this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Can you please elaborate? What is that children’s rhyme meant to teach? What are green and white ADKs?
Google was not very helpful.
ADK is short for ADirondacK mountain range. The others are the Green Mountain range and White Mountain range. All start in New England. The saying describes how step on the trail without causing it to erode into a gully.
ADK = Adirondacks.
Green (Mountains), White (Mountains).
It teaches kids to preserve trails by not walking on them, if at all possible. While walking on trails in New York and New England, you should aim for a rock first. If there is no rock to step on, aim for a root. If there is no root, then dirt is ok to step on. But avoid mud at all costs.
This highlights the ruggedness of the terrain out there. Where many hikes elsewhere provide such an ample amount of dirt with so little rock and root to aim for first, it is not a well known trail maintenance practice outside of the region. However, in the region, it is essential. When ignored, large patches of mud that will last all season long start to form. When this happens, trail maintainers either:
Close the trail until it's restored
Reroute the trail permanently
Lay down wooden planks to minimize further damage (least sustainable option).
This maintenance is tax dollars, and they don't have a lot of them, so education is the most effective use of that dollar. And that's why we teach the kids:
Rock before root and root before dirt, and never step in mud if you can avoid it! 🤠
I should clarify that my original comment -- foot traffic keeps paths in decent shape -- was in answer to the OP's titular question, about why vegetation doesn't grow atop the intended walking/hiking trail. But you're right that traffic will cause other impacts, even if plantlife isn't getting in the way.
I'm in 100% agreement that for trail upkeep, people have to be mindful how they step. The advisories here in California focus on not eroding the edges of the trail, such as by walking around muddy areas, which would only make the restoration work harder and damage more of the adjacent environment. We have a lot of "stay on trail" signs. We advise people to either be prepared to go right through the mud -- only worsens an existing hole -- or don't walk that trail at all.
I buy it. Yeah different techniques for different terrain, I suppose.
Take for example, this. Here, we'd say to step on that rock, and then leap to that root on the left, then the root on the right, then the fallen tree, etc.
If you don't, you end up with this. And something that bad will end up closed, or rerouted. Hopefully, it'll get something like this or this before it's bad, and might stand a chance at not needing much more restoration, but again this isn't nearly as sustainable.
My assumption is, as I was saying about the ruggedness of the terrain out this way, the wider, less ankle-breaking, smooth switchbacks (as opposed to New England and ADK's tendency to just go more or less straight up huge chutes) of the west coast demand the literal opposite methods to care for the trails.