Contents

Trail Building Techniques

The art of trail building has many parts, from layout and surveying through maintenance long after a trail has been built. The following pages provide a brief introduction to some of these facets.
We follow a set of standards on each project, typically specified by the managing agency. When no agency specifications have been provided or if they are general in nature, we use our own set of guidelines, found in our Crew Leading Manual. Examples of Trail Standards illustrate several of our standrads.

Sometimes a project involves more complex engineering, such as a recent project that included contructing a footbridge over a tributary of Gazos Creek, near Año Nuevo State Park.

We prepare a detailed specification sheet for nearly all multi-day projects. We hand out copies of these project information sheets to volunteers at the start of a work day and also post them on our website.Trail Center Trail Project Specifications.