Submitted 11 months ago by thermal_shock@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Surely there aren’t enough people walking them all the time constantly to mash the grass to death, is there some kind of membrane placed under the dirt to stop grass growth?
The construction of a hiking path depends on the environment and budget. There certainly is membrane used in some, especially in wet/boggy environments. I think it’s mostly gravel that’s used to prevent grass from growing. (people don’t walk on the entire width of the path usually)
Obligatory reference to desire paths: !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works
laughs in New England accent
Absolutely not.
“Rock before root and root before dirt - and never touch the mud if you can help it.”
Literally hiking 101 out here. What we teach the children.
Is also why ~5 miles in ADK, the greens, or the whites, is like ~10 miles anywhere else.
Can you please elaborate? What is that children’s rhyme meant to teach? What are green and white ADKs?
Google was not very helpful.
The fact that the trail exists there in the first place means that there’s enough people walking on it that the grass dies and doesn’t grow bag. I’ve started a trail from scratch and I doubt there’s more than a handful of people walking there every week but the trail just keeps getting more carved in.
This one’s man made though, it’s around a nature preserve and it’s runs between dozens of small communities in my area. This area is well known for outdoors, trails, creeks, small lakes, all in a very dense residential area.
Plants are actually pretty sensitive to soil compaction, which can take a lot of time to reverse. the composition clay/sand in the soil can changed the time it takes to resettle, and it might even just erode down to rock.
This one makes the most sense. There’s trails behind my house that I walk pretty much daily and maybe meet three people the entire time. There’s just not enough people walking on that path to cause that so it must be the compaction.
Yes, there are enough people walking on it to just kill the grass. No further effort is needed to form the pathway. Many wild animals make paths by walking on them a lot too.
Also once yearly trail maintenance or some other cadence. At least if a state or national park.
dirt compression its what killed my potted plant
You walked on your potted plant?
My first thought was “ah, squished by a cat”
I built an office shed in my back yard. Almost all the grass is gone where I walk between the back door and the shed. I do this fairly frequently, but I’d think still quite a bit less than an even lightly trafficked hiking path.
I’ll put some stepping stones out there eventually.
No, it’s just foot traffic everywhere I’ve hiked
No membrane. Just clay and stone.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Where I live they’re not maintained at all. If nobody uses them for a while they disappear. I have a “path” nearby that’s on every single map but you can no longer see it used to be a path.