RE: [at-l] Side trails on A.T. corridor

["Walt Daniels" <wdaniels@bestweb.net>]

There are two categories of "side trails". One needs more approval than
anyone has been willing to go for, e.g. Sec. of Interior and maybe Congress.
This gets you an "official federally recognized side trail." The other is
"local" access trails,  blue blazes to a view also fit this category. These
need to be approved by whatever the local club's local management plan says
is the approval process. There is no such thing as "corridor management
committee". The current ATC committee is "Trail Lands Committee". They are
not part of the approval process, but ATC regional office should be
informed. Note that any trail relocation or new construction on NPS land
needs to go through environmental assessment processes which involves NPS -
not ATC although the regional office is usually helpful in getting it going.
Essentially all "informal" trails blazed by non-AT committee people are
illegal and should be removed (or retroactively put through the process and
then removed if they fail).

It is possible to quite thoroughly remove essentially all evidence of a
trail but it takes a year or two to accomplish.


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