Surely there aren’t enough people walking them constantly to mash the grass to death, is there some kind of membrane placed under the dirt to stop grass growth?
Here is a pic of worn path from walking on, rough edges, clearly not intentional.
Will post pic after walking the dog of the trail that I’m speccifically curious about.
Where I live they’re not maintained at all. If nobody uses them for a while they disappear. I have a “path” nearby that’s on every single map but you can no longer see it used to be a path.
Obligatory reference to desire paths: !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works
Traffic – under foot or otherwise – is one way to keep a path in decent shape
laughs in New England accent
Absolutely not.
“Rock before root and root before dirt - and never touch the mud if you can help it.”
Literally hiking 101 out here. What we teach the children for trail preservation.
Is also why ~5 miles in ADK, the greens, or the whites, is like ~10 miles anywhere else. But yeah… No. Traffic definitely does not keep a trail in shape.
Can you please elaborate? What is that children’s rhyme meant to teach? What are green and white ADKs?
Google was not very helpful.
ADK is short for ADirondacK mountain range. The others are the Green Mountain range and White Mountain range. All start in New England. The saying describes how step on the trail without causing it to erode into a gully.
ADK = Adirondacks.
Green (Mountains), White (Mountains).
It teaches kids to preserve trails by not walking on them, if at all possible. While walking on trails in New York and New England, you should aim for a rock first. If there is no rock to step on, aim for a root. If there is no root, then dirt is ok to step on. But avoid mud at all costs.
This highlights the ruggedness of the terrain out there. Where many hikes elsewhere provide such an ample amount of dirt with so little rock and root to aim for first, it is not a well known trail maintenance practice outside of the region. However, in the region, it is essential. When ignored, large patches of mud that will last all season long start to form. When this happens, trail maintainers either:
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Close the trail until it’s restored
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Reroute the trail permanently
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Lay down wooden planks to minimize further damage (least sustainable option).
This maintenance is tax dollars, and they don’t have a lot of them, so education is the most effective use of that dollar. And that’s why we teach the kids:
Rock before root and root before dirt, and never step in mud if you can avoid it! 🤠
I should clarify that my original comment – foot traffic keeps paths in decent shape – was in answer to the OP’s titular question, about why vegetation doesn’t grow atop the intended walking/hiking trail. But you’re right that traffic will cause other impacts, even if plantlife isn’t getting in the way.
I’m in 100% agreement that for trail upkeep, people have to be mindful how they step. The advisories here in California focus on not eroding the edges of the trail, such as by walking around muddy areas, which would only make the restoration work harder and damage more of the adjacent environment. We have a lot of “stay on trail” signs. We advise people to either be prepared to go right through the mud – only worsens an existing hole – or don’t walk that trail at all.
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Yes, there are enough people walking on it to just kill the grass. No further effort is needed to form the pathway. Many wild animals make paths by walking on them a lot too.
Also once yearly trail maintenance or some other cadence. At least if a state or national park.
Plants are actually pretty sensitive to soil compaction, which can take a lot of time to reverse. the composition clay/sand in the soil can changed the time it takes to resettle, and it might even just erode down to rock.
This one makes the most sense. There’s trails behind my house that I walk pretty much daily and maybe meet three people the entire time. There’s just not enough people walking on that path to cause that so it must be the compaction.
No, it’s just foot traffic everywhere I’ve hiked
edit- I guess maybe you’re talking about those nature hikes with the box-landscape-stairs. Those are filled in with rock and clay so the grass doesn’t have any nutrients, then maintained with the fine granite gravel, which I think even has a chemical effect on the soil, suppressing plants
The fact that the trail exists there in the first place means that there’s enough people walking on it that the grass dies and doesn’t grow bag. I’ve started a trail from scratch and I doubt there’s more than a handful of people walking there every week but the trail just keeps getting more carved in.
This one’s man made though, it’s around a nature preserve and it’s runs between dozens of small communities in my area. This area is well known for outdoors, trails, creeks, small lakes, all in a very dense residential area.
I built an office shed in my back yard. Almost all the grass is gone where I walk between the back door and the shed. I do this fairly frequently, but I’d think still quite a bit less than an even lightly trafficked hiking path.
I’ll put some stepping stones out there eventually.
dirt compression its what killed my potted plant
You walked on your potted plant?
My first thought was “ah, squished by a cat”
The construction of a hiking path depends on the environment and budget. There certainly is membrane used in some, especially in wet/boggy environments. I think it’s mostly gravel that’s used to prevent grass from growing. (people don’t walk on the entire width of the path usually)
No membrane. Just clay and stone.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm07232806/page09.htm
Cool
