Pan American Trails Network - ALASKA-PATAGÔNIA, PARTIU? - Pan American Trails Network - FROM ALASKA TO PATAGONIA: LACE UP YOUR BOOTS!

Pan American Trails Network - FROM ALASKA TO PATAGONIA: LACE UP YOUR BOOTS!

The first long-distance trail in the world is conventionally known as the Appalachian Trail. Conceived in 1921 by the American forester Benton Mackeye, it was fully blazed between 1923 and 1936 and soon became a success story among American hikers, being traveled today by more than two million people every year.

In 1938, the model arrived in Hungary, where the Blue Trail was implemented, connecting the most distant regions of the country. Shortly after World War II, long-distance trails began being blazed in other European countries, where they are always longer than 50 km in distance and are known as GRs (Grand Randonnée, in France, Groteroutepaden in Belgium, Gran Recorrido in Spain and Grande Route in Portugal)[i].

Over time, inspired by the Appalachian Trail, other long-distance trails were created in the United States, where they quickly multiplied, reaching today the impressive figure of about 100 thousand kilometers of fully blazed and managed hiking paths. Since 1968, when the U.S. Congress passed the National Trails Act, these trails have formed a well-coordinated National Trail System.

As in the United States, European countries have also created their own national trail systems, using the GRs as the backbones of huge networks of paths that, together, reach hundreds of thousands of kilometers (France 60,000 km, Spain 60,000 km, Switzerland 65,000 km, to name a few).

Since the creation of the European Union, national GRs began to connect with each other, forming great European trails, the E-Paths, thus making it possible to travel on foot from as far away as Nordkapp, in Norway, to the Rock of Gibraltar in the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, there are currently hundreds of international trails in Europe, such as the Peaks of Balkans connecting Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro, the Via Alpina, the Via Dinarica and the Tatras trail connecting Slovakia and Poland, as well as twelve trans-European trails (E-Paths), each counting more than five thousand kilometers in length[ii].

More recently, long-distance trails have also sprang up outside the Europe/North America axis, in countries from the most diverse corners of the globe: Japan, Korea, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, New Zealand and Australia are just a few of those places.

In North America, in addition to the USA, Canada recently inaugurated the TransCanada Trail, the longest non-motorized path in the Americas, spanning 24,134 km. It connects with other long-distance trails, such as the International Appalachian Trail, the Bruce Trail, the Confederation Trail and the East Coast Trail, among others, to weave a huge Canadian long distance trails network.

South of the Rio Grande, one can already hike the Sendero del Pacífico and the Camino de Costa Rica as well as the Transpanama Trail, in Central America, and the GRs of Guadalupe and Martinique and the Waitukubuli Trail on the Caribbean island of Dominica. In South America[iii], Argentina´s Huella Andina and Sendero de Chile are being slowly but surely implemented. In Bolivia, the Red Boliviana de Senderos has made good progress in recent years and, next May, the Brazilian Trails Network[iv] will hold the First Brazilian Trails Congress, with two of its national trails, Oiapoque x Barra do Chuí and the Caminho do Peabiru already entertaining the first conversations to connect with trails in Uruguay and Paraguay; respectively the Cabo Polonio Way and the Sendero Te Aviru. Other international initiatives are also beginning to take shape in the Jesuit Missions region, between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, and in the Pampas Gaúchos, with the Rivera-Santana do Livramento conurbation as the hub.

But there is more to it. The Andes is home to an intricate network of historical trails known as the Qapac Ñan, which is made up of more than 30,000 km of path some of them paved with cobblestone, connecting Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. There are only two long-distance trails recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Sites: the Camino de Santiago is one. The Qapac Ñan is the other. Machu Picchu, which we all know at least from hearing, is just one of many pre-Columbian treasures visited by the Inca roads. Those who travel the entirety of the Qapac Ñan and its branches will also discover other wonders such as Kuelap, Pisac, Chan Chan, Inga Pirca, Tiwanacu and Choquerirao to name just a few pre-Columbian sites.

In the Amazon, there are already several trails skirting down the Ecuadorian Andes into the equatorial forest. Deeper into the jungle, in the heart of the Cuyabeno Fauna Production Reserve, ecotourism companies operate 6-day water trails to the Peruvian border. Further east, in Brazil, the Caminhos do Rio Negro, in the Mosaico do Baixo Rio Negro, and the Rota Guarumã, near Belém, both already in operation, make it possible to dream that one day we will have a multi-modal trail between Quito and the mouth of the Amazon River, reliving in spirit the great epic journey undertaken by Francisco de Orellana in 1542. Are we Dreaming? Absolutely so. Is it Impossible? Definitely not, as Ed Stafford has proven to us all[v].

Long-distance trails, as we have seen, are an increasingly palpable reality in many countries around the world. In fact, international trail networks are already consolidated in Europe and are beginning to appear on other continents, such as the Mount Elgon crossing, which connects Kenya and Uganda. Some of these international trails have already reached maturity and are doing very well, as the many international branches of the Camino de Santiago show clearly to us.

As they gather strength and consolidate, international trails have proven themselves to be tools of good diplomacy, bringing people together, generating integrated flows of tourism and economy and creating natural landscape connectors functioning as corridors for the movement of wildlife between protected areas located in different sides of countrie`s borders. In that regard, for a Pan American trails network to be feasible, we need to begin now to work on the integration of the different trails and trail networks in the countries and territories of the three Americas.

This is not an entirely new idea. It was first raised during the III Congress of Protected Areas of Latin America and the Caribbean -III CAPLAC, in Lima in October 2019. On that occasion, the outline of a projected SOUTH AMERICAN TRAILS NETWORK was designed. Now, three years later, under the leadership of Pedro da Cunha e Menezes and Nat Scrimshaw, directors of the Americas Hub of the World Trails Network, and Hugo de Castro, president of the Brazilian Trails Network, the topic will be discussed again, within the scope of the I Brazilian Trails Congress, which will take place in Goiânia, between the 25th and 29th of May 2022.

In this context, based on existing and planned hiking paths, one can imagine two great longitudinal Pan American trails: The Atlantic Trail and Patagonia to Alaska Trail, both serving as external pillars for a vast interior network of other large and small trails.

Neither of them starts from scratch, quite the opposite. The Atlantic Trail is almost complete. Its provisional name is Eastern Continental Trail (ECT)[vi]. Its northern end coincides with the northern terminus of the International Appalachian Trail in the mainland of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. From there, with the exception of a long stretch on roads, in the US state of Alabama, the ECT is almost entirely connected by hiking trails, namely: the Appalachian Trail, followed by the Benton MacKaye Trail, the Pinhoti Trail, the Florida Trail and the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail.

From Key West, much like the E-4 Trans-European Trail, which incorporates the islands of Crete and Cyprus into its route, the Atlantic Trail would hop from island to island, incorporating new islands  into the route as new trails are implemented. As of today, three trails would  be part of the Pan American Atlantic Trail: the Waitukubuli Trail, in Dominica and the GRs of the French island territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

Landing in the American continent, ideally, will take place through Venezuela, connecting thereafter with the three Guianas or descending into Brazil, passing through the Tepuys and incorporating in the route the unavoidable Salto Angel and Monte Roraima. From there, the trail would follow into Manaus and then it would flow along the Orellana Path outlined above. In Belém, at the Rio Amazonas mouth, it would join the Oiapoque x Barra do Chuí Trail, which already has several stretches implemented along the Brazilian coast.

In southern Brazil, the Atlantic Trail can enter Uruguay via Chuy, where tourist companies from the state of Rio Grande do Sul already operate hikes along that country´s coast, passing through Cabo Polonio National Park and the colonial fortresses of São Miguel and Santa Teresa. Another option is to make the binational connection through the Ibirapuitã, Protected area, where the Travessia dos Pampas is being implemented by ICMBio (Brazil-s Protected Areas Agency), with the support of the local city hall and volunteers from the region. There, in the twin towns of Rivera and Santana do Livramento, the possibility of extending the trail to Uruguay is already being enthusiastically discussed.

In Argentina, the Atlantic trail would follow the coast, through a long stretch that can be negotiated on a bicycle, through places of splendid nature, such as the Valdez Peninsula, until reaching its Southern Terminus in Ushuaia or, even better, opening itss mouth in a final beautiful smile to show the shiny Teeth of Navarino (trail).

On the western side of the Americas, the great Alaska-Patagonia trail would have its northern terminus in the city of Nome, where the Alaska Long Trail begins. From Anchorage, it would connect to the Transcanada Trail, via routes to be established through Chugach State Park and National Forest and Wrangell St-Elias National Park in the US, as well as Kuluane National Park in Canada. At the southern border of Canada with the United States, it would join the Pacific Crest Trail and, through it, it would descend to the border with Mexico. Another option, equally valid and not mutually exclusionary, would be to go down the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). Both hypotheses have their defenders. While Zelzin Aketzalli, a Mexican hiker triple crowned, is mapping a link between the CDT and Mexico City, taking advantage of an old royal road from the time when the region was a colony of Spain[vii], further west, the Englishman Graham Mackintosh has already mapped the entire path in Baja California[viii].

From there to the Sendero del Pacífico and the Camino de Costa Rica, much work needs to be done to connect southern Mexico to the fascinating Mayan ruins of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as well as the colonial cities of Antigua, Léon and Granada and the fascinating landscapes of volcanoes and lakes that decorate the entire region. If there are still no organized long distance trails, there exists a Meso American Trail Project and two regional integration schemes that can house the implementation activities of such a great Mayan trail: The Mayan Route and the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. The latter is a project conceived in the context of the Central American Integration System (SICA) and combines initiatives for the management of protected areas with actions that promote the economic development of the surrounding populations.

After through hiking Costa Rica and the Transpanama trail, it will be necessary to map and sew paths in Colombia, at least as far as Pasto, where the network of Inca Trails, known as Qapac Nan, that will take us to the north of Chile begins. From there, walking through a combination of trails that take advantage of the Sendero de Chile and Huella Andina projects, the hiker will reach the same Dentes de Navarino as the Atlantic Trail.

Framed by these two great master trails, it is possible to imagine a myriad of other connecting routes and options. Hike your own hike: Why not hike the Atlantic Trail in South America and switch in Venezuela to walk northwards on the Alaska to Patagonia? As that option, there are many other equally instigating and with their own integrationist importance, as is the case of the project America Perimeter Trail, which proposes an entire tour of the USA. In this same way of thinking, why not dream of a circular trail encompassing both Central America and the Caribbean, or a tour of South America that, by hypothesis, would not need to go down as far as Patagonia, but could have the Peabiru Way as its southern arch, connecting the coast of the Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and São Paulo to the Jesuitic Missions territory between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay and, from there, reach to Potosí, through the Red Boliviana de Senderos, where it would connect to Qapac Ñan. From there, the circular trail would just go up to Ecuador, scale down the Andes and cross the continent eastward towards the mouth of the Amazon, retracing the journey of Francisco de Orellana. Finally, along the Oiapoque x Barra do Chuí Trail, it is possible to descend again towards Peabiru, closing the Great South American Circuit.

Does it sound like fiction? It certainly does, but every grand project begins small, around a committed group of people who just focus and gets it done. If we think about it, the human being landing on the moon also seemed like fiction before it happened; cell phones were a distant fiction a mere 30 years ago and the American Trail System and the European E-Paths were also just a distant dream, when Benton Mackey first dreamed about long distance trails. As explained in this article, there are initiatives for long-distance trails in various parts of the Americas, there is already enough trail related knowledge accumulated around the world and there is in place a whole architecture of diplomatic multilateral institutions, like Mercosur, SICA, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization and the Andean Community that can provide the space for States to debate the issue calmly and serenely.

Like any long-term project, this one will not happen overnight. It will probably take decades to come true. We, at the World Trails Network Hub for the Americas, fully understand that this work will only bear ripe fruits when today's leaders are already hiking in Heaven. We also know, on the other hand, that a fairer world needs more integration, less xenophobia, more connectivity between protected areas and more generation of jobs and income in the rural countryside. Finally, it is clear to us that making such a project happen will take a long long time. The time required for its maturation, however only starts to count from the moment we plant the first seeds. For these ideas to germinate, we invite the entire trekking community of the Americas to join us in preparing the land, plowing, sowing, fertilizing, watering and taking care of the first seedlings. Let us all begin our long hike!.

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath

[ii] https://www.era-ewv-ferp.org/e-paths/

[iii] https://oeco.org.br/reportagens/24433-ele-caminhou-o-rio-amazonas/

[iv] https://oeco.org.br/colunas/17048-oeco-22741/

[v] https://oeco.org.br/colunas/do-peabiru-a-trilha-inca-caminhos-que-conectam-as-unidades-de-conservacao-da-america-do-sul/

[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Trail

[vii] https://oeco.org.br/analises/28621-waitakubuli-a-trilha-de-longo-curso-de-dominica/

[viii] https://explorersweb.com/first-thru-hiking-trail-in-mexico/

[ix] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CK4VUS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

[x] http://funag.gov.br/loja/download/1133_areas_de_preserv_ambi_em_zona_de_fronteira_23_10_2015_atual.pdf  pp 83-93

[xi] https://web.archive.org/web/20140415020812/http://www.transpanama.org/en/envivo/bio_team_cbb.html

[xii] https://americanperimetertrail.org/