Correction: The Arkansas Trails Council held its most recent symposium in Fayetteville in 2001. This article was incorrect due to misinformation from the council.
Several varieties of trail lovers will swarm into Blanchard Springs Recreation Area this weekend to hear about pending plans and enduring achievements, possible digs and impossible pigs.
Or maybe attendees won't swarm. Maybe they'll merely trickle in for the first Arkansas Trails Symposium in 36 years.
"Since this is the first time in a long time this has been done, we didn't know how many people to really expect," says Mike Sprague, who is executive secretary of the Arkansas Trails Council as well as state trails coordinator for the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.
However many attend, he says, on Saturday they'll hear about projects planned by people known for getting things done. Besides James R. McCoy, district ranger for the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest Sylamore District, and speakers from the Mountain View area, the list includes:
• Debbie Doss of Conway, who has helped create many of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Arkansas Water Trails and is chairman of the trails council. Doss is working toward a long-distance paddling trail from the confluence of the Buffalo and White rivers to Arkansas City, one that would lead paddlers in and out of the swampy backwaters of the White River National Wildlife Refuge.
Imagine the potential for getting lost.
"That's why you need a trail," Sprague says.
• Ken L. Smith of Fayetteville, designer and building supervisor of much of the Buffalo National River trail system, will talk about the Buffalo River Trail and plans for another extension.
• Jacque Alexander of Snowball, a member of the Buffalo River chapter of Arkansas Back Country Horsemen and national director of Back County Horsemen of America, will talk about the Buffalo National River horse trails.
• Sarah and Frank Webber of Little Rock, founding members of the Friends of the Syllamo Trail, will describe plans for a path from the Syllamo trailhead at Blanchard Springs to the Mountain View town square, passing through the Ozark Folk Center State Park. They'll also tell the history of this 50-mile trail honored by the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) as an Epic trail.
• Kevin Goodwin, the wildlife biological technician for the Sylamore Ranger District, will talk about feral hogs, what damage they do and what is being done to thwart them.
When visitors to Blanchard Springs find the water posted off-limits because of E. coli
contamination, "that's because of the feral hogs," Sprague says. "They're dangerous, and they spread E. coli, and they root up the trails."
Notably absent in the lineup of speakers are urban trail builders and managers of off-road motor trails, but "we definitely don't mean to leave out anyone, and we hope to add different types of trail users in the next trail symposium," he says.
There's only one day for speakers -- Saturday. "We're going to start on Friday, but ... there's not going to be any events other than just camping," he says. Sunday morning will bring recreational outings.
BEEN A WHILE
Wait a minute. Wasn't there a big trail symposium in Little Rock a few years ago? 2008, wasn't it?
That was not a state event but a National Trail Symposium conducted by the national advocacy organization American Trails.
The Arkansas Trails Council has conducted an Arkansas Trails Day annually, in May or June, sometimes in pouring rain. These days have brought together clusters of trail-managing organizations for simultaneous or back-to-back hiking, biking, off-road motoring, paddling and horseback rides, followed by a closing ceremony at which service awards were presented.
So how is a trails symposium different from a trails day?
"It's more of an educational event," Sprague says. Service awards will be presented and recreational trail outings are on the agenda, but the focus is on speakers. Which means sitting. In the summer heat. But that sitting will be outdoors only during the morning and evening. Speakers will move indoors for afternoon -- indoors and underground.
Saturday morning's talks will be at the Blanchard Springs amphitheater. "Then we'll have lunch, and then we'll have cave tours, which will be in the cave," Sprague says. Afternoon speakers will be in the caverns' auditorium. Saturday evening's program will begin at 7:20, back at the amphitheater.
Attendees will pay for their lodging and supply their own meals, but it will be possible to join a group order for sandwich delivery from a store in Fifty-Six. Nearly everything else in the symposium will be free; one exception is a chance on Sunday to do a Wild Cave Tour in the caverns, and that will carry a group-rate fee depending on how many attend (reservations must be placed in advance through the trails council).
Sunday's other options are free: a nine- or five-mile hike on the North Sylamore Creek Trail, including a shuttle to the trailhead; or a mountain bike ride on the Syllamo Trail.
BACK IN THE DAY
Jay Miller, a retired parks executive who was the state's first trails coordinator, remembers that annual symposiums were being held when he joined the parks department in 1976, because he was tasked with continuing them. And there is a reference in the index for the collected papers of the late Rose Hogan at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Center for Arkansas History and Culture to a document labeled "First Arkansas Trails Symposium, 1972 November 2."
The University of Arkansas Special Collections' index for the papers of the late Dr. Neil Compton includes a reference to such a symposium in 1979. Miller believes that was the last symposium during his tenure.
The first symposiums were attended by agency representatives. "The whole trails emphasis of states having trails councils and so forth was really just getting started in the early and mid '70s. Arkansas was right there with the other states forming these trails councils and trying to promote access to public lands and [encouraging] agencies to support the building of trails and the use of trails. ... We had great support from the agencies."
Having symposiums "kind of petered out," but real progress continued, he says.
The Arkansas Trails Council was created as part of the Arkansas Trails System Act, ACA 22-4-404. The council is a voluntary advisory body assigned to oversee and promote a list of trails in cooperation with the state Department of Parks and Tourism. Council members include representatives from state, federal and local agencies, landowners and trail users.
More information is at arkansastrailscouncil.com.
ActiveStyle on 07/13/2015