The Bigfoot Trail Youth Stewardship Project is a collaboration between eight organizations across the Klamath Mountains. Our focus is to better connect regional youth through place-based experiences, college/career awareness, and experiential summer programming in rural communities connected by the Bigfoot Trail.
Michael Kauffmann of the Bigfoot Trail Alliance is the Project Director. The project will connect rural communities in the Klamath Mountains by creating a durable framework that establishes relationships between non-profit organizations, community partners, local K-12 schools, and colleges.
The communities—while separated by great distances and high mountains—have forests, wild rivers, and trails connecting them. One of the linkages across this vast landscape is a long-distance hiking trail. The Bigfoot Trail is a 360-mile pathway created in 2009 using existing trails and roads, linked together to celebrate the regional conifer diversity. The route has the potential to connect these rural communities both physically and psychically by building a network of groups interested in relationship building between young people from the communities and the wilderness around them while also introducing vocational possibilities to youth across the region.
Much more to come!
