The Trail Blazer

Lester Kenway

Age: 63

Hometown: Bangor

Role: President and chief hard hat, Maine Appalachian Trail Club

Since the Maine Appalachian Trail Club was founded in 1935, thousands of its volunteers have worked to build and protect Maine’s stretch of the AT. It’s tough, sweaty work. Glaciers scoured away much of Maine’s topsoil over 10,000 years ago, leaving obstinate rock and root. The trail follows steep grades over some 52 summits, light on the switchbacks you’ll find on sections of trail farther south. Entropy is perpetual. The MATC estimates its wish list of maintenance projects will take 23 years to complete. The mastermind behind getting them done — and done well — is MATC president Lester Kenway.

Known as a pioneer in trail-building circles, Kenway cut his teeth working on the AT with his college outing club in 1972; later, as Baxter State Park’s trail supervisor, he developed routes and trail stabilization techniques that help get tens of thousands of people up and down Katahdin safely and with minimal impact. Today, he supervises and trains (and often joins) the MATC trail crews, mostly-volunteer teams that put in nine-hour days throughout the summer, sometimes hiking two hours to a project site while humping pickaxes, rigging equipment, and other hefty gear. Old trail hands will tell you that Kenway is nothing short of a legend in the AT community — also, that he’s famously reticent to talk about himself. When we caught up with him recently, fresh off a project on Katahdin, he instead heaped praise on his volunteers.

“Keeping up the trail requires weeks of effort by a crew of people,” Kenway said. “Our trail volunteers come from anywhere in the world — I’ve seen people from the UK, from France and Belgium and South Africa, which makes it kind of an interesting experience for everyone.” About half of his volunteers are in their 20s, he says, while a quarter or so are retired — and, to hear Kenway tell it, applicants need not be muscle-bound backcountry hotshots. “When we recruit them, we give them extensive information about the physical challenges, about biting insects. Trail maintenance may sound pretty challenging, but I think most anybody can do this.”