Maine Trail Crew Volunteers

 

The Maine Trail Crew Needs Volunteers!
Summer 2013 Season

An Exceptional Volunteer Opportunity

Join the Maine Trail Crew and work on Maine’s Appalachian Trail.  Help preserve this precious and wild resource for future generations of hikers.  An Enthusiastic staff awaits your arrival and is looking forward to building trail with you.

Work, hike and live in some of the wildest places left in the Eastern U.S.  Projects focus on rebuilding and restoring heavily impacted sections of the Appalachian Trail.  Crews utilize Griphoist® rigging equipment, rock drills and hand tools to build stone steps, waterbars and retaining walls to repair the Appalachian Trail.

Persons of age 18 or older – of all backgrounds – are welcome.  Enthusiasm, good health, energy and adaptability are vital.  Willingness to follow instructions, comply with safety rules, and share camp chores is essential.  Experience helps, but we teach trail skills here.

Benefits:

  • Transportation to and from Bangor International Airport
  • Tents and packs are provided if needed
  • All meals are provided, including off time between work sessions
  • Make new friends
  • Learn new trail skills
  • Lots of hiking on the AT
  • Build works in stone to last for the ages
  • Stay in mountain-side campsites
  • See Maine moose and hear the loons
  • Recreational trips to the mountains, ocean and lakes on days off
  • Receive a Maine Trail Crew t-shirt
  • Feel great about what you have done for the AT.

Time Frame:  June 15 to August 10, 2013 – You are welcome to join us for one or more weeks!  Sorry, no pets are allowed

To Reserve your space with the Maine Trail Crew Contact:

Holly Sheehan
231 Maine Avenue
Portland, ME  04103
matc@gwi.net

Summer 2013 Trail projects – Come Join Us!

  DOWNLOAD

Click to Download Summer 2013 Brochure – PDF File 

Come join us and cool off in some of Maine’s most beautiful lakes and streams after a hard day of work. Share your camp with the resident moose population and fall asleep to a loon’s enchanting serenade. Experience the Maine summer at its best!The Maine Trail Crew base camp is on a sheep farm in the town of Garland. The crew stays in wall tents when they are not on the AT. The camp building has a common area for meetings and meals.

Weekly trail crew season runs from June through early August, Saturday to Wednesday, to allow members of the MATC to work with the crew on weekends.

Crew off-days, Thursday and Friday, are for recreation, preparations for the next work week, and rest. The Maine Trail Crew works on heavy-duty trail construction and reconstruction projects from Grafton Notch to Katahdin in Maine, some of the most rugged and remote terrain on the entire Appalachian Trail.
A Maine Trail Crew member safely crosses the Piscataquis River in Horseshoe Canyon to reach a remote worksite.

On recent projects, the Maine Trail Crew has constructed rock steps and waterbars on the south sides of Saddleback and Barren Mountains; installed hundreds of feet of cedar bog bridges near Gulf Hagas; quarried, cut, and placed more than 100 rock steps on the Hunt (Appalachian) Trail near Katahdin; dug new sidehill trail in Horseshoe Canyon; and created a safer ascent out of (or descent into) Orbeton Stream Canyon with 40 rock steps, including three carved into bedrock with the power drill.

Multiple goals of The Maine Trail Crew’s program’s are:

  1. to teach and accomplish quality treadway construction and repair on the AT in Maine
  2. to supplement the ongoing efforts of maintainers and volunteers on the AT in Maine
  3. to improve and build the trail-repair skills of the crew
    participants and MATC volunteers.