Usually when you're hiking, two is considered a lot and three or four is a crowd out in the nature's bird-filled cathedral of woods.

But this weekend, it's all about getting that collective soul of hikers out tromping into the woods together to celebrate one of the area's unique trails -- one that is located mostly on private land through three counties.

Close to 300 folks will be hiking and helping out during the Kanawha Trace 45th Anniversary Hike. The event starts today and runs through Sunday on the 32-mile trail that runs from Barboursville (at the confluence of the Mud and Guyandotte rivers) to Fraziers Bottom on the Kanawha River.

You can still join them and hike one section or all three days.

"From the hiker's standpoint, you get to meet a lot of hikers and you get to meet a lot of people from the community that are out and about," said Charlie Dundas, who dreamed up the idea of the trail in the 1950s. "This weekend is about an opportunity for fellowship. It's not your typical weekend on the trail where you're with a small group and don't run into anybody."

The registration fee is only 50 cents -- the same as it was in 1962 when the trail first opened.

And there may even be a few of the meal packages available as well at $10.

Like in years past, this year's hike is broken into three chunks.

Today, most folks will hike six miles before staying overnight at Camp Arrowhead.

Saturday is a 14-mile hike to the historic Blackjack Schoolhouse that was built in 1883 and is located just over the county line in southern Mason County.

Sunday, it is 12 more miles on to Fraziers Bottom, along the Kanawha River in Putnam County.

Dundas, who is one of the folks maintaining the trail, said they've already got 220 hikers signed up for meals and about 50 folks along the trail running shuttles, meals and helping out.

Hikers are coming from around the region from Springfield, Ohio, to North Carolina to hike the Kanawha Trace, which gets about 500 to 700 hikers in an average year.

Although the trail is mostly used by Scouts and the general public from the Tri-State, people from nearly all of the 50 states have hiked the trail, as have hikers from Mexico, England, Canada and Scotland.

Dundas said the anniversary hikes have been a great tradition. They have hosted a 10-year hike, a 20-year, 30-year, a 35-year-hike and a 40-year hike.

Each anniversary hike, the thru-hikers get a one-of-a-kind medal, this year's is a blue cut-glass arrow medal.

There are a variety of patches available, too, to commemorate the hike.

A part of Boy Scout Troop 42, out of Baptist Temple Church since 1954, Dundas and his friend Ben Triplett dreamed up the idea of a backpack trail in the late 1950s while walking along the hills of Cabell County. They started talking to landowners and began building in 1958-59.

By 1962, the 32-mile trail through Cabell, Mason and Putnam counties was finished, and now 45 years later, the Kanawha Trace is still the only recreational trail of that length in those three counties.

Maintained by local Boy Scouts in the Tri-State Area Council Inc., the Kanawha Trace in many parts is an old Bison and Indian trail. Early pioneer use dates back nearly 200 years as a road between the river and the Howell's Mill area.

That land near Howell's Mill was at one time in the Dundas family, but after the Civil War, a Confederate ancestor of Dundas surrendered the family's 5,000 acres rather than take the post-war oath of allegiance to a bunch of Union soldiers who had just burned his farm.

Thanks to grant money as well as several groups taking interest in the trail, Dundas said the Kanawha Trace has never looked better.

Just a month after the 40th anniversary hike in 2002, Dundas found out the Kanawha Trace was one of 21 trails in West Virginia that received grant money.

Linked with matching money and in-kind labor and material from the Scout Council, the grant was used to upgrade the trail including a foot bridge over Little Cabell Creek where the trail went into Camp Arrowhead.

Crews also replaced about 12,000 feet of trail, restoring hundreds of feet in different sections that had been destroyed by landslides.

The $50,000 grant, which came from federal transportation funds, also paid for new signage all along the trail.

Other improvements have been made in the past few years.

A couple years ago, Troop 762 member Jamie Dzierzak spent 415 hours leading work crews that replaced the foundation of the 122-year-old historic Blackjack School House, which serves as an overnight camp site on Trace.

And just this week, his older brother, Jan Dzierzak, just finished up a G.I.S. (geographic informational systems) project of walking the entire trail and re-mapping it to reflect the new changes.

With the new switchbacks, the trail is now about 32.1 miles, up from 31.7 miles, Dundas said.

The Barboursville-area mountain bikers have been out helping maintain the trail since it is also open to mountain bikes as well, Dundas said.

"We've went out several occasions, and we were going to do work on sections and found that they were already done," Dundas said. "Dwayne Walters and the Barboursville bike group had already been out snipping and doing a lot of good things on the trail."

Dundas said they hope to hear in a month or so if the Trace will get additional grant money to replace more of the bridges along the trail.

The state has already agreed to build a pedestrian tunnel under U.S. 35 where new construction takes the highway over the trail.

"The trail has never looked better," Dundas said. "It reflects a lot of hard work by a lot of people. We've probably put in about 1,200 manhours just getting ready for the hike. Like always, we've walked and worked every foot of the trail. You get to the far end and find out that on this end a windstorm knocked over a tree around Barbourville blocking it. It's really a never ending thing. It would have been great if 45 years ago we would have made the trail and never had to do it anymore, but that's not the nature of the beast."

Photo courtesy of Deb Stivers-Dzierzak

Chase, Wayne and Clay Thacker of Boy Scout Troop 762 help clean up Kanawha Trace.

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