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The Future of the Pacific Crest Trail in Trump’s America
A now-familiar story emerged from the Pacific Crest Trail last month near Truckee, California, when the Truckee Trails Foundation (TTF) announced that the federal government had frozen $20,000 in funding for necessary trail maintenance.
The money had been intended for much-needed upkeep in the Tahoe National Forest, especially a section of the PCT from Donner Pass Road to Interstate 80 where retaining walls and rock steps require attention to allow safe travel through the area. Now, that work will remain undone unless grassroots donations and volunteerism can fill the $20,000 gap in TTF’s budget.
In today’s political climate, more stories like this are likely to emerge along the PCT and trails across America. This funding freeze was part of a broader push for cuts to partner organizations like TTF and the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA).
These organizations typically rely on a mixture of public and private funding to keep the trail open and well-maintained. In 2023, for instance, about 40% of the PCTA’s total budget came from government grants. Eliminating or dramatically curtailing this funding source would have serious implications for the trail.
“While we have private financial support and rely on volunteers for frontline work, federal funds provide key seed money and supply costs—not to mention expertise—that ensure the trails are safe and accessible for all,” wrote Sandi Marra and Megan Wargo, CEOs of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and PCTA, respectively, in a joint letter published this March. “We rely on the federal funds to train and equip thousands of volunteers who maintain the trails, to coordinate trail crew work and support every single project, whether maintaining remote water sources or supporting local emergency response.”
How Does the Current Political Climate Affect America’s Long Trails?
While thru-hiking may feel like an escape from politics, government fiscal policy directly impacts the PCT’s maintenance and accessibility.
What does the PCT’s future look like under Trump? We can draw some lessons from his first term. From 2017 to 2021, energy development and other extractive uses of public lands were often prioritized over recreation and conservation programs, and we’re seeing that pattern re-emerge in 2025 — to an even more extreme degree, now that the concept of actually selling off public lands is on the table.
During the first Trump presidency, federal agency budgets were perennially uncertain and federal grants, by extension, became less reliable. Thanks to a proliferation of red tape, it also got harder and slower for groups like the PCTA to actually tap into federal funds, even if the money was technically “available.”
Back then, the PCTA had to make some tough decisions about which planned maintenance and construction activities could move forward. Although crucial, efforts to clear huge numbers of downed trees and to repair damaged sections of trails were deferred.
The recent TTF funding freeze seems to echo those struggles. A potential return to the funding climate of 2017-2021 could be especially damaging now, as agencies and trails themselves haven’t even fully recovered from that period.
To fully understand how damaging, you have to understand the role of public and private funding on long trails. When federal funding grows less certain, there are always calls for private donations and volunteer labor to fill the gap. But maintaining a 2,600-mile trail is a monumental undertaking — one that requires contributions from both the public and the private sector.
The Role of Federal Funding for the PCT
The PCT crosses stretches of land managed by multiple federal agencies: the US Forest Service (USFS), the National Park Service (NPS), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Each year, Congress provides funding to these agencies through appropriations bills. A portion of those funds is typically allocated for trail management on the lands they oversee, including the PCT.
The PCT passes through seven national parks: Lassen, Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades.
With the trail crossing lands managed by so many different agencies, the PCTA fills a challenging and critical role: implementation. PCTA is a private organization, but it partners with these federal agencies (the USFS, NPS, and BLM), either through direct grants or by working together on specific projects.
Essentially, the PCTA often serves as the group using the federal funds to actually carry out the on-the-ground trail maintenance, construction, and restoration that federal agency staff alone cannot fully handle.
Non-Federal Funding Sources for the PCT
In addition to federal funds, a large portion of money allocated to the PCT comes from donations, grants from charitable foundations, corporate sponsorships, and, occasionally, funding from state-level programs. Across all national trails, volunteers contribute labor valued at millions of dollars, directly supporting needed trail maintenance.
This work substantially augments the work funded by other sources. While volunteers are incredibly generous with their time and effort, they require organizational infrastructure (training, supplies, etc.) to be effective. That infrastructure costs money.
This public-private model all but guarantees the PCTA’s reliance on both sources to keep up with necessary trail maintenance. Especially on the PCT, which is often plagued with major trail reroutes and large-scale repairs following wildfires and floods, the expected annual upkeep costs are greater than the appropriations PCTA receives.
Budget cuts, funding freezes, and administrative delays therefore have a direct and often cascading effect on the PCT. Volunteer labor, while wonderful, cannot replace what federal funding allows the PCTA to accomplish.
Historically, How Has the Federal Budget Been Allocated to the PCT?
Federal funding to the USFS, NPS, and BLM was turbulent during 2017-2021. Proposed federal budgets often included significant cuts for these agencies, particularly for programs related to conservation, recreation, and maintenance. Some proposals sought to slash funding for land management agencies by billions of dollars.
While Congress ultimately did not enact the most severe of these cuts, the constant threat created an environment of uncertainty for land managers and partner organizations.
And the budgets that were enacted during this period resulted in funding levels that were either stagnant or saw only modest increases that did not keep pace with inflation or the rising costs of managing public lands and infrastructure, effectively meaning a decrease in real funding and capacity for organizations like the PCTA.
Data from this period indicate that despite increased visitation on many public lands, staffing levels at agencies like the NPS sometimes declined, further straining their ability to manage resources.
But What About the Great American Outdoors Act?
Federal land management did experience a win in August 2020 in the form of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA). This bipartisan legislation guaranteed annual funding to address the large backlog of deferred maintenance across federal land management agencies.
It also permanently and fully funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). The LWCF provides funding for conservation and recreation projects, including land acquisition and trail development.
Proper trail signage is one tiny piece of what the PCTA helps to facilitate with their funds.
Because of the GAOA, the PCTA suddenly had more resources available for large, critical projects that had been postponed for years due to a lack of funding.
While this meant PCTA could resolve major bridge replacements and extensive trail reroutes, the GAOA money is specifically for deferred maintenance and conservation/acquisition. It can’t replace the annual appropriations needed for day-to-day trail maintenance, staffing, and operational costs that keep the PCT functional.
Also, the deferred maintenance funds were limited to only five years (FY2021-FY2025), and the current political climate suggests federal funding to the PCT’s necessary agencies will once again enter a period of decline and uncertainty.
How the Pacific Crest Trail Survives Economic Uncertainty
When federal funding becomes unpredictable, the PCT relies more heavily on private donations and volunteers to soften the blow. Non-federal resources, while not able to fully meet the demands of the trail, can prevent some critical trail work from completely grinding to a halt.
The PCTA has found itself increasingly dependent on private donations to cover its operational needs as federal support remains inconsistent. When expected federal grant money is delayed, reduced, or frozen — like what just happened to Truckee Trails — contributions from individuals and foundations become even more important for everything from keeping staff employed to buying supplies for trail crews.
The Future of the Pacific Crest Trail
The Truckee Trails funding freeze perfectly illustrates the type of challenges facing the PCT under the Trump administration. Maintenance organizations’ reliance on federal funding leaves the trail incredibly vulnerable to political whims.
During the first Trump administration, funding shortfalls on the PCT created a maintenance backlog that extended into the Biden era. With an expected return to the budget climate of 2017, the PCTA must brace to weather a similar storm again, even before fully recovering from the last one.
Marra and Wargo put it best in their open letter. “With increasing catastrophic weather events and the threat of no federal support, the dangers to our trails will increase in ways not seen in nearly a century.” Hikers can expect degraded trail conditions as the PCTA is once again forced to make tough choices.
In the short term, this might mean miles of blowdowns covering the trail, less reliable water sources as infrastructure degrades, and a slower response to the PCT’s frequent wildfires. In the long term, deferred maintenance will snowball, requiring more money to fix later than it would to simply stay on top of upkeep.
The trail’s resilience to climate change impacts, like intensifying wildfires and severe weather, will decrease. Trail closures will become more frequent and last longer.
Inconsistent federal funding jeopardizes the sustainability of the trail. The next four years are likely to further erode your ability to recreate on a well-maintained, healthy, and accessible PCT.
Featured image: Graphic design by Zack Goldmann.
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Comments 18
We don’t want our tax dollars to fund your frivolities. Fund your own frivolities.
I completely understand your sentiment! However, I disagree that the health of the PCT is a frivolity, and actually think it’s a very important economic boost to the rural towns it passes through, and America as a whole.
Maintenance of a well-funded PCT creates a lot of direct employment opportunities in skilled and specialized fields, as well as indirect employment for manufacturing, supplying, construction, and landscaping sectors.
Additionally, the attention the PCT draws both internationally and domestically for tourism contributes to a massive boom in funds flowing into rural areas for lodging, transportation, food, and guide services.
Without even touching on the environmental impacts (watershed protection, fire mitigation…), the health of the PCT does so much more public good than just giving thru-hikers a space to vacation.
I wouldn’t feel so strongly about the importance of federally protecting these spaces if I considered it anything close to a frivolity!
Cheers x
I lean toward grammy on this one, but appreciate Katie’s non-combative counter argument, and agree with some of her points. Where I diverge is that I don’t believe it’s the federal governments role to fund these things. Someone on the east coast isn’t going to realize these benefits, so why do they have to contribute?
Seems like this should logically be a state responsibility.
Hey Matt, I totally understand this perspective!
In a country as large as ours, I don’t think there’s a perfect answer by any stretch. I relate to the frustration about having to pay taxes for benefits that don’t exist in your region. I don’t see any budget solution ever really fixing this, considering just how diverse the country is (e.g. I pay taxes that go to support port infrastructure, maritime support, hurricane disaster relief etc., and none of that is directly relevant to me in Colorado!).
I am all for finding a funding model that works and relies on a variety of sources; Fully agree that it should not all be federal money. I certainly don’t have the answers to something this complex, but I appreciate you being willing to talk about it in a collaborative way! We all spend way too much time going for each other’s throats and playing the blame game, and too many people’s knee jerk reactions against what they view as the “other side” is a huge reason why I feel we are treading water without any actual progress being made. So frustrating!
Cheers 🙂
Katie, thank you for a very well developed analysis of the problems facing the PCT (and by extension, every other trail which crosses through federal lands). My only major disagreement with the current state of long-distance hiking stems not from anything you wrote, but from the number of hikers on social media who are openly soliciting donations or are being financially supported, in part, by outdoor equipment companies, not for the maintenance and preservation of the trails, but for their own monetary gain. With this practice becoming far more widespread, especially on YouTube and even in several of the posts on The Trek, my suggestion is simple: enact a fee for the use of those trails.
Current hikers on the PCT spend an average of roughly eight to twelve thousand dollars during their trek. Merely by sleeping in their tents for two additional nights instead of paying for a motel room or a bunk in a hostel, they would easily be able to afford a $200 hiking permit, and with at least 750 hikers beginning the trail each year you would immediately have an additional $150,000 for trail maintenance. (The monetary cost and number of annual hikers were taken from the PCTA.) Likewise, with the AT such a program would yield $300,000 per year for trails due to the 2000 individuals who annually attempt the thru-hike.
I’m aware that much of the allure of long distance trails is the companionship of fellow hikers in the many available hostels and motels, but at the time of my CDT hike thirty five years ago, there was no established system of hostels, with the result being that during my five months on the trail, I spent a total of five days in motels. I’m not suggesting anyone go to that extreme, but merely by reducing their zero town days by two over the course of the journey they would more than compensate for the hiking permit fee. In addition, they would hopefully receive a great amount of satisfaction (and positive Karma) from becoming far more intimately acquainted with what it takes to maintain the incredibly diverse system of trails we enjoy
It’s not funding frivolousness. It’s funding America. But I wouldn’t expect someone who calls herself MAGA grandma to comprehend such things.
troll grammy goes to hiking website voluntarily (frivolously?…) to type negative energy about… hiking?
hiking culture is a consistent and decisive boost to the communities. it promotes more good will than anything you can imagine…. but keep trolling grammy, its good to release. i bet youre super nice in person but for some reason feel the need to be mean and shortsighted in your lil digital world
thanks Katie
I shouldn’t answer this troll, but it needs to be said that we OWN these public lands. They belong to us (including you magat) as Americans. It is up to us (aka tax dollars) to provide proper maintenance for this property that is ours. If you don’t want to fund it, fine, but know you are in the vast minority. Have more respect for your birthright. Hell, this is probably a bot anyway.
Great story—thanks for writing it. I thought I’d add to your story that the funding cuts you mentioned, along with the loss of some donor support (for a variety of reasons), resulted in the PCTA laying off a significant number of their staff, including several senior staff members who collectively represented a lot of institutional knowledge about the trail and the PCTA. I was one of those staff members: for 7 years I worked for the PCTA and poured my heart into our work for the trail. Being laid off was a shock, and suddenly I was right there with the many other conservation professionals whose careers abruptly ended. I have no ill feelings toward the PCTA and still donate a small monthly amount. I understand the layoffs had to happen. But it’s tragic that our nation’s leadership has inflicted such enormous damage on so many land management agencies and conservations orgs.
Who would have guessed that putting a guy in charge of the country that thinks exercise is unhealthy would be bad for outdoor recreation?
The 2020 Great American Outdoors Act was President Trump’s bill that allocated huge funding which had been neglected during the previous administrations.
While it’s true that Trump signed it, the GAOA was not a priority for the administration and he had no role in writing or crafting the legislation. I point that out because here we are, five years later, and the second Trump administration is now trying to undo… every single consequence of the GAOA. They are cutting funding from conservation efforts, laying off NPS/FS/FWS/BLM employees, and, according to the new budget supplement, attempting to drain the LWCF as well.
This story begins by criticizing the Trump budget withholding funds. I’m glad to see you finally mentioned the Great American Outdoors Act. It was President Trump’s bill that allocated huge funding which had been neglected during the previous administrations. And, you tried to marginalizeit by calling it “bipartisan”. Just give credit where credit is due. It was Trump’s funding bill.
Hey Danny– The GAOA passed under the Trump Administration with broad bipartisan support: 310-107 in the House and 73-25 in the Senate.
The current Trump Administration is attempting to restrict funds to public lands and National Parks.
I do not say this as a “gotcha”, or as a condemnation/endorsement of any president; they are just two pieces of factual information. I care so much more about what happens to the land itself than who or which party instigates the positive change, and am concerned with the current direction of President Trump’s administration.
Hey Danny: I want to be very clear about this, because you’ve repeated this for the second time here.
The Great American Outdoors Act had two primary consequences: it allocated additional funding to a variety of public lands management causes (agency staffing, maintenance backlog, conservation efforts, trail construction, public lands infrastructure) and it authorized permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
It was introduced by (Democratic) Representative John Lewis, and major credit goes to (Republican) Senator Cory Gardner for convincing his fellow Republicans to support it in the Senate. It was eventually passed via bipartisan vote in Congress. Donald Trump initially opposed the bill, but Cory Gardner personally convinced him to sign it.
At the time, I gave credit to the president for this action, and I have told plenty of people I know personally that Trump deserved credit for this.
However, we are now in a situation where the current administration is striving to undo every single component of that bill.
The new budget targets massive budget cuts (affecting every component of land management) and up to 50% workforce reductions for federal land management agencies. The budget supplement, which was just released this week, directly targets the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and explicitly proposes taking that money (which had previously been set aside by the GAOA) and using it to promote logging instead.
In other words, the FY26 budget proposal reverses every single thing the Great American Outdoors Act accomplished. If you liked the GAOA, you should dislike the provisions in this budget proposal. If you don’t care about the budget proposal, you cannot have possibly cared about the GAOA.
If people in this country would get their head out of the sand and address the problems in California and other border states that let millions of Illegal aliens come into this Country and support them like they did in California for 4 years that cost us Billions in expenses, they would have funds to cover these projects! I am an outdoor person and fund my fishing and hunting thru license fees for my sports including taxes on firearms and ammo I purchase! I also belong to organizations that provide billions to fund purchasing and maintaining my sports such as DUI, PHEASANTS FOREVER AND GROUSE SOCIETY. These organizations also provide recreational areas that are used but are not supported by many people! If you are a hiker, you need to look at how you vote in the state and how your state is Run? Maybe when we address how we spend our money and run our local and federal government we will not have so many problems? California needs another Govenor like Reagan! Maybe Your sport needs more support from private donors and organizations that are specific to hiking or riding trails? Maybe a tax on trail bikes and other items that are used in your sports use of Trails like we have on firearms and ammunition for funding? Just a few thoughts from an ex-California resident and serviceman .
Good god, the trolls are certainly out. Hitting all the fox news talking points.
And you are typical CALIFORNIA Liberal CNN Follower no doubt!