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

Trail workers overwhelmed


Lynn Smith of the Spokane Mountaineers cruises a campsite at Lower Stevens Lake looking for litter last Sunday. Smith was one of six club volunteers picking up litter along the 5-mile trail and around the popular lakes near the Idaho-Montana border. 
 (Rich Landers / The Spokesman-Review)
Rich Landers Outdoors editor

Forest Service trail crews are facing a mountain of work with a trickle of funding this season.

“In a word, it’s horrible,” said Jack Dorrell, Idaho Panhandle National Forest trails manager for the Coeur d’Alene River District, when asked about his trail-building and maintenance budget.

“The funding has been flat or falling for the last decade, and in this latest go-round it reached dismal. We use volunteers whenever we can. We look for grants and take advantage of state off-road programs. If a fire crew is idle, we kidnap them, but even that’s not an option now that the fire season is in full swing.”

While opportunities for new construction are very limited, the district just finished rerouting the trial up Independence Creek to avoid most of the 19 creek crossings that hikers had to endure on the old trail.

However, the Coeur d’Alene River District has two trails crews, each with about six workers funded for only nine weeks to cover 350 miles of trails on 732,000 acres, he said.

“We’re just trying to hold things together,” he said. “Because of the growth in the area, some trails are heavily used. The motorized trails in particular are suffering a lot of damage and we’re having a hard time keeping up.”

Saving the day in some areas are volunteer groups, such as the Panhandle Trail Riders Association, which concentrates on motorcycle trails, and the Backcountry Horsemen of America, which focuses on non-motorized trails.

“The Horsemen have cleared out the Marie Creek Trail and the motorcycle volunteers have been out on a lot of trails,” Dorrell said.

“Just recently, we camped our trails crews in the Coeur d’Alene River Trail 20 for 10 days and they reported clearing about 200 blowdowns off that trail and associated side trails. We had a lot of storm damage last fall and this spring.”

To make matters worse, recent wind storms have littered blowdowns on trails that had already been cleared.

In the Priest Lake District, crews had to be sent out to clear popular trails around the lake and to Upper Priest Lake, said staffer Dale Schrempp. “The Backcountry Horsemen are back up here and we’re just focusing on getting the main line trails opened up again,” he said. “We’re working on the upper Priest River trail this week.”

Aside from trail maintenance, litter control continues to be a problem at popular national forest sites, especially those accessible to vehicles, officials say.

“Just before the Fourth of July, the forest staff devotes a day to cleaning up the hot spots, such as Bumblebee Meadows, Graham Flats and the other places that are closer to towns and hit by partiers,” said Terrann Tester, a fire prevention tech out of the Wallace area. “It doesn’t last long. You get your hopes up when you come across a clean place and then you’re depressed at the next site with glass and cans in the fire pits.”

Some volunteers, such as Ed Banning of Kellogg, have adopted hard hit spots, she said. “Ed is a retired guy with a ton of energy who regularly picks up at Glidden Lake and some other places. The Boy Scouts are taking care of Revett Lake.

Six members of the Spokane Mountaineers hiked into the Stevens Lakes near the Montana-Idaho border on Sunday to pick up litter.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” said group leader Chic Burge of Post Falls, noting that the group had filled only two bags of litter. “I think people are realizing the Forest Service has no money to do things, and they’re cleaning up places on their own.”

“We can only hope,” said Tester. “My job (at the Forest Service) doesn’t allow me to take care of trails, but that’s what my husband and I do for recreation on our weekends. We hike into lakes around here and we always take garbage bags because we know we’re going to be packing out garbage.”