Erin Amadon, founder of Town 4 Trail Services, leads volunteers through a sustainable trail building workshop in November on the Cross Falmouth Trail. Contributed / Falmouth Land Trust

In many nature preserves, trails act as a set of winding, forest-flanked arteries, guiding visitors through a collection of protected woods, parks and farmland. Within the Falmouth Land Trust, these paths allow guests to access a patchwork of protected land reaching from the edge of Casco Bay up into North Falmouth.

But, like any thoroughfare, these trails get worn and sometimes treacherous with extended use and weather events, such as freeze-and-thaw cycles and heavy rainfall. To ensure longevity and resilience in these passageways, the land trust recently began a series of sustainable trail building workshops, beginning with updating and restoring a path in the Blackstrap Community Forest.

While FLT hosts regular volunteer days on the second Saturday of each month from April to October, the Nov. 16 workshop marked the first event to specifically address sustainable trail construction and education, according to Whitney Bushey, stewardship manager at the land trust. Participants included regular FLT volunteers, board members and stewards, and members of the Greater Portland Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association.

“We have all been on trails that need some love,” said Bushey, noting that a degrading path within the trust’s area “impacts your experience, making it harder to access the outdoors in a safe, enjoyable way” for the hikers, mountain bikers and hunters, all of whom use the property.

The work began on the Cross Falmouth Trail in the Blackstrap Community Forest, part of a 2,000-acre conservation corridor with a 30-mile trail network linking Falmouth Land Trust preserves with other protected land, such as the Lowell Preserve of the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust. This collection of preserved land makes up one of the largest forest corridors in Greater Portland, said Bushey. Updates to the Cross Falmouth Trail, she said, not only fortify a pathway within the land trust’s properties, but also maintain a gateway to many other protected nature areas.

To lead the workshop, the land trust brought in Erin Amadon, founder of Town 4 Trail Services, a trail planning and training company, which focuses on sustainable design and construction. The workshop is split into two parts: the first centered on theory behind sustainable and climate-resilient trail construction and the second part will exercise those principles out in the field.

When educating others on climate-resilient trail design, Amadon said she “focuses on sustainable solutions that create a positive user experience.” In practice, she incorporates “hill hydrology, trail slope alignment and rolling contours” into trail construction, ensuring that users can comfortably navigate the path’s gradient while guiding runoff in ways that minimize trail surface erosion.

While work just began at the Cross Falmouth Trail – an 11.5-mile section in total – Amadon explained that they started to address some of the trail’s “fall lines,” the steepest slopes in a stretch of land that are often weathered and destabilized by excessive water runoff.

The second workshop is scheduled for April under Amadon’s leadership, pending weather conditions.

In addition to the work in the Blackstrap Community Forest, Falmouth Land Trust plans to expand other trail improvements. The trust received a $9,000 grant from the L.L.Bean Land Trust Grant Program, which will be put toward additional trail maintenance in the spring, a plan detailed in the FLT December newsletter. The trust will bring in the Maine Conservation Corps trail crew, and Bushey said that their projects will center around installing raised gravel causeways, providing stable passage over areas that freeze and thaw more consistently with warmer winters.

With volunteers, trail construction experts and a dedication to climate-resilient designs, Bushey said the land trust is on the path to creating trails that allow visitors to fully absorb and appreciate the nature and wildlife of their protected spaces, no matter how many steps have been laid down on them.