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April 29, 2007
Volunteers fill void in repair of hiking trails
Dan DeLong - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Please take a moment to checkout this excellent article about trail volunteerism in Washington State. Washington Trails Association is a member of the American Hiking Society Alliance of clubs, and WTA's Executive Director Elizabeth Lunney is a member of the American Hiking Society Board of Directors.
For the record, trail volunteerism is no less important in the southeastern United States.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
By COLIN MCDONALD
Seattle Post-Intelligencer REPORTER
NORTH BEND -- Jim Knoke was dubbed "Badger" by his trail-crew leader because "when I dig, the earth flies."
Pete Dewell became "Axman" in tribute to his speed chopping through tree trunks and roots.
"I got the job done," he said.
At 71 and 77 years old, respectively, what the volunteers love more than digging and chopping is moving boulders the size of small cars.
"It doesn't get any better than this," said Knoke, scrambling over the rocks left by Humpback Creek when it washed out the Lake Annette Trail this winter.
Behind him, the creek sparkled in the sunlight as it rumbled over the edge of a cliff, sending a fine mist into the air.
Knoke and Dewell spent Thursday inching a hunk of granite the size of a baby grand piano into position, relying on their engineering skills, a half-dozen fellow volunteers and a pair of 5-foot steel bars.
"It's all muscle power," Dewell said.
Washington Trails Association volunteers, including Knoke and Dewell, are the best shot the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest has at recovering from $5 million in trail damage left by the winter storms of 2003 and 2006 and more than a decade of declining maintenance budgets. Since 1993, the non-profit has grown from 250 hours of volunteer service to 75,000 hours in 2006.
This year, the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service, which includes 19 forests in Washington and Oregon, has $150,000 set aside for flood and fire damage repairs. Baker-Snoqualmie received $15,000 of that. There is a request for additional money for the region before the U.S. Senate, but nothing in the House.
Gary Paull, the trails coordinator for Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, will use most of the money to pay overhead costs for managing volunteer trail crews. Less than two decades ago, professional crews, who were hired every year, would have done the work. Now the summer budgets depend on grants and there is no guarantee of work for the next season -- except for the volunteers.
Damage from the 2006 winter storms was the worst Baker-Snoqualmie has had in decades.
Some of the biggest pending repairs:
# Three washed-out miles of White Chuck Trail: $615,625
# Smashed bridge to the Big Four Ice Caves: $478,000
# Damaged bridge providing access to Big Heart Lake: $288,000
# Destroyed trail at Monte Cristo Campground: $178,000
Volunteers have always been part of the Forest Service, but the government is now relying on donated time to do jobs that were once solely the domain of professional crews. It is a paradigm shift for a bureaucracy that for more than a century has depended on trained staff and federal taxes to take care of the woods.
The WTA has been around since the 1960s, but it was not until 1993, at the request of the Forest Service, that it started conducting regular trail maintenance. The association now works in national forests and parks across the state. The work it does is held to the same standards as professional crews.
After 8 1/2 years of working on trails, Dewell's orange hardhat is cracked and faded. The semi-retired lawyer averages three days a week as a volunteer, and often brings along his three granddaughters, who all have their own green hardhats. The oldest is 15 and will be spending a week this summer on a crew for teenagers.
Dewell has a reputation of turning off his hearing aid at 1:30 in the afternoon, so when crew leaders tells him to stop working at 2:30 he won't be able to hear it.
Knoke, a retired Boeing mechanical engineer, has been volunteering his time for more than a decade. He came across a crew while hiking, liked what they were doing and joined up. He's now a regular on the weekday work crews.
The WTA is the largest of a handful of organizations working to maintain the trails of Washington. Whether it is picking up branches off the trail or helping to build a bridge, the organizations can find work for almost anyone. The Northwest Region office of the Forest Service has requested the non-profits to broaden their work to Oregon.
"The trail crew of the future will be volunteers," said Jenni Blake, the WTA trail program director.
For 18 years, Blake worked for the Forest Service, moving up the ranks of trail crews until she oversaw the work being done on more than 2 million acres of forest in Idaho.
Budget cuts forced her to take a job in mineral management, which she couldn't stand. Now she's doing the same job she did for the Forest Service, but for the WTA, and said her job in Idaho remains empty.
"There is a lack of understanding that the trails do not take care of themselves," she said. "You don't know it until the trails are closed."
Gail Throop, trail program manager for the Northwest region, said it would be catastrophic if the volunteers stopped. Necessary trail repairs would either be delayed or ignored entirely.
This winter, heavy rains washed out the ramp leading up to the bridge crossing Humpback Creek. Instead of a smooth trail at the end of the bridge, a 5-foot-deep pit greeted hikers.
The job was estimated by the Forest Service to cost $5,700. The trail is one of the most popular in the forest, and the damage made the top-10 list of work to be done this summer.
Still, it wouldn't have been done until July, when the Snoqualmie Ranger District's only trail crew had finished its training, said Bill Sobieralski, trails coordinator at the Forest Service's North Bend Ranger Station.
Instead, Sobieralski called the WTA, reported the damage and let them do the rest.
After Knoke and Dewell assessed the situation, under the guidance of their crew leader, they decided moving the boulder would be the best thing to do. It would fill half the hole and protect the trail from future washouts.
By the end of the day, the rock was in position. The hole was filled with smaller stones and topped with a layer of dirt, making it look like it had always been that way.
"Every time I come home, my wife asks me if I had a good time," Dewell said. "I always have a good time."
Volunteerism | By Jeffrey Hunter | 07:28 AM
