A skid trail (stickväg) is a route established in the forest to improve access for forest machines. It’s used when a harvester is harvesting and a forwarder is extracting timber from the forest.
These trails, typically 3–5 meters wide, are created by cutting corridors through the forest to form a network of parallel routes.
Skid trails are often covered with slash to reduce soil wear and root damage during machine traffic. To minimize both total trail length and the risk of damaging standing trees, they are kept as straight and parallel as possible. These trails can be reused in future harvests and, under Swedish forestry law, may not occupy more than 20% of the thinned stand’s area.