Trail Work
Helping Out the Bob: Volunteering in Montana’s Largest Wilderness Complex
In what amounts to a sponsored trip to a place few get to, trail crews with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation repair the nation’s oldest working backcountry phone line.By Maggie Neal Doherty, 7-28-11
Group photo during a memorable volunteer trip with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation.
Pull, don’t push! When you’re working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness with a crosscut saw, this is the rule.
For five days in July, “Pull, don’t push!” became my mantra. Without the whine of the chainsaw or the stench of two-cycle engines to burn your nostrils, it is the sing of the blade, powered by two people, that makes trail crew work possible in Montana’s largest wilderness complex that said no to roads, vehicles and motorized anything in the late 1960s, largely thanks to one man, Robert Marshall.
Six of my friends and I signed up with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation (BMWF) for one of their many volunteer trail crew projects. Our goal was to free a section of downed telephone line on the Historic Phone Line along the South Fork of the Flathead River in the 1.5 million acre complex. For 15 years the BMWF has placed volunteers deep within one of the country’s largest and most remote wildernesses to help maintain and preserve the many trails, cabins and artifacts that encompass a place affectionately referred to as “the Bob.”
I’ve joined the BMWF on five volunteer trips over the past two years and each one has been a memorable experience. Frankly, it’s practically a free vacation into the Bob. Granted, there’s work and a lot of it, but the BMWF provides the expertise of a seasonal crew leader; it coordinates a volunteer packer to haul in all the tools, food, and group gear; and the BMWF even purchases all the food for the trip. We’re not talking basic, backcountry fare either. With the help of a pack string, such delights as sausage and fresh vegetables make their way into the Bob and onto your plate.
My six friends are all backcountry-savvy mountain folks. We ranged in age from late 20s to early 60s. Yet among us, we didn’t have much trail-crew experience. Direction would come from our crew leader, Kelsey, who’s in her second work season with the BMWF, after a stint with the Montana Conservation Corps. We met Kelsey at the Spotted Bear Ranger Station and then traveled together to the Meadow Creek trailhead to begin our journey into the Bob. Our base camp was Black Bear Cabin, a Forest Service cabin perched above the west bank of the South Fork of the Flathead River, 12 miles from the trailhead.
As a small nonprofit headquartered in Hungry Horse, the BMWF has hosted more than 551 volunteer projects with more than 5,000 individuals in the past 15 years. With the work all done by blood, sweat, smiles and a few blisters, the BMWF has cleared and re-opened 4,300 miles of trail within the complex that is the Great Bear, Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness areas. In that time, the BMWF volunteers have contributed the value of $5 million in labor to the Bob.
An added benefit of signing up to clear trail in the Bob: One beautiful sunset. Photo courtesy of Maggie Neal Doherty.
The BMWF sponsors a wide range of trips, about 50 projects annually for individuals to sign up for each summer – ranging from one day to nine days in length. Volunteers, both young and old, lend a hand to a growing need to maintain the Bob’s trail system and also to help rid the pristine wilderness of a growing noxious weed invasion.
To improve communications after the 1910 fires that scorched 3 million acres across Washington, Idaho and Western Montana, the Forest Service began constructing phone lines to connect their backcountry administrative sites. The Historic Phone Line in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, at 39 miles long, is the nation’s oldest working backcountry telephone line. Stretching south from Black Bear Cabin and ending at Danaher Cabin, it connects five Forest Service cabins and backcountry ranger stations.
Each year, the No. 9 galvanized wire is subject to a beating by the elements. If it’s not the snow or wind, it’s the falling trees that bring it into disrepair. Because it is a working historical artifact, each summer both volunteer crews with the BMWF and Forest Service employees work to clear the line, hang it and see to its maintenance.
For three days we toiled (the kind folks at the BMWF doll out a rest day in the middle of the week which can either be used for rest or exploration. I chose exploration and trekked south to Big Salmon Lake, very worthy of the 18 miles). We crossed the suspension bridge over the South Fork and headed south on trail No. 80 and worked along the line to Damnation Creek. Granted, the wire runs along the trail, but the line doesn’t exactly stay on the nice, typically flat trail. No, the phone line darts up the mountain side and plunges into the valley above the river. We’d scramble, with our tools, up and down, chasing the downed line to saw it free.
In teams of two, we’d leap frog the line. We’d nominate a scout who’d follow the wire and call back with directions on which tool we required – it could be a large log that needed the two-person crosscut or a small log that could be cut with an Oregon saw. Always a different puzzle to solve – which tool to use, where will the log go if it rolls, is a lever needed, will it pinch the saw, where is the tension point and is this safe? These were all questions requiring answers before the tools were removed from their leather sheaths.
Physics has never been my strong point, but after one day in the woods, I had a better grasp of levers, tension points and the law of gravity than I ever managed from studying high school textbooks. Due to my ample behind, I quickly acquired the nickname “Lever Butt.” If a tree began to pitch or roll, I’d simply sit on it, only if it were safe to do so. On big logs that need levers, I’d find a nice big branch and apply my own weight. Power tools be damned, all you need is your own strength and years of ski training to supply the might.
By our third work day, we had removed 129 downed trees from the phone line. The following morning, we were to meet again with Pat Clanton, owner of South Fork Outfitters, who volunteers his time and his mule string to pack trips for the BMWF. He was pleased to hear of our accomplishments and especially impressed we’d consumed all of wine and whiskey he packed in for our trip (note: volunteers must supply their own libations).
As he loaded the gear into panniers, we strapped on our packs and said our farewells to the Forest Service trail crew folks who’d also been our companions for the week. We bade farewell too to our camp spot, the decommissioned airstrip above Black Bear cabin. There, we set up our tents and also held our nightly cocktail hour watching elk graze under the alpenglow.
As we crossed the suspension bridge above the boiling South Fork and turned to look back at Black Bear, and Charlie, my dear friend Sanford’s father, said to me, “I don’t know if I gave back to the Bob as much as it gave back to me.”
My feelings precisely. And I’m pretty sure we are not the only two people who share the sentiment.
For more information, visit the site for the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation.
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I have been in two wind storms that happened in daylight hours closing the road home. One I was bullbucking, and was following two sets of cutters out early due to a red flag fire warning, when an August east wind blew down Saddlebag against the short roots and the road was filled with hundred year old second growth. It took five hours to cut our way to freedom. The other one it was a fifty mile ride around the countryside of Cottage Grove, as this blow was in old growth on mostly private land. I remember it took the Drive In movie screen to ground. And two years later, the Columbus Day storm in 1962 took that screen again. And maybe 20 billion board feet or more of saw timber to ground. That is where the majority of the low elevation old growth met its Waterloo. Not logged on purpose. Blown to ground by a freak storm and salvage logged. Weyerhaeuser didn't cut a green tree for three years. They had that much on the ground and tax implications of damage claims and salvage logging.
I just get green with envy when I see accounts of backcountry Big W wilderness experiences in Region One, where Wilderness did not mean burn all the old ranger cabins and CCC shelters, like it did in Region 6. There are no three sided shelters along the "Skyline Trail", now called the Pacific Crest Trail, all having been burned by the USFS after the Wilderness Act of 1964. I still have a bad taste in my mouth for that arrogant USFS decision. I see the same responses today in our Congress, unable to make good decisions because we continue to elect partisan idiots to office, on both sides of the spectrum.
Back country hikers should try one of those professional pruning saws Sandvik makes, in the trail maintenance operations. Strong, light, and user friendly. Just remember to undercut, and use the wedge if you get it bound up.
I pick up the paper every morning, and I can read about the fire that destroyed something of value the day before. We have building codes, warning systems, prevention education, and still we have fires every day. Do you really think that aboriginals did not have fire issues with cooking, carelessness, or need to manage for their survival?? Wilderness was never free from the hand of man, and now that Salazar is finding ways to include purchased cutover timberland and ranch land in Wilderness, as he has done in the last year in California, the denial of prior use by man is a joke. And then including land in Wilderness that has not been grazed or logged for five years, and is now "untrammeled by the hand of man" is dishonest at the least. And then you will have the zealot in charge subverting the good intentions and supposed free use by the public. Wilderness does need to be challenged before designation. It has to be a conversation with all users, present, past, and for the future. Denial of man's use of land prior to European conquest, Manifest Destiny, is racist, and genocidal. You could make the case that Big W wilderness is an icon of genocide practiced against the Native Americans. It denies their existence, and says that they were only "visitors" be their presence. No. They lived on landscapes, and were present and part of those landscapes. The issue of a town with streets and water, metes and bounds, is EuroThought, not landscape thinking.
The "Bob", however, had inclusions of uses and artifacts that were "the hand of man", and that is part of its allure and use. The zealots in charge have to endure things that their purist souls would deny. That is why the "Bob" is a used and revered Wilderness, and many are just lock outs for the public. My favorite pocket wilderness, Boulder Creek, on the Umpqua has been burned through three times in the last fifty years. Last time the anthropomorphic ponderosa pines were burned through. Let is burn is not good public policy, nor is it the intent of the founders of the Wilderness Society. No matter what the mantra is today.