Appalachian Trail hikers in Port Clinton faced a set of steep, sagging stairs.
“There were actually stairs where there wasn't even dirt under them any longer. It was just hanging out in the open air," said David Bailey, trails chair for the Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club.
An active railroad runs near the base of the stairs in Schuylkill County.
"Hikers were exposed to every train that was traveling on those two lines," Bailey said.
The club's volunteer members maintain 65 miles of the Appalachian Trail between Palmerton and Jonestown in Pennsylvania. They thought about replacing the steps that lead into the Reading Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad's Port Clinton headquarters. But in five or 10 years, they’d probably have to be updated again. So they decided to dig out a switchback in the hillside of Kittatinny Mountain.
To do that, they had to work with the railroad, which offered another safety suggestion — reroute the trail down an access road instead of its current route over all of the active lines in the yard.
"It's actually almost sort of like two projects," Bailey said.
The project began in fall 2023, and the switchback and trail change was ready by early December.
The change is insignificant as far as miles on the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.
In terms of safety, hikers will still need to be on the lookout for train traffic, but now avoid crossing paths with the 12 to 15 trains a day that run through the yard.
Hikers approaching the switchback, either coming down or heading up, now only cross the least active lines. The railroad even put gravel over the one track heading to the base of the switchback.
Bailey said the change reduces the "possibility of unpleasant encounters."
No hikers have been hit by a train, he said, but coming down the steep steps has always been a challenge.
The Appalachian Trail - known as the A.T. – runs from Georgia to Maine, criss-crossing for around 2,200 miles. The trail is not strictly through forests. It weaves through small towns up the eastern side of the country. Its iconic white rectangle blaze can be found on road signs and guardrails.
That’s no different in Port Clinton.
On a below freezing day in January, powdery snow covered the new path. Bailey, along with Alexis McAllister and Adaiah Bauer, the club's public relations committee chair, checked out the improvements. They had spikes on their hiking boots and trekking poles. The snow crunched beneath their feet as they crossed a bridge near the confluence of the Little Schuylkill and the Schuylkill rivers.
They hiked up the new switchback, which is a path that twists at sharp bends and turns in the opposite direction to help hikers get up a mountainside. Coming down a trail, it helps slow down hikers with heavy backpacks.
Railroads were coincidentally the first to use switchbacks.
Volunteers from not just Blue Mountain but other trail clubs, including the Susquehanna Appalachian Trail Club, built the new path. They dug out the hillside respectfully, saving trees and pulling out roots. They smashed up rocks without heavy machinery.
"It’s volunteers that come in and they’ll do pick axe work and mattock work and clipping and sawyering trees and they actually make the path,” said McAllister.
They also had to reblaze the path. McAllister helped scrape off the old paint.
"Then camouflaging it back over so it looks like a natural tree or pole," she said.
The Appalachian Trail is a national scenic trail maintained by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and by clubs made up of volunteers along its path.
The Blue Mountain Climbing Club predates the trail. It began in 1916. The A.T.’s first section opened in New York seven years later. It was completed in 1937.
Blue Mountain built 102 miles of it. The AT runs 229 miles through Pennsylvania.
"I don't think I've ever seen a hiker not say thank you to somebody who's working on the trail, doing trail maintenance," said McAllister.
Bailey said, for him, it’s an intellectual challenge to maintain the trail according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's standards.
"There's a real sense of accomplishment to maintaining your section of trail. There's a real sense of service in maintaining the trail so that the public can access it," he said.
Through hikers — those who hike the trail in its entirety in one shot — get a lot of press.
"There are only about 3,000 of them a year, as opposed to the best estimate is 3 million people a year that get onto the Appalachian Trail," he said.
McAllister is a Scouting America ScoutMaster and one of those rare through hikers.
"That's how I got involved in the trail," she said.
Her troop maintains a section of the trail.
"It's giving back to the next generation that they learn how to take care of the trail, that it's something to leave behind for the next people, and by doing that, keeping it in its scenic format allows everybody to enjoy it in the rustic ... original state," she said.
She now section hikes, which means finishing the trail section by section, with her children. They have about 500 miles left.
"Those maintainers coming out and just walking their sections and keeping the brush back and keeping the poison ivy back away from the trail, and keeping the trees off the trail that have fallen down. It is an invaluable service when you're a hiker," she said.
