Trails Program Marches on
By Jon McBride (Missoula ’54)
Art Jukkala (Missoula ’56) started it. He convinced the Forest Service, with some difficulty, that old smokejumpers could do some useful work on trails that the Forest Service could no longer maintain. In 1999, he assembled 17 volunteer NSA members into two crews and went to work on trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The program has grown every year since, and this year between 130 and 140 NSA volunteers worked on 13 projects, repairing over 100 miles of trail, building and rebuilding several bridges, repairing corrals and gates and rail fences, re-roofing cabins and barns, and doing other maintenance on backcountry guard stations and administrative sites.
NSA volunteers have worked in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Colorado, and this year, for the first time, Alaska.
Also this year, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth honored the NSA by presenting the organization the “Chief’s Award” for exemplary voluntary service.
Perhaps an even greater honor lies in the fact that we no longer have to twist Forest Service arms for projects. There is now a waiting list of projects they want us to undertake, whenever we can get to them. In addition to the Forest Service, we also work with the Bob Marshall Foundation, the Sawtooth Society, the Colorado Trail Foundation, and this year with the Seward, Alaska Iditarod Trail Blazers.
Some NSA trail projects involve many miles of hiking, and others are on sites that are vehicle accessible. The projects serve the volunteers as mini-reunions and satisfying working vacations. Most return year after year, traveling at their own expense from all over the country.
Every crew includes an emergency medical technician, a cook, and a cadre of veteran smokejumpers. In their current lives they are doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, politicians, pilots, engineers, journalists, preachers, teachers, carpenters, foresters, soldiers, spies and lots of other things. That kind of mix makes for good conversations, good arguments, good times, quality work and lots of silk stories. What fun it is.
And what fun it would be for Art Jukkala if he were alive to see how his baby has grown.
