Twice a week from June through September, small groups of hikers climb some of Acadia National Park’s tallest mountains carrying a strange kind of cargo. Not water bottles or camera gear, but bags of soil weighing between 5 and 20 pounds each. Their goal is simple to say and hard to do. Undo years of erosion caused by people walking on plants that were never built to be stepped on.
- Volunteers hauled 5,049 pounds of soil up Sargent and Penobscot mountains last year to fuel restoration experiments.
- Acadia’s summits hold 145 plant species, many low-growing and easily crushed by foot traffic.
- The project pairs hands-on hiking with active research led by the park, Friends of Acadia, and the Schoodic Institute.
Why a Footprint Does So Much Damage Up High
Acadia’s peaks get hammered by high winds and bitter cold. The plants that survive up there have adapted by hugging the ground, growing low and tight against the granite. That works great against the weather. It works terribly against foot traffic.
Chris Nadeau, a lead scientist on the project, put the math plainly. Thousands of people climb Acadia’s most popular mountains, and the vegetation sits right in the path. Step on one of these plants a couple of times and it dies. Once it’s gone, the roots that held the thin soil in place go with it. Then a single heavy rain or windstorm washes that soil right off the mountain. What’s left is bare rock and a slow, stubborn problem.
Most of the harm isn’t malicious. As Nadeau noted, people rarely wander off trail on purpose to stomp on greenery. They just don’t realize they’ve drifted a few feet from the marked path, especially in spots where the trail blends into open ledge.
From Cadillac to the Backcountry Peaks
Park officials first flagged the problem in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their first move was to keep visitors off certain parts of Cadillac Mountain, the park’s highest point and the only summit reachable by a public road. That popularity made Cadillac a natural starting point.
But simply roping off areas didn’t bring the plants back. So scientists shifted to a more active approach. In 2016, they began running experiments on the summits to figure out which mix of soil, seeds, and erosion fabric could coax life back onto the granite. In 2023, they added two more remote peaks to the effort, Penobscot and Sargent. Unlike Cadillac, there’s no road to the top of either one. The only way up is on foot.
Why People, Not Mules or Helicopters
Getting soil to a roadless summit is its own puzzle. Researchers looked at mules, helicopters, and highline cable systems before landing on the low-tech answer. Those other options would have meant trail closures and a lot of logistical headaches. Carrying it up by hand turned out to be the most practical route.
That’s where the volunteers come in. On one recent Wednesday, about 20 people hiked up Sargent, the park’s second-highest peak, with a combined 311 pounds of soil on their backs. The group was led by AmeriCorps fellow Lauren Knierim and mixed first-timers with regulars. Some were locals who summit the mountain every month. One had brought homemade blueberry ice cream to share on an earlier trip. Others were visitors, including a couple from Florida who found the hike on the park’s website.
The soil itself came from Coast of Maine Organic Products, a Portland company that donated 100 bags of enriched mix. Frost Farms, a Bar Harbor garden center, loaded and delivered it to the carriage roads where each hike begins.
Learning the Mountain One Bag at a Time
Nobody has a finished playbook for this. Acadia’s sub-Alpine ecosystem is unusual, and Nadeau describes the work as learning while doing. The team restores in a way that lets them track what’s working and what isn’t, then adjusts based on the results. About 200 restoration plots are now spread across Cadillac, Penobscot, and Sargent.
Future phases will reach more peaks and focus on rare plants like the Nantucket shadbush and boreal blueberry. The hikes double as lessons in leave no trace, which matters because human feet started the damage in the first place. If you want to help, the program even runs a dog-friendly summit trek, with its third annual canine edition set for September 12. Bring good shoes, a willingness to sweat, and respect for whatever tiny green thing is growing at your feet.