Seeking Volunteers for BWCAW Spring Trail-Clearing Season

Apr 2, 2025Hiking Trails, Volunteering

A group of nine Boundary Waters volunteers, wearing rain jackets and life vests, smile in front of a wooden sign surrounded by trees. Canoes and colorful backpacks are on the ground. Its a damp, wooded area, suggesting a canoeing or hiking trip.

Story and photos by Boundary Water Advisory Committee

Do you enjoy hiking or backpacking? Are you interested in exploring and giving back to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota? Now is your chance. Ten spring trail-clearing trips with the Boundary Waters Advisory Committee (“BWAC”) are open for volunteer sign-up now!

Hutchinson MN: Home of the Luce Line State Trail
Two Boundary Waters volunteers walk through a forest filled with young trees and tall grasses on a sunny day. One person in a striped shirt examines a pine, while the other wrapped in a cloak walks ahead. The sky is partly cloudy with bright sunlight.

In 2024 alone, 75 BWAC volunteers participated in 15 trail-clearing trips to the Boundary Waters wilderness. Together, these BWAC members contributed over 7,000 volunteer hours in 2024 towards maintaining these trails for use and enjoyment by the public.

Two side-by-side images show a wooded area in the Boundary Waters with a person holding an ax. Left: overgrown foliage. Right: cleared path. Text reads BEFORE on the left and AFTER on the right. The person wears a green shirt and sunglasses.

BWAC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose volunteers restore, maintain, and advocate for hiking trails in the Boundary Waters. Trails maintained by BWAC together comprise over a third of the maintained hiking trails in the Boundary Waters wilderness. Over the last 10 years, together with the United States Forest Service (USFS), BWAC volunteers have restored the Powwow hiking trail after over 90% of it was destroyed by fire in 2011. BWAC volunteers also help maintain the Brule Lake, Eagle Mountain, and Sioux-Hustler hiking and backpacking trails. 

Clearing trips for the 2025 spring season are available now on BWAC’s MeetUp page.
More information about Boundary Waters Advisory Committee is available on their website

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A person wearing a yellow helmet, sunglasses, and warm winter clothing smiles while outside in a snowy Minnesota landscape. They are pointing at something, perhaps one of the scenic mountain bike trails nearby, as the sun shines brightly overhead.

I’m Jan, the publisher of Minnesota Trails Magazine. I’m looking for that one trail, the next ride, a new discovery and other reasons to never sit still in Minnesota.

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