Technology Provides More Accuracy For Trail Blazers

MERIDEN (AP) – Technology is helping hikers blaze trails in an increasingly crowded Connecticut.

The Connecticut Forest & Park Association has recently published its 19th edition of Connecticut Walk Book, a guide to the organization’s Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails. The guide has been published since 1929.

The latest edition took longer than usual to publish. Connecticut is no longer a patchwork of farms and a public trail system that relies on access provided by landowners.

Trails now wind through a more developed and more crowded landscape.

As a result, greater accuracy was needed to help keep hikers on the trails and away from off-limits private property. Global positioning systems that use satellite navigation were used to pinpoint exactly where hikers are.

Using global positioning, Vernon resident George Arthur led a team that hiked 800 miles of trail. The team took a global positioning reading every eight meters or so, pinpointing latitude and longitude. The information was filed digitally and transferred to a computer.

The effort to revise the Walk Book involved “almost starting from scratch” because of the use of new technology, said Ann Colson, coeditor of the guide.

“It was time to bring the trail maps into the 21st century,” she said.

In the past, the guide included superimposed trails over topographical maps.

“It’s very archaic,” said Robert Pagini, former chairman of Meriden’s Conservation Commission.

It also wasn’t very useful. A hiker doesn’t need lines showing the gradations of a hill, but must instead find the trail.

The guide also features photographs and commentary of historical, archaeological and botanical interest. So much is new that the “Walk Book” is now divided into two guides.

The Connecticut Walk Book East, which covers the eastern and central portions of the state, was released in October. It’s thicker than the 18th edition, which covered the whole state.

The release date for the guide for western Connecticut has yet to be announced. The state’s two central trails, the Mattabesett and the Metacomet, are in both volumes.