Maine Huts & Trails: Opening the Backcountry to All
We envision a future where more individuals, schools, community groups, and families can experience enriching, even life-changing, backcountry experiences.
Our goal is to instill deep appreciation for nature and inspire enthusiasm for outdoor recreation and environmental stewardship through immersion in the stunning landscapes of Maine’s western mountains, forests, and waters.
These natural settings provide space and time for building connections and deepening the bonds of family and community.
Mission & Vision
The mission of Maine Huts & Trails is to connect people to nature, to one another, and to the enduring responsibility of caring for the land by expanding access to Maine’s backcountry.
We envision the impact of what we’re doing here at Maine Huts & Trails will ensure a future where the joy, wonder, and connection found in nature strengthens lives and communities.
Core Values
As the Maine Huts & Trails team, we are part of something bigger than building trails or welcoming guests into nature. These four values guide everything we do as a not for profit organization, and we invite you to carry them with you on every adventure, hut visit, or trail project, large or small.
- We believe everyone belongs
We believe everyone deserves time in nature. We treat every guest and teammate with respect and care, while being inclusive of varied levels of ability, experience, and background. - We lead with purpose
We take pride in caring for the land and our facilities, on a not for profit basis. From maintaining trails to stacking wood, every act we take helps preserve the backcountry experience for generations to come. - We enable connections
The Maine Huts & Trails team is all about connections. Whether serving meals, grooming trails, or guiding new visitors, we’re building community and creating memorable experiences. - We work hard and play hard
We do this work because we love it. We bring curiosity, kindness, and positivity to each task, and we welcome challenges with joy and grit, knowing we get to hit the trails, too.
What Drives Our Work
At Maine Huts & Trails, we don’t just create access to nature, we enable meaningful, memorable, and transformational experiences in the unique backcountry of Maine. To help fund our mission as a non-profit, we offer hospitality to paying guests at our huts and curate unique outdoor experiences for guests to attend.
These core commitments reflect what we’re committed to, what sets us apart, and how we make a lasting difference to individuals, organizations, and communities for generations to come.
Expanding Backcountry Access
We believe nature and the outdoors should be accessible to all, whether you’re a first-time snowshoer, a solo hiker, or a seasoned mountain biker or skier. We are building and maintaining the pathways that open the outdoors to everyone.
We make this real by:
- Building and maintaining a free, year-round, multi-use trail network (currently 50 miles and expanding).
- Investing in and maintaining a network of off-grid huts to extend your adventure, lighten your load, and provide the comforts of home through warmth and shelter.
- Ensuring safe, inclusive, and welcoming infrastructure with clear signage, well-built bridges, and well-marked trails.
- Supporting users of varied experience levels and abilities, including individuals, friends, families, youth and community groups.
Sparking Connections through Outdoor Experiences
We inspire a lifelong passion for nature and discovery, by encouraging visitors of all ages to explore, learn, and grow through outdoor experiences.
We make this real by:
- Creating shared spaces where curiosity is nurtured and connections are born over a shared hot meal, on a trail walk, or in a quiet moment in nature.
- Enabling diverse and underserved groups to experience the outdoors by providing subsidized programming where necessary.
- Curating outdoor events at which people come together and connect in the quiet beauty of Maine’s wilderness–including Harvest at the Huts, Forest & Forage, and Alpine Feast.
- Hosting mission-oriented organizations that create immersive, thematic experiences for select audiences.
- Using nature as a classroom where curiosity, creativity, and stewardship are sparked in people of all ages.
Fostering Community Commitment and Caring
Our mission goes well beyond huts and trails. We are building something enduring, as a not for profit. Our ultimate aim is to create a healthier, more connected region for generations to come, rooted in stewardship, sustainability, and shared public access.
We make this real by:
- Building enduring local landowner partnerships that enable a free, accessible journey through the Indigenous, ancestral lands on which we exist.
- Encouraging deep community engagement with, from, and between volunteers, donors, trail users, overnight visitors, youth groups, families, and partner organizations.
- Operating off-grid, self-sustaining huts that showcase renewable energy solutions and promote a reduction in fossil fuel use while fostering communal spaces open to all.
- Modeling environmental stewardship and conservation ethic through sustainable practices across trail building and maintenance as well as hut operations.
- Supporting a robust regional economy through visitation enabled by partnerships–with like-minded organizations, schools, and municipalities that share our values.
