There is a popular quotation by Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The idea is inspiring and appealing. In our globalized world, we are aware of so many issues, with limited ability as individuals to make substantive contributions to any solutions. The world is big, its problems are many. We are each one small person.
In previous articles, this column has “run the numbers” to take a fun and possibly educational look at some topics ripe for data analysis. Those topics frequently relate to participation, performance, and the business side of the sport. However, quantitative data can enrich our understanding of other aspects of trail running. This month, we highlight a few trail races that emphasize giving back to their local trails and attempt to quantify that impact.
It’s some heart-warming stuff, y’all.
A volunteer from the Manitoba Association of Trail Runners carrying out trail work. Photo: Manitoba Association of Trail Runners
The Importance of Trail Work
I don’t need to convince iRunFar readers that trails are valuable and work is necessary to maintain them. Let’s touch briefly, though, on why financial and volunteer support for trail networks deserve special attention.
Members of the trail running community contribute to the sport in multiple ways: making the sport welcoming, making trail races possible, and enhancing the professionalization and competitiveness of the sport. The work of building and maintaining trails is particularly notable because it benefits a larger community of trail users.
An unsustainable trail network might, for example, be poorly maintained, causing safety issues for users and causing them to frequently go off-trail as they take wrong turns and, in the process, expand the trail’s total footprint in a wilderness area. Or, an unsustainable trail may be overused, so that garbage cans are overflowing and the trails are eroding because the infrastructure can’t accommodate the total number of users.
The Virginia Happy Trails Running Club trail crew in the Massanutten Mountains on a cold January 2017 morning. Photo: Virginia Happy Trails Running Club
Every hour spent properly building or maintaining trails helps protect trails — and trail users — from that fate. John Lacroix of the Human Potential Running Series has written about how trails are designated and race permits granted in the U.S. under the United States Forest Service (USFS) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), explaining:
“I mentioned how trail work can do wonders for adding heartbeats to an area’s sustainability … If a trail becomes so overgrown that it disappears, or a NEPA study indicates that it can no longer accommodate any heartbeats … the trail is then removed from the USFS system of trails. Race directors can only obtain permits for routes that remain on system trails. So, if a trail is no longer in the USFS system, it’s gone … and it will take a literal act of Congress to get it to come back.”
Lacroix’s description of the need to do trail work is compelling — it’s worth reading the entire piece.
The Premise
Just like a previous article on the financial cost of competitive ultrarunning, it may be helpful to think of this article as a thought experiment. Please don’t mistake the estimates we’ll use here as ironclad or universal costs to build or maintain a mile of trail. To state the obvious, trails vary widely based on multiple factors, including:
- Ruggedness
- Remoteness
- Elevation
- Trail width
- Accepted uses (some trails are for pedestrian use only, while others can accommodate or were designed for cyclists or equestrian users)
- Volume of traffic
- Overall trail length
- Time and equipment requirements for the trail builders
It will cost more to hire a professional trail builder to create a route in a rugged, remote area that includes the installation of bridges and amenities, for example.
For the purposes of this article, I gathered data on the money and time involved in trail work. I limited the scope to race organizations involved in trail work because the data is readily available: Trail work requirements and total race entrants are listed online, as are plenty of self-disclosed donation amounts from great race organizations. Plenty of commendable trail work is organized and performed by other agencies and volunteers. Please feel free to give a shout out to your favorites in the comments section!
The Financial Cost of Building and Maintaining Trails
The estimates for trail building costs vary widely based on location, trail type, and budget. To arrive at a rough estimate of what it costs to build one mile (1.6 kilometers) of new trail, I created a dataset of 30 estimates and calculated the average. I only included figures from within the last decade, and I adjusted the costs for inflation. I only included estimates from within North America, and I converted all costs to U.S. dollars. I only used estimates from non-profits, governments, and media outlets; I did not use estimates on forums where experienced trail builders offered ballpark estimates without identifying themselves by name and qualifying their experience.
The result? In 2025, it costs an estimated $56,687.32 USD to build one mile of new, high-quality singletrack trail.
I found four estimates of the cost to maintain a mile of trail, which averaged to $1,485.33 USD. I’ll note, though, that these were all for “rails to trails,” which are wider trails on former railroad beds. These trails may cost more to maintain because, annually, maintenance may include snow removal, mowing along the edge of the trail, and maintaining the crushed gravel. In my personal experience maintaining a section of singletrack trail, annual costs are much lower, especially for sections that don’t include bridges, boardwalks, or other infrastructure.
I have volunteered with the Manitoba Association of Trail Runners to maintain a section of the Centennial Trail. Our maintenance costs might include insurance, hand equipment, safety gear, fuel, and signage. Excluding any costs associated to maintaining bridges, outhouses, or parking lots, I think we consistently maintain the trail at a cost of less than $250 USD per mile.
Volunteers from the Manitoba Association of Trail Runners carrying out maintenance on the Centennial Trail. Photo: Manitoba Association of Trail Runners
Coast Mountain Trail Running (CMTR), a race and events organization in British Columbia, Canada, donates a minimum of $5 CAD from every single race entry, totaling between $50,000 and $60,000 in donations per year (approximately $35,000 to $42,000 USD). Donations are divided between supporting trail maintenance and search and rescue organizations. The organization is on track to eclipse $500,000 CAD ($352,000 USD) in cumulative donations in 2025.
For context, the annual donations from this one organization and its race participants amount to the estimated maintenance cost for 140 miles (225k) of trails, using the $250/mile estimate from above. That’s roughly 60% of the trails on which CMTR events take place. In previous years, 140 miles of trail equaled 83% of the trails CMTR used for its races (1) — the only reason the total is lower in 2025 is because the organization is launching a new 100k race, The Alpenglow 100k.
For an individual runner, hearing $5 from their race registration is donated to support sustainable trail use may not seem like a big deal. But organizations like Coast Mountain Trail Running process thousands of race registrations in a single year, and even invite their race participants to make extra donations. The donations add up, and so does the impact.
A Coast Mountain Trail Running race, the Run the Ridge 25k, showcases the brilliant trails that the organization’s donations help to maintain. Photo: Ty Holtan
Trail-Building Time Commitments
One of the easiest ways to measure the trail work that gets done is by looking at trail races that make it a condition of registration. Multiple trail races, commonly for distances of 100 miles or more, require participants to do a minimum number of hours of volunteer work in order to appear on the starting line. Of the sample set of races with this requirement that I reviewed, eight hours of volunteer work was the standard minimum. The volunteer requirement can be satisfied by performing trail maintenance or volunteering at a trail race. Some events allow runners to make a donation in lieu of volunteering.
While 100-mile races are the most likely to have a volunteer requirement, there are renowned races of shorter distances that mandate trail work, too. For example, the Chuckanut 50k requires four hours of volunteering from its entrants, meaning that runners like Brandon Miller and Adam Peterman spent more time qualifying for the event than they spent racing it. With 585 entrants in 2024, the Chuckanut 50k prompted at least 2,340 hours of volunteering from its participants that year. The Knee Knackering North Shore Trail Run, held in British Columbia, had 192 participants in its 30-mile event in 2024, generating a combined total of 768 volunteer hours.
Adam Peterman leads the 2022 Chuckanut 50k. This is one of many races which requires entrants to carry out a minimum of four hours trail work to earn their spot. Photo: Tad Davis
The table below highlights the 10 races in my sample dataset that had eight-hour volunteer work requirements and the most starters.
The graph above shows ten 100-mile races, and the Fat Dog 120 Mile, with the total number of volunteer hours generated by entrants. The total number of volunteer hours is the number of starters (finishers plus runners who did not finish) multiplied by eight.
Based on experience with the Manitoba Association of Trail Runners, I estimate a single volunteer can clear a mile of trail in four hours. This would include using hand tools to clear brush, a chainsaw to cut and move fallen trees, and adding or replacing signage. For safety and effectiveness, we typically do trail work in groups. I distilled this estimate of how long it would take a single volunteer to maintain a single mile of trail to give us a simple metric for understanding the tangible results of trail work.
Using this back-of-the-napkin “trail math,” we could estimate that participants of the 2024 edition of The Bear 100 Mile maintained the equivalent of 696 miles of trail. Of course, that’s built on the assumption that every runner spent their volunteer hours doing trail work. In reality, the total volunteer hours were likely divided between trail maintenance and volunteering at races. I’ll look to partner with a race organization for a future article to look at anonymized volunteer forms for a glimpse at how runners allocate their volunteer hours.
Kathryn Graham on her way to winning the 2023 Bear 100 Mile — a race that requires entrants to carry out volunteer work. Photo: Bethany Draper
Closing Thoughts
As the race team for the Cascade Crest 100 Mile put it on the event website, “Entrants get to do … trail work” (emphasis added.) It’s part of the overall experience for runners who are engaging with a community as well as a race. Race organizations that mandate trail work care so deeply about the trails on which their events take place that they invest time in educating participants on the value of trail work and reviewing their volunteer forms. These race organizations even make their own financial commitments to supporting access and safety on their local trail networks.
Trail work can be physically demanding and challenging to fit into our busy schedules. But it’s rewarding.
If you’ve registered for an event that has a mandatory trail work policy, or you already make time in your schedule to give back to the trails you love, please know it matters and has a tangible impact.
Call for Comments
- We highlighted a few races that support trails and the broader trail community — which others deserve some recognition?
- How would your own estimates differ when calculating the financial or time commitments to build or maintain a trail?
- Do you have any advice from your own experience doing trail maintenance that you can share with first-timers?
References/Notes
- This figure is based on a cursory review of the courses for all Coast Mountain Trail Running (CMTR) trail races (excluding the multisport Vedder Mountain Challenge) to confirm that most races with multiple distance options largely use the same trails for each distance option. I therefore added the distances of the longest event at each CMTR race together to estimate the total kilometers of trail used per year. I did not subtract miles for any road sections in each race. This is a thought experiment, after all.
