The two-trail project is the first of many the park service hopes to coordinate with its new neighbors, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), which is building a 10,600 acre reserve adjacent to the parkland near Glen Jean, WV. in the area traditionally known as the Garden Grounds.

"There are incredible benefits to having the Scouts so close by, and this is a perfect example of one of those benefits," West said.

Both trail-building collaborations will improve tracks through woodland areas west of the New River Gorge and will include alternate routes of increased or decreased difficulty, also known as stacked routes, he said. Both networks will also accommodate biking as well as hiking.

The collaboration will ultimately benefit the hiking and biking public, both locals and visitors alike, as well as the scouts, who will hone trail-building skills in the process. Both trail networks are located on public lands outside the Boy Scout reserve.

Of the scouts to be employed on the project, all are members of the Boy Scout's prestigious Order of the Arrow, the organization's honor society, West said.

The scouts will be organized into units of 10 members, and each unit will led by a member of the National Guard of the United States, which maintains an armory at Glen Jean. More than 50 paid members of the guard will be employed throughout the summer, he said.

One trail network will travel through the Garden Ground Mountain area near the BSA reserve west of Prince, descending from a trailhead near the summit of the mountain to a trailhead near Terry, a once prospering coal mining town on New River. One will travel across the highlands near Kaymoor, and along the upper drainage of Craig Branch southeast of Fayetteville, according to West.

In 2009 the BSA unveiled its plan to locate an adventure base similar to its Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico adjacent to the New River Gorge National River, in part because of the outdoor-recreation opportunities available in the region. Soon thereafter, the BSA announced that it would also improve the facility to host its Jamboree, which has traditionally been hosted every four years at Fort A.P. Hill at Fort Belvoir, VA.

BSA officials say they expect the Bechtel Family National Scouting Reserve, also known as The Summit, to host as many as 100,000 scouts annually once completed in 2015. The facility is also being designed to accommodate 40,000 Scouts and 6,500 adults participants during the Jamborees, the first of which will be hosted in 2013.

West said park visitors and area residents can expect to find Boy Scouts working on public improvement projects throughout the New River Gorge region in the coming years.