KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – A key section of the Appalachian Trail will be relocated to a boardwalk alongside a stream, making it one of the few places on the trail that would be accessible by wheelchair.
The decision by U.S. Forest Service district ranger Stephen Kimball means that the portion of the trail that now runs alongside a town road will be moved to a yet-to-be-constructed 470-foot boardwalk beside Kent Brook.
The Forest Service acquired an easement to the land over which the new trail will pass in the late 1980s, and the agency has been considering different ways to reconfigure the trail ever since.
The Green Mountain Club and the town of Killington support the boardwalk option – unlike another proposal put forth five years ago – but the project was by far the most expensive option considered for moving the trail off the road.
Building the raised boardwalk over a wetland along Kent Brook, building a small bridge over the Ottauquechee River, and associated trail work will cost about $200,000. That’s nearly two-thirds of the Green Mountain National Forest’s annual trail budget for the entire state.
“The cost is the only drawback,” said Kimball.
The ranger said the project would be one of many vying for funding from the Forest Service, but its location on the famous 2,168-mile Maine-to-Georgia trail would help its chances.
“It will compete with other projects,” he said. “But being the Appalachian Trail, we think we have a good case. We think this is an important trail and will present itself really well.”
In a “best case” scenario, Kimball said, the project could be completed two years from now.
The ranger said he chose the boardwalk option because it best fulfilled the Forest Service’s objectives of moving the trail away from the road and providing hikers better access to the nearby 140-foot-high Thundering Falls.
Moving the trail off a half-mile section of Thundering Brook Road will eliminate the second-longest road walk on the Appalachian Trail in Vermont. The longest one runs along Route 14 in West Hartland, said J.T. Horn with the Appalachian Trail Conference, a non-profit group based in West Virginia dedicated to protecting the trail.
Horn said his group supported the Killington project because it brought the trail back into the woods and because the boardwalk would create one of the only sections of the trail accessible to people with physical disabilities.
“They’re not many places on the Appalachian Trail where somebody with a wheelchair can go,” he said.
AP-ES-07-13-03 1336EDT
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