To find out about scheduled trail volunteer trips, check our events section.
About Trail Volunteering
Trail volunteering is essential for keeping our trails open year round, and it helps the RMC in several important ways. When volunteers spend time brushing and blazing our trails, it helps the paid trail crew focus on more demanding reconstruction projects, it provides a “labor match” to qualify us to receive trail work grants from the State of New Hampshire and other funders, and it helps members get to know more about each other and about our trail network.
“Volunteer work trips” are scheduled during the summer months, and all are welcome to join in regardless of prior experience. Family groups are welcome, and there is often work that school-age children can do and enjoy. The brushing work is to cut back branches and small trees that have grown in and narrowed the trail; blazing is to refresh the painted blazes on routes below treeline, which are especially important as a guide to winter hikers. On each trip, there will be one or more experienced volunteers to teach or assist those who are new to the work. Some trips are for a morning, others for a full day; sometimes the target trail is a “hill side” trail within Randolph, and sometimes it is high on the mountains or near treeline.
How to prepare? Volunteers should bring standard day hike gear, including long pants, sturdy shoes, insect repellent, gardening gloves or work gloves, and a lunch for all-day trips. Bring your own small tools (clippers, loppers, hand saws); if you have them and like to use them; otherwise the trip leader will lend them to you.
