The Northern Forest Canoe Trail — 145 miles of which runs through Vermont — is beginning a project to understand and improve accessibility for people with mobility challenges.
The paddlers’ organization is seeking input via an online survey to help it identify needs and target future infrastructure improvements.
“We want to know where folks like to paddle and what kinds of improvements would make certain paddling opportunities safer and more enjoyable for a range of bodies, from those with creaky knees and stiff hips to people in wheelchairs and everyone in between,” said Alex Delhagen, the Northern Forest Canoe Trail’s assistant trail director, in a press release earlier this month.
The canoe trail begins in Old Forge, New York and follows Native American travel routes upstream for 740 miles through Vermont, Québec and New Hampshire to Fort Kent, Maine. While some have paddled the entire route, many utilize segments of the trail for quick day paddles or weekend trips.
In Vermont, the trail crosses the northern portion of the state: across Lake Champlain to the Missisquoi River into Canada, and then south across Lake Memphremagog to the Clyde and Nulhegan rivers until reaching the Connecticut River on the New Hampshire border.
According to the trail organization’s executive director, Karrie Thomas, expanding access to the trail is a core part of the group’s mission. But it struggled to make headway until receiving technical support from the National Parks Service’s Rivers Trails and Conservation Assistance program about a year ago.
The organization, which works with the private landowners who allow the use of the waterway’s campgrounds and portages, created an accessible launch on the Missisquoi River in Richford and made a portage in Maine wheelable, Thomas said, but neither launch point is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The survey, scheduled to run until June, is intended both for those who have paddled before — via canoe or kayak, and on flatwater or whitewater — and newcomers.
It is the first phase of a project that will include focus groups to help the Northern Forest Canoe Trail gather information about where to direct its efforts. The subsequent phases of the project are expected to include field assessments, fundraising, building, and sharing information about the improvements.
“We plan to engage people with disabilities to assess the projects in the planning and implementation phase to ensure that we are doing it correctly,” Thomas said.
Once people with disabilities have tested the improvements, the organization plans to develop and share trip descriptions for those with varying mobility needs. The information will be posted on the organization’s trip planner tool, and it is also working with a number of statewide accessibility and trail organizations to make the information more widely available — and to inform future accessibility projects.
Disclosure: VTDigger editor-in-chief Paul Heintz serves on the board of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. He was not involved in the assigning, editing or publication of this story.
