for more permanent “off the ground” trail structures and methods, these measures are often only temporary.
The latest visit by our hale and hearty “Trail Crew” assessed Trail 9 conditions at Turkey Run State Park. While many state parks offer trails with an “easy” or “moderate” degree of difficulty, all but one of this park’s trails are rugged or very rugged. If you have hiked any of the Rocky Hollow Falls Canyon Nature Preserve trails, you will likely agree with this designation.
Trail 9 is rated very rugged for a reason and offers a case study of the challenges property staff face in maintaining trails and keeping them open for public use. As many hikers familiar with this trail know, traversing the narrow, steep hillside sections into and out of Boulder Canyon is grueling. After two landslides in a month and a half, an existing trail staircase and retaining walls were damaged beyond repair. Trail 9 was closed for public use for over a year and half and complaints from hikers were received. Property staff used their in-house expertise and labor to design and construct climbing ladders that would avoid highly eroded areas and steep slopes and would transport hikers from the canyon floor safely to higher ground. Two strategically placed 20-foot-long wooden ladders were installed; one at a 53-degree angle, the other at 40 degrees, providing a reasonably safe climbing position for most hikers. This in-house solution minimized erosion, protected native vegetation in the canyon, and resulted in successfully reopening the trail for safe public use.
Costs for trail maintenance can be very expensive. Transporting personnel, materials, tools, and equipment to remote trail locations contributes substantially to the project cost. Using in-house labor and expertise and labor assistance from the Putnamville Correctional Facility, the Trail #9 ladder project at Turkey Run was completed for a total cost of $24,228; including materials and in-kind labor.
Our Trail Crew’s upcoming visits include maintenance challenges at Whitewater Memorial State Park and the Pine Hills Nature Preserve. We will continue to serve as a sounding board for property staff and advocate for IPA’s budget proposal urging the Governor to address the severe funding backlog and champion the need to properly maintain hiking trails. These are the most heavily used facilities in Indiana State Parks and Nature Preserves.
Thanks very much to State Park staff who shared their time and expertise this summer:
- O’Bannon Woods State Park – Stanley Baelz, Property Manager
- Versailles State Park – Garrett McAdams, Property Manager and Alex Garcia, Assistant Property Manager
- Turkey Run State Park – Chris Newcomb, Property Manager, Tanner Snell, Assistant Property Manager, and Joshua Sorrels, Property Maintenance Supervisor.