Donate to PATC's Keep it Standing Campaign
How Far Will Your Gift Go?
You have the power to support PATC’s work, including road repairs, boundary monitoring, privy maintenance, mapping, and the operational backbone that keeps 1,200 miles of trail and 49 cabins open and cared for.
This spring, we're asking you to help PATC raise $25,000 by June 15 — to fund the behind-the-scenes work that makes everything else possible.
You turn off the highway. The road narrows. Pavement gives way to dirt, and the noise of everyday life fades behind you. You're almost there: the trailhead, the cabin, the quiet you've been looking for all week.
For thousands of hikers, volunteers, and cabin visitors each year, that road is real. It's the road that winds back into the wild places PATC has protected for nearly a century.
For every mile of trail you can see, there's a longer list of work you can't. It happens off-camera and mostly off the radar, carried out by people who understand that the experience of escaping into nature depends on everything surrounding it. Here are just a few things you might not know PATC takes care of:
- Cabin access tracks take a beating every winter from ice and runoff. PATC volunteers regrade and gravel washed-out sections so cabin guests, hikers, and trail crews can get where they're going.
- Boundary monitors walk the perimeters of PATC's lands each year, resetting markers to protect the natural spaces we steward.
- Privies at backcountry shelters need regular maintenance, cleaning, and occasional full rebuilds. Last season, one burned to the ground. Another was destroyed by a bear!
- Volunteer cartographers and GIS specialists work year-round to update PATC's maps as trails change, reroute, and expand, so the map in a hiker's hand matches the ground underfoot.
None of this is glamorous. But without it, the work stops. Volunteers can't reach their sections. Cabin guests can't get in. Hikers follow maps that no longer match the trail. And the wild spaces that people depend on for restoration, connection, and escape quietly become inaccessible, not all at once, but one neglected detail at a time.
This spring, we're asking you to help PATC raise $25,000 by June 15 to fund the behind-the-scenes work that makes everything else possible.
Your gift supports the full picture of PATC’s work, including road repairs, boundary monitoring, privy maintenance, mapping, and the operational backbone that keeps over 1,200 miles of trail and 49 cabins open and cared for. Your gift ensures that when a hiker, a volunteer, or a cabin guest needs to get back into the woods, there's a way in, and everything waiting at the end of the road is still standing.
Jim Fetig, PATC President
If you'd like to help us effect even more change, without taking any extra steps, click here to set up a recurring donation.