Guino, people just don’t go out in the wilderness and do crazy things. Most of the PCT was developed with people using stock. Have you done any trailwork this year? Or perhaps you just like hiking, have someone else do the work and then you can bytch about the job. As far as I know there isn’t a trail-fairy that comes along and provides maintenance and support. Your point was heard, I don’t think you should be calling people names that are doing a job.
Rick
A firebreak needs to be much larger than 6 or 8 feet. This thread is getting out of control. I reread hydro heidi’s entry and see that this chat room gets nothing accomplished. Just bored people sitting at a computer name calling and fighting. Imagine how many feet of overgrown vegetation we could have trimmed back in this time!
Raindance
Point taken raindance, I think this is the longest thread ever. Sorry for the name calling back there that is inappropriate. As far as calling volunteering a “Job” though Rick, I think your wrong there. Volunteers do work for free that people like me or others could get paid to do. I think that scores of volunteers who seem ever to anxious to jump to work make jobs through the Forest and Park Service unavailable. Maybe if people weren’t so eager to do work that other people did as a job as their hobby their would be less need to complain in exceedingly long threads such as this one. WG-03 trail crew (ENTRY LEVEL seasonals) get around $12.50/ hr. nearly free rent and super cheap or free food, Super rewarding work, and something to be real proud of. However when these jobs become unavailable because volunteers take them instead of just hiking in the woods, or playing golf in their free time, we need to settle for much less of paying jobs, like working in the Laundry dept for the concessionaires at a Park like I did for $5.45/ hr. or being the night custodian at a resort at Mammoth for $9.00 scrubbing toilets also what I did, in order to be close to nature. Roosevelt had it right with the CCC employing people to do this stuff. Unfortunately money seems to have been relocated to wars on Muslims now. Sads state of affairs. Thanks for your effort guys.
guino
Washington State trail upkeep, guino…since the majority of it is done by volunteers. Sure, in fantasy world it would be great if people got paid. But that just isn’t going to happen in this day anymore. If we want to keep trails open, we need people to volunteer (and how selfless is that if you think about it?)
Here in WA much of the trail work is done by the WTA in conjunction with the NP’s and NF’s. A good chunk of work on the PCT south of Rainier is done by the Backcountry Horsemen group.
I am grateful for what they all do (and I give to WTA for that reason). For example…This year without volunteers giving so much Rainier would not have opened like it did. They made the difference between a hell hole and few knowing how bad the trails were.
sarbar
Sarbar. I am in Olympic Chapter of BCH. We do volunteer work around our area.
I think why this thread is confusing is that over the trail described above there was a the same time, a couple of paid college kids working for the Forest Service and the man told he was paid by the section he did. I don’t know if they told them what to trim and where. This was on a section of trail that does the usual maintenance by the “Muleskinners” ike their sign or not, they are volunteers and probably didn’t have any thing to do with this mess. They are getting the credit for the mess because of a sign that was up. I don’t really think it’s that big of a deal if their sign is 1’ wide or 4’ wide, it wasn’t something that insulted your sense walking by it.
I just think we should thank the volunteers for the job they do all over the country. Whats wrong with a long thread, isn’t that what this place is for?
Rick
Guino, you seem to be completely unaware that the recreation budgets for US National Forests have been cut back to basically nothing in recent years. For example, the last fiscal year’s trail maintenance budget for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which includes all of NW Washington from the Cascade Crest west to “Puget Sound City” and from the Canadian border to Mt. Rainier, was a whopping$15,000. This is the area in which the population of the Puget Sound megalopolis does most of its hiking, so it is very heavily used. It is also the area that was severely damaged in the fall of 2003 and even more so in the fall of 2006. In case you’re wondering why the PCT around Glacier Peak hasn’t been fixed, that’s why. They did go up and put in a couple of bridges this year, which probably exhausted the entire budget.
If it weren’t for volunteers and a few Americorps crews (completely different branch of government), there would be no trail maintenance at all, because the Forest Service has no money, repeat, NO MONEY to hire trail crews. This is not because there are volunteers but because the folks in Washington refuse to appropriate any money. If it weren’t for volunteers, there would be basically no trail maintenance at all on National Forest land!
Instead of complaining about volunteers, try writing your congressperson and senators! Regardless of anyone’s opinion about the current administration, it’s Congress, not the President, that appropriates the money!
And get out there and help maintain a few trails yourself–unless, of course, you want to give up hiking for lack of trails to hike on. Because that’s what’s going to happen!
grrannyhiker
A big thanks to you and the BCH over on the Peninsula! I appreciate all that they do…even when I crab about trail apples 
sarbar