WTA volunteer crew improves popular trail – and puts out smoldering fire

Camaraderie, candy, the desire to help give back to trails: People sign up to volunteer on trail with Washington Trails Associations for any number of reasons. Turns out, when you sign up to volunteer, you might save more than a trail … you might save a whole dang forest. 

Last month, an 11-person volunteer crew, one of a series of work parties improving the way to popular Barclay Lake, ended up putting out a fire after their day of work clearing overgrown brush for a full two miles of the trail. 

One of the Barclay Lake volunteer trail crews. The series of work parties improved the tread, cleared the trail and rebuilt sections to stand up to the many boots that will visit this summer. One crew even put out a smoldering fire. Photo by Andy James. 

“We had time to hike all the way into the lake and what did we find? An unattended smoldering camfpfire!” reported longtime volunteer and WTA member Linda Roe, who was on the work party. The crew had left their gear at the work site, so one of the assistant crew leaders improvised rocks as hot pads to safely carry the smoldering log to the lake.

Putting out abandoned fires is the kind of unseen work that Forest Service staff do all the time as a matter of course when they’re out in the field. With so many staffing and funding cuts to our land manager agencies this year, there will be fewer eyes watching out for these small smoldering fires dotting backcountry campsites and dispersed roadside camps, a big problem as things get hotter and drier throughout the season. (Most fires, even in many campgrounds, are banned at this point across the state.) 

While putting out a fire was an unexpected task that day on the Barclay Lake work party, it’s not out of character. Volunteers and the career staff doing trail work care deeply about trails and about helping improve trails for everyone who use them. In big and small ways, they pitch in, help hikers and protect public lands, day after day, year after year. This was just one more example of that sense of responsibility. 

Want to give back to trails? You can join an upcoming work party. Or you can go above and beyond by picking up trash, helping other hikers or even dumping water on a campfire left burning. (One hiker and trip reporter spent an hour last month putting out a fire on the North Fork Skokomish River.) Do a good deed while you’re out there? Write a trip report and show the hiking community just how much we show up for the places we love. 

Unlike carelessly set fires, that’s the sort of kindness we want to catch and spread.

Trip reporter Old Dave spent an hour scraping off the surface and digging out the hot embers of a smoldering fire last month. Photo by Old Dave.