Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation

The Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation provides backcountry trail maintenance to five national forests overlapping with the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, including the Salmon-Challis National Forest. This summer is the first time that the Foundation is expanding its reach to include the Sawtooth National Forest, according to executive director Ryan Ghelfi.

The nonprofit staffs its crews with a mix of funding from the Forest Service, state agencies, private donors and proceeds from its special Frank-Church license plate, titled “Idaho Wilderness,” Ghelfi said.

“The [license plate] program provides a lot of funding, but the mix changes,” Ghelfi said. “Half of it is often federal, very specific agreements to send X number of crews for X number of days to X area.”

The Foundation dispatches 6-7 backcountry trail maintenance crews to the central Idaho wilderness from June to September every year. Most have five technicians who work eight days at a time, with six days off in between treks.

Backcountry wilderness trail work differs in many respects from front-country work and isn’t for the faint of heart, Ghelfi said. Crew members must climb thousands of vertical feet, dig tread and build rock walls for 10 hours per day, sometimes while carrying 80 pounds of equipment on their backs. While most trips are fully human-powered, the Forest Service will provide the Foundation with mules and horses if necessary, he said.

“You’re combining difficult backpacking with heavy weights and technical manual labor, two days away from the nearest hospital. It’s kind of wild, honestly,” Ghelfi said. “But many people, once they get into it, don’t want to do anything else—they get hooked.”

This month, a 10-member trail crew will repair trail networks within the 125,500-acre Wapiti Fire burn footprint in the Sawtooth Wilderness. The crew will focus on a 40-mile area from Grandjean to the South Fork Payette drainage, targeting the most heavily damaged tread, Ghelfi said. The Forest Service’s Burn Area Emergency Relief program will reimburse the Foundation for $75,000 of its post-fire recovery work, though the group will be also working outside the burn area, Ghelfi said.

Ghelfi said he’s noticed backcountry ranger staffing numbers in all five forests—not including the Sawtooth National Forest—“going in the wrong direction for a while now,” and he expects that Foundation crews will be “cleaning up fire rings and trash” on top of their assigned duties.

“That’s not what our [federal] funding is explicitly for, but if we’re going to be there, we’re going to do that stewardship work,” he said.

Idaho Conservation League

In tandem with the Foundation’s work, the Idaho Conservation League runs its Wilderness Stewards program to offset a decreased Forest Service presence in the Sawtooth and White Clouds wilderness areas.

The volunteer-led initiative trains individuals to serve as informal wilderness rangers—picking up trash, dismantling illegal fire rings, monitoring trail use and educating visitors about wilderness regulations, according to Program Director Lexi Black.

The League set up its Wilderness Stewards volunteer program in 2016—the same year the Cecil D. Andrus–White Clouds Wilderness was designated—to help offset wilderness management demands for the Forest Service, Black said.

“Even in 2016, three wilderness rangers for hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness wasn’t really sufficient,” said Josh Johnson, the League’s central Idaho director. “Now it’s our understanding there are no full-time rangers left. The eyes and ears are more important this year.”

Black said interest in the program has surged this year. Normally, about 60 people sign up, she said.

“But this year, a little bit in response to the current landscape for our land management agencies, we’ve had 115 people sign up, our biggest group yet,” she said.

Black added that she was surprised to see that “folks will be traveling from Meridian, Boise, Idaho Falls and Moscow” to help out this year.

“It’s really become a statewide initiative. It’s very exciting,” she said.

About half the volunteers are first-timers who recently went through a classroom and field-training session with Forest Service and League staff at the SNRA headquarters on June 7.

Much of the day focused on role-playing how to approach other trail users who are violating wilderness rules, she said. The most common violations reported by volunteers are hikers without wilderness permits, illegal ground fires and fire pits, off-leash dogs between July 1 and Labor Day, illegal mountain biking and improper bear hangs, she said.

“More and more in the SNRA, there have been a lot more run-ins with bears, so proper food storage is another important one,” she said. “Last year, we had volunteers reporting a lot more wildlife than in previous years, especially with the wildfires—like more river otters at the Bench Lakes, looking for habitat after being displaced.”

Black said that volunteers will be trained in an intervention method called “authority of the resource” to reframe the conversation.

“You’re just two trail users, neither has authority over the other,” she said. “The resource—our beautiful wildlands—becomes the authority and the focal point.”

Once deployed to the wilderness area of their choosing, volunteers will collect data for the Forest Service. They’ll be documenting wildlife sightings, counting hikers and stock animals, assessing other trail users for visible wilderness permits and reporting the locations of noxious weeds, among many other tasks, Black said.

“We then submit that to the Forest Service, to give them a wider scope of what’s happening on the trails,” she said.

There are “funny reasons” why some of the observations matter, she said.

“It might not seem like a big deal if you randomly see three goats on the trail,” she said. “But in the White Clouds, it’s against wilderness regulations to have goat packing in there because there’s this pathogen that can transfer from goat populations to local mountain goat populations.”

Johnson, who runs the League’s Ketchum field office, said that from a user experience, it might not look all that different this summer, but volunteer work “will be more salient than ever.”

Black acknowledged that the Forest Service may not have the capacity to follow up on every data point, but the information, especially dealing with wilderness permits, helps the agency demonstrate usage levels to justify future funding.

“The main thing is honestly just talking to other trail users, because there won’t be rangers to go out there,’” she said. “Those permits really matter.”

Both Black and Johnson said that first-time volunteers are often surprised at the productive conversations, and changed behavior, they can prompt just by modeling leave-no-trace ethics.

“One of our volunteers tries to dismantle fire rings in more public places with more people around, because they’ll ask why he’s doing that, and he’ll explain this is actually against the wilderness regulations,” Black said. “They will respond that they didn’t realize—they just saw so many fire rings around.”

“For the most part the conversations go pretty well, and more often than not, people just don’t know the rules,” Johnson added.

Pulaski Users Group

Hailey resident Greg Travelstead is president of the Stanley-based Pulaski Users Group, which performs wilderness trail work in remote areas of central Idaho and Hawaii. The group also monitors invasive species and cuts down hazard trees near historic structures and campgrounds.

“We maintain everything from trails that are intentionally left rough to ADA-compliant trails maintained for wheelchair use,” Travelstead said.

In wilderness zones, the first priority is keeping trails clear for pack animals.

“Some of the thickets are 10 feet deep—it’s unbelievable, like the jungle,” he said. “If you extend your arms horizontally and parallel to the ground, that’s how wide you want the trail to be for pack stock, clear from fingertip to fingertip, even though the dirt path might be only as wide as a pair of boots.”

Trail maintenance is also critical for pack-train safety.

“Stock can freak out and buck if they run into bad trail conditions,” Travelstead said.

He said the next, more important focus is drainage.

“Most people think of trail work as cutting out logs, and we certainly do thousands of those a year, but what it’s really about is the water management, which is far more time-intensive,” he said.

Wilderness photographer Ed Cannady, who spent 31 years as the SNRA’s backcountry manager, agreed.

“The three most important components of trail maintenance are drainage, drainage and drainage,” he said. “When it rains, runoff will obey gravity and take the path of least resistance. The faster it flows, the more sediment it picks up. Not only do trails get washed out, but that sediment is put into the nearest stream.”

Cannady added that if water is not consistently directed away from trails, “spawning gravels get smothered and streambanks start to widen—all of a sudden, that water’s not as cold anymore.”

“Salmonids can’t live in that,” he said.

Cannady also voiced concern about reduced Forest Service staffing to monitor vulnerable species.

“We have the second-densest wolverine population in the lower 48 after Glacier National Park,” he said. “That can change in a hurry if nobody’s watching the forest.”

Travelstead said he expects about 90-120 Pulaski Users Group volunteers, including some from Hawaii, to work deep in the Idaho backcountry this summer.

“We’ll be backpacking in for five or six days at a time, carrying all the stuff you’d normally take for those days plus axes, saws, shovels, loppers, safety gear, hardhats, radios,” he said. “Some people take the work for granted.”

Travelstead said that the group operates its backcountry hitches using funding through private grants and federal reimbursement agreements with the Forest Service.

“Our reimbursements for last season came through just fine without any humbugs, but reimbursements for this upcoming season remain to be seen,” he said.

Travelstead thought that Forest Service staffing cuts “are certainly” putting more stress on trail-based nonprofits that cooperate with the agency, though the effects in the wilderness may not be as visible this summer. He said his main concern is a lack of front-country rangers.

“Sites run by concessionaires, like Redfish, will probably be OK. But it could be a disaster at other campgrounds if they aren’t closed,” he said.

Idaho Trails Association

Melanie Vining, executive director of the Idaho Trails Association, told the Express that her organization has one more volunteer project scheduled on the Sawtooth National Forest this summer compared to previous years, “and overall more trail work days.”

Volunteer crews assembled based on gender, age and life experience will head out on the Sawtooth National Forest in July. A group of high-schoolers led by two guides will clear the Little Queens and Queens River loop in the Sawtooth Wilderness over five days, and 12 active-duty service members and veterans will embark on a weeklong trek from Atlanta to Alturas Lake with pack animals, clearing logs and brush using crosscut saws and other heavy tools.

At the end of July, a 12-member, all-female volunteer crew, in partnership with the Wood River Trails Coalition, will clear trail and avalanche debris from Prairie Creek trailhead up to the lakes below Norton Peak. Last year, volunteers cut out 113 trees and worked through almost 300 feet of retread in the area, the nonprofit reported.

Vining said project cost varies widely depending on planning, transportation—such as flights, pack strings or jet boats—and whether food is provided. Replacing and repairing outdoor gear is another expense. Projects are funded by donations and grants from the Forest Service, Idaho Parks and Recreation, and Idaho Fish and Game.

Cannady said he knew of many retired Forest Service employees who live in the Wood River Valley and are volunteering to help maintain public lands this summer.

“They are getting paid in sunsets. These people love the land,” he said. “[Trail maintenance] should be funded by Congress, but people are stepping up.” 

This is the third and final installment of a multipart series on forest management in the wake of federal cuts.