Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Pack Train Delivers Without Machinery

Jim Mann The Daily Inter Lake

Sweaty-browed, Bill Workman and Gene Brash load the timbers on the mules, check the balance, cinch the slip knots.

It takes time and muscle, but when they’re loaded and lined up, the two pack strings look like they’ve stepped out of a Charlie Russell painting. So do Brash and Workman, seasonal Forest Service wranglers who know the backcountry as well as their stock.

Their work could be done with a helicopter for less money and less sweat and in less time.

But the Forest Service has decided the hard way can sometimes be the best way, especially when it comes to stock packing.

It’s a tradition, a craft, a skill that date back to the agency’s inception. And it’s alive and well this summer on the Big River Trail, which starts at Bear Creek near the southern corner of Glacier National Park and parallels the Middle Fork of the Flathead River.

Twenty-six tons of treated timbers, re-bar and other supplies are being hauled by mule 11 miles into the Great Bear Wilderness. That’s 298 muleloads of supplies to rebuild support for large sections of the Big River Trail that are vulnerable to being washed or avalanched into the Middle Fork.

It is, according to wilderness ranger Kraig Lang, the biggest packing operation that anybody can remember in the Hungry Horse Ranger District.

“We could have done this in two days with a helicopter,” Lang said.

“We could have gotten a waiver (for mechanized use in the wilderness). But this is the right way to do it.”

It’s the right way, Lang said, because it meets the intent of the Wilderness Act - to preserve wilderness areas as cultural and natural strongholds, as free of machines as possible.

The Big River Trail job was reviewed and approved at the regional level. The cost for the mule trains was pegged at $25,000, compared to $15,000-$20,000 to haul the materials by helicopter.

The analysis also considered the harm the packing operation could cause to the trail. Other trails would have been damaged by a huge packing operation, Lang said, but the Big River Trail is solid and it dries out quickly.

“I was worried about that, but the trail has held up real well.”

He said a couple of places on the trail will require some repairs for damage caused by the pack strings.

“There’s a whole other side of the coin - keeping these skills alive in the Forest Service,” Lang said.

There’s a concern that agency-wide downsizing, centralization and specialization are gradually robbing the ranks of people who have practical field skills.

Packing skills, in particular, aren’t picked up overnight, or at some school, or from books. There are dozens of little tricks and secrets to keeping a string and its cargo together, and they are usually learned the hard way. Trail miles, mistakes and successes are what count, according to Workman.

Loads have to be carefully balanced and tied on a mule, or the entire pack can shift and slide off. A distressed mule can raise havoc with the entire string.

When the mules are packed, Brash announces that he’s ready to cross Bear Creek and get onto the shady, quiet trail. He and his partner mount up and finish doing what few people know how to do anymore.