The Mason-Dixon Trail is 100% maintained and protected by volunteers across multiple states who help for the sake of their love of nature. Without that combined effort, our trails could be lost to both human and natural processes.
Are you willing to assist us in keeping our trails clean, safe, and maintained for years to come? There are multiple ways that you can help:
Financially
Become a member
Our club relies 100% on grants and donations from people like yourself. By becoming a member, your donation will be used to continue our efforts in maintaining and preserving 200 miles of connected trails. Every single dollar goes to help us purchase new tools, paint and other blazing materials, bridge building and repairing materials and much more.
Check out membership options in our shop.
Make a one-time gift
Every single dollar goes to help us purchase new tools, paint and other blazing materials, bridge building and repairing materials and much more. We are a 100% volunteer-run organization so when we say every dollar goes towards the trail, we mean it. Click here to make a donation today!
The Mason-Dixon Trail System is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, and your donation is tax deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.
Physically
Be our eyes on the ground
Report issues you experience while on the trail. We can’t be everywhere at once and rely on trail users to identify issues for our trail crews to resolve.
Become a shuttle driver
We are looking for shuttle service providers that can offer shuttle services to long distance hikers along the Mason-Dixon Trail. The ideal candidate should have a good size vehicle, preferably 4-wheel or all-wheel drive and in good working order, current insurance and a general geographic knowledge of the area surrounding the Mason-Dixon Trail. The general guidelines for what shuttle service drivers charge is $1.00 per mile which includes travel distance to and from picking up the M-DTS hiker as well as the actual distance shuttled. We will also list you in our Backpacking Info area under Taxis/Shuttles/Public Transportation. If you would like to apply for this position, please Contact Us.
Get a little dirty
Join our weekly trail crews or become a dedicated maintainer. These folks are the ones making sure you are having the best experience possible when out on the trails!
Click here to submit a form to become an official maintainer for a designated section of trail. Depending on your location across the three states, we can help find you a section of trail near your home that could use your routine support.
Besides becoming a designated maintainer, you can always join us each Thursday morning on our regular work trips. Each week we meet at a location determined earlier in the week where we update blazes, create new routes, repair existing routes, clearing blow-downs and more. You are welcome to join us, but please bring proper foot-wear, water and any tools you might have. Most of the tools we need will already be made available. To join our email list and be alerted of these weekly work trips please Contact Us.
⚒⛏ Learn more about trail maintenance here.
Behind the Scenes
Become a board member
We are currently looking for volunteers to fill the Treasurer and Vice President positions.
See more information about these positions here.
Treasurer’s Tasks
- Attends quarterly meetings
- The Treasurer’s records are primarily compiled in Microsoft Excel files, so moderate experience with Excel is required. If you have limited Excel experience, you could be taught all the tasks via Zoom.
- Weekly: Record income and expenses received via PayPal, email or USPS mail in both the Journal file and the General Ledger (30 min – 1 hour per week).
- Monthly: Calculate totals in the General Ledger and reconcile them with the bank statement (1 – 2 hours per month).
- Quarterly: Calculate quarterly totals from the monthly Totals in the General Ledger and create a quarterly Income Statement which summarizes the income and expenses and reconciles the checking account with the General Ledger (1 – 2 hours).
- Annually: Submit required forms and records (2 – 3 hours).
Vice President’s Tasks
- Chairs meetings in the President’s absence,
- Assists the President in the performance of his duties,
- Leads special projects and committees, and
- Attends quarterly meetings
If you would like more information about either of these positions, please Contact Us.
Update our map descriptions
The trail descriptions on Maps 5 & 6 go all the way to the bottom of the page. We’re in the process of adding a reroute just south of I-95 on Map 6. Adding the details of the reroute will require a lot of editing to the existing description to make room. The people who will make these edits use Microsoft Word. With the current process, they have no way of telling whether changes that free up space in the Word file will free up the same amount of space in the Adobe file. We’re hoping someone can help us with this dilemma. Are there fonts and page formats in Word that match similar fonts and formats in Adobe? If you can help us with this dilemma, please Contact Us.
Write for us
Become a blog post writer or contribute to our Facebook or Instagram page. We love hearing about your latest hike on the Mason-Dixon trail and want to share your stories and pictures. You can tag us on Facebook @theMDTS or Instagram @masondixontrailsystem. If you are interested in becoming a website blogger, please Contact Us.