What Goes Into Trail Design? Landscape Architect Sarah Walter Explains It All

Sarah Walter (00:00)
But one case where this did happen was like, it was.

⁓ property lines actually were, it was hard for me to tell where they were and we didn’t have a survey, it was a private landowner, they opted not to get a survey. and I had aligned the trail in a certain way thinking the property line was like pretty far away and it was a crux point, right? It was like I had to snake some turns through the steep area and it turned out that I was over the property line by…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (00:08)
⁓ yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

Sarah Walter (00:25)
by some distance and luckily we caught it before things progressed. But I did have to do some tricky things with the turn. We had a tight space to kind of get the trail down the hill.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (00:43)
If you’ve ever been out on a hiking trail and wondered why did they design the trail this way, this episode is for you.

this episode, I’m speaking with Sarah Walter, who is a landscape architect and trail designer. She goes into the full process of planning, implementing, and finalizing the trail. I found this very interesting and have a new appreciation behind trail design, and I hope you do too. So let’s get into it.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (01:07)
hi, Sarah. Thank you for joining me today. I’m so excited to talk to you about trail design. Like every hiker needs to know the process that goes into this. So I really appreciate you being here talking to me about that. How are you doing today?

Sarah Walter (01:20)
I’m good. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (01:23)
Yay. I usually ask this of everyone just because I’m always curious about what brings people to the outdoors. But did you grow up in an outdoorsy family? Were you out hiking a lot? Or is that something that you developed later in life, your love of the outdoors?

Sarah Walter (01:38)
say that I grew up in an outdoorsy family. I mean a little bit. Yeah, I mean a little. Like not as a family. But like my dad took me canoeing when I was a kid and I spent a lot of time outside. Like I was always out there. I was an only child so I was always out like playing imaginary games and you know making little shelters out of sticks and ⁓ climbing trees. Yeah and my dad collected rocks and so he introduced me to that. like geology and

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (01:44)
Yeah

Yeah, that counts! Gotcha.

climbing trees.

That’s cool.

Sarah Walter (02:07)
I was always really into animals ⁓ and wildlife and biology and that kind of stuff. So that was my interest. And then later, like later in high school, I got more into like canoeing, hiking, a little more outdoor adventure type stuff. Yeah, yeah. But I would say an appreciation of nature from a very young age. Yeah, totally.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (02:22)
Gotcha, gotcha.

of course. Yeah. I would think to do

what you do, you would have to have that like innately. Yeah.

Sarah Walter (02:32)
Yeah, and I, it’s funny, I always say like, one of my goals when I design trails is to help people see what I see out there, you know, because I’m always looking at little, I mean, little goofy details, know, funny shaped trees or a rock or just something. And I know a lot of people don’t see that stuff. So I want to help them, you know, see it how I see it.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (02:40)
I love that, yes.

Yeah!

There’s a park in New Jersey, it’s called Sourland Mountain Preserve. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but there is a rock that literally looks like it’s eating a tree and the trail goes right by it. And I’m like, I know the trail design was like, people need to see this rock that’s eating the tree. So how did you get into trail design then?

Sarah Walter (03:09)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That’s a really good question. So

I didn’t know that it existed, right, for most of my life. ⁓ And yeah, yeah, and like I said, I wasn’t really in a family that was traveling to do hiking, so I hadn’t been to trails out west or, you know, any other really iconic trails. ⁓ But then I actually was interested, it’s gonna be a long story, a longish story, so.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (03:20)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Why would you even think about it, right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That’s fine.

Sarah Walter (03:42)
I was interested in being an architect because I come from an art background. I was doing

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (03:44)
Okay. Nice.

Sarah Walter (03:47)
art all through as a child, all through school. ⁓ Was interested in maybe going to art school but thought architecture might have a little more, like as many artists do, like stability, utility, which like, whatever. But that thought process you go through when you’re a kid or young. And ⁓ I attended kind of a summer arts program.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (03:55)
Stability to it maybe yeah

Yeah.

Sarah Walter (04:10)
was architecture and my instructor actually said, hey have you considered landscape architecture because a lot of the things you’re making have this more naturalistic quality to them and I was like that’s interesting no one had ever really shared that with me before and I looked into landscape architecture and I was really interested because it seemed like this combination of all my interests right it was like design and art and biology and geology and soils and topography and mapping it was like

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (04:26)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Walter (04:39)
All of these things. So I went to school for that, graduated in 2010, which was a horrible time to graduate and join the workforce. And so then my first kind of like real job out of school was in a planning office at the county level, working in conservation. So it was very meaningful work, but very administrative and bureaucratic. And I got bored.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (04:47)
gosh, ⁓

Sarah Walter (05:07)
with that, but I was there for about six years. I was there for quite some time. Yeah, it was a great learning, and I use a lot of that still today. I’m really grateful for that experience. And then someone I went to school with contacted me out of the blue and said, are you interested? Are you looking for a job? And I was like, not really, but what do you got? And she had been working on a temp basis for PennTrails, which is the company that I then went to work for.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (05:07)
Yeah, I could see that. Okay. So a good learning experience though too, right? Yeah.

That’s good.

Gotcha.

Sarah Walter (05:37)
She told me about it and I was like, what do you mean trail design is a thing? Like can do that, you know? So it was very eye-opening and it’s exposed me to this whole world which has now become my career. So yeah, yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (05:48)
That’s incredible. I love that. And

very grateful for people who do what you do. Good. So I know this is probably like a multi part question, whatever, but I was wondering like, how long is the typical trail design process like from when you guys are

Sarah Walter (05:54)
thank you. It’s a joy. So I mean, I’m grateful that I can do

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (06:10)
being reached out to by whatever entity it is to when the trail is available for public use. About how long does that take? Is that a multi-year process, I assume.

Sarah Walter (06:20)
Yeah, it really varies and it depends on ⁓ so many factors. The complexity of the trail, the type of funding that would be involved, the ownership of the parcel. Like if it’s a private landowner, ⁓ it can be very fast, shockingly fast. Yeah, yeah, and mean sometimes private trails can be built to a much lower standard.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (06:34)
Mm-hmm. Yes, they don’t have all the red tape to go through. ⁓

Gotcha.

Sarah Walter (06:45)
⁓ But if it’s something that runs into environmental, a lot of environmental constraints like wetlands or if there’s bridges or structural elements or funding, sometimes these projects are multi-million dollar projects. So it takes, we have to phase it and it gets done over time. So usually the initial design process though, for me is like, I don’t know, four months, six months, sometimes eight months at the longest, depending on who’s reviewing it or if there’s community engagement involved.

But then from there, it can really vary to when it actually gets implemented. Yeah, it could be a year or two all the way to, I mean, know of trials that have taken 10 years to get built.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (07:26)
wow.

Yeah, that’s that’s crazy. Now, what role does your company then Penn Trails, as you mentioned, what are they responsible for? Just the design or do they do? Are they also part of like the construction of the trail or?

Sarah Walter (07:32)
Mm-hmm.

So I am sort of a design first, design focused firm. I mentioned that my background is in landscape architecture and that’s always, so the company’s been around since 2007. ⁓ But, well, and design has really always been the focus. ⁓ But we do take projects all the way through construction. when I’m not like a lot of other trail building, trail construction companies, ⁓ a lot of them focus on construction and the design.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (07:43)
Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Sarah Walter (08:08)
ends up being sort of like a way to get to that. I’m not a contractor first, I am a designer first. And so I will take on sort of like special selected construction projects and I’ll assemble a crew to get them done. You know, if they fit kind of my goals and what I wanna do at the time, if it’s a good fit, yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (08:11)
Okay.

Hmm.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

how do you decide the trail route? And I know that’s also a very loaded question, but is there a way for you to kind of condense that answer? Like, how do you decide which way the trail is going to go? know you like you touched on like environmental factors, things like that. Obviously, grade would have something to do with that, correct? Yeah.

Sarah Walter (08:43)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So the first step is to figure out what we’re trying to do, like what kind of experience we’re trying to create. And I do that through usually talking to the client, you know, some kind of stakeholder group, which might be like the owners or I think who else it would be. Like sometimes it’s like a board or a friends group or something like that. And then sometimes it’s a broader process of engaging with the public and asking what they want.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (08:57)
Okay.

Sarah Walter (09:16)
you know, to have on whatever the site is. And then from there, we can get a sense for how the trail should look and feel. So if we’re doing like a back country, single track trail, it can be more rugged, right? It can have more obstacles, it’s narrower, it can be steeper in places versus if I’m designing like a universal access trail, it tends to be wider, it needs to meet, you know, certain grade parameters. And so right away, then the next step is to go into the field.

⁓ and kind of start laying out what we call the corridor for this trail. And usually that’s like a 50 or 60 foot corridor, right? There’s like some like wiggle room where the actual trail alignment can go. ⁓ But sometimes it’s narrower. Like sometimes there might be some kind of feature that really limits where the trail can go, like a bridge crossing for example, or if we’re crossing wetlands or you know really steep slopes can kind of limit where you can go, or rock features, things like that. So

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (09:50)
Okay.

Okay.

Sarah Walter (10:15)
⁓ From there, then we get the corridor and that’s kind of a broad like swath of kind of where the trail can go. And then from there, it would be narrowed down and that might happen sort of in design or sort of as pre-construction flagging and that’s like narrowing it to like the trail is going here, you know?

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (10:32)
fun though. like, I always think about that when I’m on the trail. I’m like, what made them decide like to go this way, you know, versus, you know, this way or, or, or when to implement switchbacks and when to just make us go straight up the hill.

Sarah Walter (10:45)
Yeah, yeah, and there’s there’s give and take, right? Like I

don’t just lay out the trail based on the parameters. That just gives me a sense of how challenging it’ll be to get to different things. Like there’s definitely a part of every design process that is this sort of inventory and analysis and like ground truthing and scouting of the site where I’m looking for interesting things. Like, cause sometimes, sometimes the brief is very specific. It’s like, we want to loop around this lake, but sometimes it’s like,

we have 600 acres, where should we go? And then I’m kind of looking around for, what’s interesting on this property? What do I like? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The points of interest, things people would wanna see, things to make it an interesting experience.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (11:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, like if there’s like cute little like overlooks or something along the way or water features, things like that.

⁓ So you kind of touched on to the universal access trails and it seems like that is a, am I correct? I was looking at your website and it feels like that is a large focus of your firm, like to work on the accessible trails or.

Sarah Walter (11:43)
Yeah, yeah, I would say

we specialize in universal access trails. The founder and me co-wrote Universal Access Trails. It’s Trails for All People. Sorry, I got renamed in, I think, 2021. Trails for All People, which is a free guide for how to design parameters for these universal access trails. So yeah, it’s something I specialize in. But it’s not…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (11:56)
Hehe

Sarah Walter (12:13)
bulk of what I do? I would say no. I design a pretty good mix of sort of more accessible trails and I do want to say for your audience that that is different from ADA trails or it’s not ADA at all. should say that’s different from the Americans with Disabilities Act. ⁓ But you might also hear them referred to as all-persons trails. A lot of people will also say accessible trails. So there’s different terminology. ⁓ I use universal access trails because that’s the name of the guide that we wrote.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (12:15)
Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Now what is the difference when you say they’re not ADA? Is it because you don’t have to follow like a certain grade or anything like that? Because I know like the ADA, like if there’s a slope, there’s a certain grade you have to have.

Sarah Walter (12:41)
Yeah.

⁓ yeah.

That’s right. Yeah, so ADA ⁓ are federal guidelines that affect the design of built spaces, right? ⁓ And they just don’t exist for trails. The ADA, there’s no ADA rules for how trails should be built. And so the government, the federal government came out with these guidelines for like the forest service and for parks, parks properties, things like that.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (13:01)
Gotcha.

Gotcha. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah Walter (13:15)
the sort of governed trails outside of like the ADA regulatory environment. ⁓ And that’s what universal access trails also are. Like they’re the same guidelines, they’re just meant to apply to like municipalities, states, ⁓ and like land trust properties. Like any property that would be open to the public and have trails on it, there’s sort of a set of best management practices. Like no one is going to come and

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (13:25)
Gotcha. Okay.

Sarah Walter (13:41)
you know, say this trail meets, it’s not one standard, I guess I’ll say, like it’s kind of a spectrum and we try to incorporate as many of the best management practices as possible into the trail. I don’t wanna get too technical, but yeah, yeah. yeah. Not in Berks, I’ve been, is it in, ⁓ my gosh, Schoolkill County?

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (13:44)
Yeah. Okay.

No, no, I get that. get that. At in Hawk Mountain in Berks County. Have you been to Hawk Mountain in Berks County? They have. I don’t know if you’ve been there.

Sarah Walter (14:08)
Is there a different hawk mountain? ⁓ it might. Yeah, yeah, it’s Hawk Mountain. Yeah, I’ve been to Hawk Mountain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (14:08)
I think. I thought they were in Berks County, but maybe they straddle, I don’t know. But it’s like it’s not far from reading, if that gives you an idea. OK, OK, OK. So they have the silhouette trail there

and they and they, you know, post like what the grade is and, know, the material that they use so people can again, it’s a universal access trail. So.

You know, I’m assuming again, it’s not, you know, it’s not the ADA standards, but I thought it was interesting that they had the grade like they’re like, this is the max grade of the trail, which I think was it’s a low. like 8 % or something like that. So, yeah.

Sarah Walter (14:43)
8%. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and a big piece of that is also just communicating objectively what the trail looks and feels like, you know, because that helps people immediately understand, is this appropriate me?

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (14:54)
Yeah, it’s always good to know what to

Would you find that, do you find that planning like an accessible trail, universal access trail is more difficult than planning a regular like single track trail or is it, it’s all the same. It’s all the same kind of ⁓ amount of planning and that goes into it.

Sarah Walter (15:13)
It can be more difficult. It can be more difficult to have a site that’s compatible. ⁓ You know, often you get into steep slopes and it’s just not really feasible. So I think looking at a site and understanding like this is a ⁓ site for it that’s conducive to universal access is the first step, right? Like you wanna pick a place that has, you know, something that’s worth going to, you know, for one, like.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (15:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Sarah Walter (15:42)
I

don’t, I see a lot of places putting in kind of like universal access trails that just are kind of boring, right? They don’t really go to the thing. And those might not be, like, it’s good to have those, have opportunities just to get outside and exercise. But I think we should also be providing like real meaningful outdoor sort of adventure experiences that are still accessible for people with mobility disabilities, right?

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (15:50)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

I

love that you said that, well, because I had on my previous season a woman, her name’s Jennifer Allen, her son has spina bifida and they do a lot of hiking together. So, you know, she has to find all these trails and she was talking about how one of them she thought would lead to a waterfall and it still didn’t lead to the waterfall. It got nowhere near the waterfall. And so, you know, everyone was disappointed because they thought they had the expectation that they would still get to see the waterfall on it. And the trail went nowhere near there. So.

Sarah Walter (16:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

and that’s such a disappointment, right? Especially if you have like a mobility device and you might have traveled like, I don’t know, an hour or more to get to a site and then to get unloaded. And you know, if there’s not a bathroom or the trail is damaged and you can’t get to whatever the thing is or there’s not even anything there, I mean, it can be really disappointing. And there aren’t necessarily other options like to just, ⁓ we’ll do something else. so I think…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (16:36)
Yes.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, yeah, that’s their

only option, yeah.

Sarah Walter (17:01)
Yeah, yeah, so I think kind of really putting in that thought about what beyond just like the physical shape and layout of the trail, like, is this a meaningful experience, you know, for people who need this type of experience?

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (17:14)
So you did

touch on the guide that you wrote with Larry Knutson, who he was he’s the founder of Penn Trails. But now you are the owner of Penn Trails. Correct. Yes. And you guys, he started the guide and then you, guess, ⁓ updated it with him. Correct.

Sarah Walter (17:20)
Yes, that’s correct. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, he’s I think the first edition came out in 2014 and that was funded by Pennsylvania DCNR and we can serve PA formerly the PA Land Trust Association at the time and then we put out another edition I want to say in 2021 it was a few years ago now maybe 2022 but it’s free online so that’s that’s the nice thing about it.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (17:34)
Okay.

Yeah, that’s well,

that’s all I want to comment on because I love that you did provide this information free for everyone. And so why why was that so important for you and Larry to make sure that this information was available to everybody?

Sarah Walter (17:57)
you

I think that was more a function of the funding source honestly was was ⁓ PALTA or now WCPA we can serve PA recognized kind of this void in guidance ⁓ They do a lot of work with land trusts as you know, they’re formerly the PA land trust Association So that’s who forms their membership is land trusts and Pennsylvania has a really unique land trust environment ⁓ It might have the most land trusts of any state. I don’t like quote me on that, but I know it’s a

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (18:08)
Okay. ⁓

⁓ wow, I didn’t know that.

Sarah Walter (18:34)
There’s a lot of land trusts

a lot of them own land and they open it to the public. Like they open up preserves or conserves, they might call them. And so there was kind of this need for guidance related to how do we like provide access, broad access to, you know, as big of an audience as possible. Like how far does ADA apply into the property? Like beyond the parking lot? Do we need to be meeting ADA?

guidelines, not guidelines, but ADA regulations on our trails, you know, so they they saw the need for that ⁓ and luckily DCNR agreed to fund it.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (19:09)
I’m gonna switch gears here. Just any of the projects that you’ve been working on or you’ve worked on in the past, have there, has there been any kind of like difficulties designing the trail, whether maybe the environment wasn’t as conducive to the trail as maybe you first imagined it to be? I’ve been on trails where I feel like they’re like cutting through rocks and stuff like that. Like have you encountered any?

Sarah Walter (19:31)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (19:33)
Any projects like that where… Yes. I’m sure.

Sarah Walter (19:35)
Unforeseen circumstances. Yeah. I mean, all the time, like we just can’t,

we just can’t predict everything. And so ⁓ something I’ve learned, you know, not coming from a construction background. And I really believe this is that every construction project involves some element of design build. ⁓ You can’t, even a building that has full set of architecture drawings, you just can’t foresee every.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (19:56)
Yes.

Yeah.

Sarah Walter (20:04)
So

yeah, I mean all the time we run into rocks or we run into, I don’t know, all different things. Seaps, know, water is a big one. And the key is just leaving that flexibility and kind of thinking ahead to what the uncertainties might be and how you might deal with them.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (20:13)
yeah.

Sarah Walter (20:26)
But one case where this did happen was like, it was.

⁓ property lines actually were, it was hard for me to tell where they were and we didn’t have a survey, it was a private landowner, they opted not to get a survey. ⁓ And there were no posted signs on their property and I had aligned the trail in a certain way thinking the property line was like pretty far away and it was a crux point, right? It was like I had to snake some turns through the steep area and it turned out that I was over the property line by…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (20:35)
⁓ yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

Sarah Walter (20:57)
by some distance and luckily we caught it before things progressed. But I did have to do some tricky things with the turn. We had a tight space to kind of get the trail down the hill. yeah, things like that. It just happens.

Bedrock is always there. CEPES are always there, like I said. and anything with…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (21:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Walter (21:18)
wetlands or like as you get into more complex projects that require like ⁓ endangered species surveys and things like this. Like there’s always things like that that can affect ⁓ what actually gets built.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (21:30)
Do,

like don’t go by this home of like nesting birds or whatever, you know, like, yeah.

Sarah Walter (21:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, and that’s so looking at ⁓ things after the fact, like any built feature, but trails also, like people always ask me like, you just can’t look at trails the same ever again. And the answer is no, I can’t, but ⁓ it’s easy to look at it and be critical, right? Like, this is too steep, they should have done this, they should have done that. Yeah, yeah, and you just can never know like what came up through the process. So that’s a, you know, it’s an exciting part, I think.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (21:54)
Yeah, like, why’d she loop this so tight? Well, it’s against the property line.

Yeah.

Sarah Walter (22:04)
to see ⁓ how the final thing gets built.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (22:09)
Now do you think about difficulty level too when you’re designing a trail? Like, does someone say to you, I really, I want to design a hard trail here or a ⁓ moderate trail? Like, do they come up to you for that or is it just, it just is what it is when it’s done?

Sarah Walter (22:24)
Yeah, and I think people have the misconception that a difficult trail can just be steep. And that used to be the case, you know, here in the northeast. And like a lot of legacy trails, right, or just kind of straight up that I’m sure you’ve been on trails, like many of these types of trails.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (22:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

⁓

the East Coast here, we just love our straight up the mountain, yes.

Sarah Walter (22:43)
Yeah, yeah, that kind of classic Adirondack experience. ⁓

And we’ve just moved away from that as an industry, right? We have sort of sustainability guidelines now that actually are not that far off from accessible trail guidelines, right? We want to be keeping trails ⁓ gentle running grades because the steeper they get, the more water is going to run down them. Yeah, and you’ve seen this. I you’ve seen trails that are just gullies. ⁓ You want to…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (22:57)
Okay.

water.

Or they like after

the fact add the logs to try to like direct the water off the trail.

Sarah Walter (23:15)
Exactly.

Yeah, and I really don’t like seeing those. They’re just not great. know, like anytime you’re channelizing water, you’re just speeding it up and creating erosion. we’ve really moved away from kind of trying to make steep ⁓ trails and this focus on sustainability is ⁓ really just a focus in the industry. ⁓ So we want to keep them this general running grade. We want to incorporate ⁓ grade dips to…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (23:21)
No.

Yeah.

Sarah Walter (23:44)
to let water drain off the side of the trail. ⁓ And you can incorporate difficulty in other ways. And you can have higher density of steeper parts, sort of steeper parts. You can leave obstacles in the trail, like rocks and logs and things like that. ⁓ that’s where I like to see difficulty get added. And then also just the distance of the trail or the narrowness. There’s different things that can change it from being a more social experience to a more kind of like.

I’m taking risks, I’m navigating, I’m like way out here in the wilderness, you know, that kind of thing. those like, but I think it’s more about like environmental cues or just like sight lines and ⁓ how much you have to pick up your feet, you know, ⁓ rather than it being about like, yeah, yeah. And then where it has to be steep, I think we like to build steps now, you know, more, more so. I know a lot of hikers don’t like steps, but they really are inefficient.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (24:18)
Gotcha.

In Pennsylvania all the time.

Yes.

Sarah Walter (24:43)
effective way to armor and protect steep, steep sections of trail.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (24:49)
My kids always laugh at me because I swear almost every single trail we get on there’s some kind of steps that they’re like, of course there’s steps. The worst one that we did was in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It was the Chimney Rock Trail and it was just steps after steps after steps. And they’re like, are we there yet? I’m like, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there’d be so many steps.

Sarah Walter (24:55)
Yes.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, it’s hard as a hiker, but I think once you’ve built trail and especially repaired damaged trail, you gain an appreciation, yeah, for what those steps are doing to protect it.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (25:18)
Yeah, you understand. Yeah. I always

appreciate the stone steps because I’m like someone had to move all those stones and build. I’m sure that is like a process.

Sarah Walter (25:32)
Tell me about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve built some. mean, like I said, I’m not a construction focus company. I’ve worked a little bit on crews that do do that, and it’s hand work. ⁓ Whenever I do steps, I try to do it where I can get a machine in so that we can have machine assist. ⁓ But it’s a lot of work. It just is. There’s no way around it. And if you’re mining the rock on site, that adds a whole other element. It’s dangerous. It takes its toll on the people who do it. So if you see the trail builder.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (25:37)
No.

It ⁓

I’m sure it does.

Sarah Walter (26:01)
Thank them. They work really hard.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (26:03)
Always. I have seen people who have not built the trail, but maintain the trail. And I’m always like, thank you so much for doing this. So are there ⁓ any projects that you’ve I know it’s winter right now as we’re speaking. So we just had snow and whatnot. ⁓ Are there any projects that you are currently working on right now that you’re be kind of implementing like, you know, in the spring or summer? Or are you kind of on a hiatus right now? What are you doing?

Sarah Walter (26:09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mostly in the winter, kind of hold a lot of desktop work. ⁓ I was hoping to get out for some site work. Let’s see, in Pittsburgh. And then I have a project local to me also here in Western Maryland where I live. ⁓ But the ground conditions have not been conducive to that at all since basically December 1st. So that’s just on hold.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (26:50)
No.

It’s been awful,

Sarah Walter (26:54)
Yeah,

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (26:54)
ugh.

Sarah Walter (26:54)
usually I can get a little bit of site work in it. By site work, mean like scouting and flagging, that kind of thing. So no, mean, the construction season really starts, I don’t know, sometimes we’ve done some things in March or April, but May is usually, yeah, I like to do things in like May and June, which is another thing that’s different about me from like a more trail, a building focused company. Like they’re gonna be out as soon as they

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (26:58)
Yeah, yeah.

But even the grounds, even then a solid, right?

Sarah Walter (27:22)
I have the luxury of scheduling out ahead. So yeah, I do have a Universal Access project coming up, hopefully May and June. That’ll be about a month, five weeks. ⁓ And then after that, I’m not sure. Quite a bit of planning work is lined up. So I’ll be in the Adirondacks and then, like I said, Pittsburgh.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (27:23)
Yeah.

Very nice.

Sarah Walter (27:41)
And then have some more, some desktop work to catch up on too from the fall. So it’s cyclical like that. think, I think trail folks like that, but winter is just, yeah, it’s a quiet time. I mean, a lot of trail builders will like, I mean, if they can’t build, they’ll join ski patrol or they’ll travel and ski and do things like that, winter sports. Yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (27:51)
The quiet time.

That sounds like fun. Now, do you

do most of your work in the Northeast? do you kind of maintain that area or have you gone all across the country?

Sarah Walter (28:10)
For the most part, Northeast, Pennsylvania, New York are the biggest states where I have projects. I have done work in Texas, Illinois, Wyoming, like I said, Delaware, Maryland. I will go anywhere. But most of my work is Pennsylvania, New York.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (28:29)
No.

Are you, I guess, like, are you more comfortable than designing, like, because, you know, it’s different terrains, different environments. Are you more comfortable than with like Pennsylvania, New York, or are you okay to switch to Texas and. ⁓

Sarah Walter (28:44)
That was okay, yeah, I mean it was different. It’s just, you know, in getting a sense of the terrain and the geology on that particular site was really interesting. There were kind of these bands of stone. But the principles are the same, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do like being exposed to different places, because I think ⁓ they require different solutions and they require creativity and it’s really…

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (28:59)
No matter what, yeah.

Yeah, use your brain a

little bit more, right? Definitely, yeah.

Sarah Walter (29:12)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s really easy to get into a rut. You know, and even

culturally, like working in different communities and seeing, you know, what’s important there ⁓ is really nice. And I like, ⁓ I think all of those travel projects have also been in relatively small communities. It’s not like I’m traveling to like the Great Smoky Mountains or, or, you know, Yellowstone or something like that to work on a trail, though that would be really cool. I

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (29:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, no.

That would be.

Sarah Walter (29:40)
I like working

on these sort of community centered projects. I think that’s really important.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (29:45)
like county trails or like small town, like parks, things like that.

Sarah Walter (29:48)
Yeah,

yeah, counties, land trusts or conservancies, things like that, ⁓ especially if they’re driven by the community. just when they’re for the local community, I really think we all deserve access to high quality recreational opportunities. We shouldn’t have to travel multiple states away to find those. yeah. Yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (29:53)
Love that.

100%. Yes.

Yep, yep, I agree, I agree. Everyone outdoors, outdoors is for everybody. ⁓

So because even though you didn’t really kind of grow up hiking and doing all that, but now doing all this trail design, have you turned into a hiker or is that like the shoe, like the cobbler’s children have no shoes kind of thing? Like, are you like, no, I don’t want to see a trail when I’m not working.

Sarah Walter (30:27)
Yeah. I do

like to see trails. ⁓ I will say I have started as I’ve aged, which maybe is also strange, but to seek out other ways of being outside. So I picked up downhill skiing as an adult, whitewater kayaking. I got into mountain biking this last summer, and that’s a whole other part of the industry that I’m excited to learn more about. ⁓

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (30:53)
Yes, yes. My husband

mountain bikes and, you know, he he has his complaints about certain trails with that because he likes a lot of the the elements on the trails, you know, like the jumps and stuff like that. That’s what he wants.

Sarah Walter (31:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think mountain bike

trails are so interesting because everything feels a little bit exaggerated. ⁓ Drainage is still really important, but you want those changes in grade and the way turns are built really impacts user experience. And then there’s all those opportunities to add fun little features. So ⁓ that’s gotten me out on way more trails. And the thing I love about it is I can see way more trail than if I were walking.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (31:12)
Yeah.

That’s fun!

Sarah Walter (31:34)
You know, I can see miles and miles in a day. So yeah, I’ve been really enjoying that and getting around and seeing different areas, different mountain bike trails in different areas. So yeah, it’s a big part of the industry. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (31:35)
Yes. Yay.

That’s good. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And growing, I think, right? Like you said, it’s like more and more popular. ⁓

So one of the questions I always ask my guests and I feel like for you, I might I might word it a little differently, but I typically ask my guests like when they’re when they’re hiking, would they prefer to hike like if they only could do one kind of hike for the rest of their life, would they prefer to hike to like a view and overlook or like a water feature, like a waterfall? But for you, I’m like.

Do I ask you if you had to design a trail? Like, do you prefer designing them to overlooks or to like special features like waterfalls, lakes, things like that?

Sarah Walter (32:24)
such a good question. ⁓

I think more frequently I end up designing them to water features. And I think that’s a nature of where I work. You know Pennsylvania, like we don’t have very big hills. I haven’t designed a ton of overlook. That’s really interesting. ⁓ But I think as a hiker, I prefer overlook style trails. Yeah, I really enjoy that type of trail. I really enjoy. ⁓

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (32:31)
Okay.

Okay, that makes sense. Yep.

Gotcha.

Sarah Walter (32:50)
trails with some challenge, like ⁓ maybe some rock scrambling. I’m sure you’ve done those trails that have the wires so that you can hoist yourself up and stuff. I really like bordering on rock climbing. I’m not a rock climber. ⁓ But those types of trails, I love to just wander. This is probably from when I was a kid. I didn’t spend a lot of time on trails, but I did spend a ton of time wandering around in the woods, and that’s what I do as a job now.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (32:51)
Mm-hmm, same.

Mm-hmm.

you

Yeah.

Sarah Walter (33:18)
I still really like that. I just like kind bushwhacking and exploring and seeing all the weird stuff that’s in the woods. ⁓ But I think overlooks, if I had to pick, I would like to design more of those. Yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (33:30)
Okay. Yeah, there’s no wrong answer as far as I’m concerned. To me it’s like, what day

of the week is it? What am I in the mood for, you know?

Sarah Walter (33:37)
Yeah, I’ve always just loved

⁓ landscapes where you feel really small or where I feel really small and I feel like that’s also unique to like the West or we don’t have a ton of that in the Northeast. ⁓

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (33:42)
Yes.

No, but you can still, like

there are some times where you’re just at the top and you’re like, wow, like look at everything out there.

Sarah Walter (33:54)
Yeah, there are some

good ones over like next door to me in West Virginia, like some just gorgeous scenic overlooks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Good stuff.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (33:58)
Mm-hmm. I love West Virginia. like

hiking there. Any opportunity that we can. We can’t always get there, but when we can, I’m like, let’s go to West Virginia. And New York, too, I think has some incredible hikes. New York is, people don’t always think about that, but they do. Even down like in the Hudson Valley and stuff like that.

Sarah Walter (34:07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, New York really does.

The Hudson Valley,

yeah, yeah, yeah. I was lucky, fortunate to work on a trail crew kind of in the Hudson Valley. And ⁓ that’s just beautiful. We were there in the fall and it was stunning. Yeah.

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (34:27)
So, so gorgeous. Yes, yes.

But all right, so if anyone wanted to hire you to design a trail, where would they find you?

Sarah Walter (34:36)
⁓

Sure, ⁓ I’m on the internet at www.penntrails.com You can also find pentrails on Instagram and Facebook though. I don’t update I’m not very active, but you can find me personally on Instagram at at shovel ready, Sarah. That’s my personal Instagram so ⁓ And yeah, there’s a phone number on the website. There’s a I think you can like fill out a web form and will send me an email So that’s the best way. Yeah

Lauren – Her Side Of The Trail (34:47)
Yeah

Okay.

That’s awesome. Well,

Sarah, thank you so much for being here, sharing your experience, designing trails, giving us a definite appreciation for the process behind the trail design. So when we’re out there, we can be like, hmm, did they have to worry about, you know, borders and ⁓ whatnot? But. Yes.

Sarah Walter (35:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, my gosh. Yeah, you bet. Thank you so much for having me Lauren. It’s been a pleasure.