Trail design standards

This manual focuses specifically on the development and maintenance of rustic hiking trails, without machinery and with minimal inputs. This approach aligns with Rando Québec's guidelines, where accessibility to the territory, safety, quality of experience, and the ecological balance of the environment are the foundations of all development.

You will find a wealth of theoretical and technical information to properly plan, maintain and manage your network of hiking trails.

Why this manual?

As a national outdoor organization , Rando Québec's mission is to promote the development, promotion, practice and supervision of hiking and snowshoeing in Quebec.

For us, the hiking trail itself is the basis of all sustainable development of the activities for which we are responsible.

That is why Rando Québec offers you here a series of recommendations which we call standards, which will allow you to continue to develop hiking trails while respecting the 3 main priority areas which are: the safety of users, the quality of the experience lived and the ecological balance of the environments used.

In this publication, you will find our vision for the development and maintenance of a hiking and snowshoeing trail. Our approach focuses primarily on construction techniques that require no machinery and, most of the time, no external inputs. We do not claim to offer the only method for developing hiking trails, but rather to contribute our expertise to the existing body of publications and techniques related to trail maintenance.

Based on years of field experience and extensive research into best practices at the national and international levels, we hope that this book will meet your expectations and provide you with the tools to ensure sustainable and reasoned development of your hiking and snowshoeing trail networks.