Washington Trails
Association
Trails for everyone, forever
Washington Trails
AssociationTrails for everyone, forever
We sit down for a chat with a recreation planner with Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to talk about her job, the current challenges facing the forest and our collective way forward for the future of recreation.
When WTA works in coalitions or with our partners to help envision what trails and recreation might look like in five, ten or fifteen years, we’re often working alongside someone like Sarah Lange, the Outdoor Recreation Planner for Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We recently chatted with Sarah about her role in carrying out the complex mission of protecting the natural and cultural resources of our National Forests while also providing timber and also recreation opportunities for a variety of users. Adding to the challenge: a growing number of people in our region are looking to get outdoors while agency budgets stay flat. Sarah shares how new approaches and partnerships are the key to the future of recreation as she sees it.
I’m a recreation planner for Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The recreation planner role does a lot of things. Part of it is ensuring that we are compliant with policy and regulation for recreation activities. Sometimes we’re involved in analyzing the effects on recreation for something else that the forest is doing, for example restoration work or timber activity.
And then the recreation planner position takes a mid- to long-term view on what the recreation needs are, so we’re identifying what’s missing or what needs improvement and then opportunities for improving recreation. That can be trails, campgrounds, day-use sites and things of that nature. A lot of it’s working on getting partnerships and funding aligned, getting other folks involved and identifying what the goals are for a particular area.
I feel like working for the U.S. Forest Service is a great position to be in because we are trying to take that more holistic view. We are managing the forest for recreation but also natural resource protection and stewardship.
I love tackling wicked problems, you know, the messy challenges that are hard to sort out. I really like that we take the bigger picture, longer-term view. I love that it’s interdisciplinary. I do have a special lens on the human dimension of national forest management, but it involves understanding a lot of other natural resources and uses of the forest.
I just love all of that, and I really like working with partners outside of the agency too.
There’s often a lot of needs that feel urgent. We’ll have parking lots that are overflowing, trails that are washed out, or roads that are broken, and sometimes the solutions are really slow.
They’re slow for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s just the nature of the process we need to go through to identify a solution and work through National Environmental Policy Act and compliance pieces. Sometimes it takes time to find funding. Sometimes there isn’t agreement about the right way to solve a problem, and that’s pretty common. That can be really frustrating.
A lot of the stuff that I work on, I don’t see the results quickly, sometimes I never see the results. That part can be tricky.
Below the clouds lie the Suiattle River Valley, one of Washington State's nationally designated Wild & Scenic Rivers. Photo by David Cooper. It’s an interesting question because what I’m seeing across the country right now is a reinvestment in recreation planning positions. It used to be common practice to have a recreation planner on staff, yet I’m one of few in the region, but that’s quickly changing. The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest is hiring a recreation planner, and there are some positions being hired on the Olympic National Forest.
Nationwide there’s an acknowledgment that the forests have a certain set of recreation opportunities that have been around for a while, but needs are changing, the population’s growing.
There’s so many immediate needs that it’s hard to be strategic sometimes in our day-to-day operations, so I think that’s where having a recreation planner is a powerful part of the toolkit that we have to manage trails and recreation.
The thing that people will see this summer is that there’s going to be a lot of trails closed because we’re doing huge maintenance projects across the forest as a result of our success in securing Great American Outdoor Act funding. That’s something I’ve been really involved in, helping coordinate our forests’ response to that major funding opportunity. We’ve got multiple trails and roads on the Mountain Loop Highway that will be closed, some of our most popular like Lake 22, Pilchuck, Big Four, and also the Denny Creek trailhead expansion on I-90.
In the short term hikers might be disappointed, but come back next year and those trails will be in much better shape, there will be more places to park, the roads might be less daunting.
Lake 22 is one of the most popular destinations within Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Photo by trip reporter Cuppa.
WTA is the comprehensive partner, from boots-on-the-ground trailwork to WTA’s advocacy role and how you all show up in the state and federal arenas to communicate about the importance of trails. That’s certainly something we can’t do in our role as a federal agency, but we benefit from that spotlight on trails and recreation that groups like WTA provide.
Things like the Great American Outdoors Act have been a game changer for federal agencies trying to get ahead of all this deferred maintenance, and it’s groups like WTA that makes those things happen. Another part is communicating the fundamentals of trail conditions and road conditions to folks. In fact, we get a lot of information from folks who are sharing trip reports.
Where I tend to play with WTA in my work is mid to long term planning: the Mountain Loop Highway and Alpine Lakes. Looking at that longer time horizon and benefitting from WTA’s perspective and understanding of trail user needs and use patterns to help inform more thoughtful decision making and planning.
We have booming population growth in the greater Puget Sound area. So many of those folks are coming here because they love getting outdoors. That’s a big challenge, thinking about how we’re responding to increased demand for recreation with somewhat limited opportunities to provide new trails.
Initiatives like the Mountain Loop Highway planning and Alpine Lakes Collaborative are really good examples of how different groups are showing up to advance the conversation for how we take care of these places in the future and how we respond to these challenges.
It’s not the old model where the Forest Service identifies the problem, identifies the solution, then implements it on our own. I just don’t think that’s realistic in our day and age where our agency budgets are flat, not growing in response to the demands we have to meet.
The solutions and the funding and the implementation all rely on a network of different organizations and agencies coming together, bringing resources to the table, bringing ideas, helping us think outside the box.
