Of course, you will need to actually walk the proposed routes at some point in time. Your Trailmaster will want to contact the landowners and ask for a one time permission to hike the a rea. This is where diplomacy and tacit will be very important. You will find landowners who welcome and encourage trails and you will find some that don t want any part of trails. If you can talk to these latter people and understand their reasons why the y are against trails, you can sometimes convince them that they are over concerned or they misunderstand the concept.
Most land owners are concerned about liability.
Someone falls on the trail and the next thing I know their suing me is heard often. It was enacted by the state legislature in 1979 to protect landowners from being sued when they give the public permission to use their land. As long as the landowner doesn t charge a fee for the use and as long as they don t put anything on the trail that could be construed as being grossly negligent, such as digging a trench or stringing barbed wire across the trail, they won t be held liable for personal injury on the property. The intent of this law is to promote outdoor recreation without penalizi ng the landowner. Since its inception, there have been a few lawsuits initiated.