Corridor Boundary Monitoring in Maine

[peakbagger]

I had the opportunity to sign up for a volunteer week with the joint ATC/MATC boundary corridor maintenance session last week. I am a volunteer corridor monitor for a section in Maine but my primary focus is to "walk the line" to observe that if there are encroachments into the corridor versus maintaining the line. Much of the AT in Maine was surveyed 40 years ago and paint does not last that long. There is a north and south boundary, so the corridor is roughly twice as long as the AT (its actually longer as the AT corridor is an assembly of odd size blocks of land). The original surveyors set aluminum disks along the boundary at intervals and at every corner. They were preferably attached to a rock but if the soil conditions didnt allow it, they set pipe markers. Every disk has a set of witness points that are described in the documentation that can be used to locate the disk as they are frequently hard to find.

The pro crew moves around setting up weekly basecamps near the trail that allows them access to areas that have not been visited or there are known issues. They set up last week and at least one more upcoming session to bring in additional volunteers to join them for the week to cover more territory by splitting into groups. They had pre-scouted access points to areas of the trail from whatever logging roads and ATV paths they can find so we would travel with them in the morning to some remote point and then head into the woods. The AT in Maine is quite remote, and the corridor is even more remote. Much of the adjoining lands to the AT are industrial forest lands that are cut on a rotation basis so much of the land we need to cross may be young forests growing up from a past cut. That means thick vegetation especially after this year's record setting rain in June which is continuing into early July. Our goal is to make it to boundary sometimes using the AT to get there and then start locating old painted blazes, scraping them off and repainting them. Brush is cleared just enough to travel between points and maintain a line of sight. We keep an eye out for signs for a boundary aluminum marker using a specialized "ap" developed by the NPS.

For someone who likes off trail hiking in rarely traveled woods it is a fun challenge. Our first day was quite rainy, I had jokingly suggested to the crew that we jump in the lake at the base camp and get getting soaked over with but instead we stayed dry until a few minutes getting out of the truck. The woods were soaked, the mud was deep in spots but eventually we got to work and got some corridor done. Along the way we saw a trail crew working on the AT footbed and saw some of their high-quality work from the past working to keep at least a small part of the trail up out of the mud. We passed a small pond and visited it via a spur path, visibility was zero while the pond is well over the normal bank. Luckily the weather cleared as the days went on and on the last day it was sunny and hot. We even met a few long-time trail angels at road crossings serving hiker feeds. They did not have a lot of customers, to date they had seen more southbounders although an "angel" that lived in Andover to the south reported there was a group of northbound hikers heading out that should arrive that afternoon. We were honored with a top rate bacon cheeseburger for our work.

[Slow Trek]

Thanks for your efforts!

[NY HIKER 50]

In NY I was mostly on my own having to hack my way into the underbrush as a boundary monitor. Many times I spent the night where I was and got out in the morning. I even found an old dump and brought home a souvenir, an old metal plate. To this day I still have it and I don't know if Antiques Road Show would care about it. I had to give it up since I came from the city and at the time they were worried about terrorism. I don't think they would appreciate some of tools in my pack at the time..