Working Up Outdoor Lather on Vacation Chores

Cold rain splashed off my hard hat and ran down the back of my neck. Mud oozed over the top of my boots and into my socks. Again I heard the boss say, “Put in another water bar.”

I picked up my shovel and began to dig. As I did, I wondered whether I had made a wise choice of vacation plans.

Along with 10 others, I was spending my vacation as part of a volunteer trail crew. We were doing trail maintenance and reconstruction in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area of southern Montana, just north of Yellowstone National Park.

Tax-Deductible Vacation

Such volunteer projects are organized by half a dozen nonprofit agencies each year. They offer the opportunity to make a contribution to the nation’s trail system and the chance to work flabby muscles into shape, meet people from all over the country who enjoy the outdoors, and take a tax deduction on your vacation.

The projects last anywhere from a day to the entire summer, and volunteers usually work in national parks, forests and other conservation areas.

In Colorado last summer one group dismantled and packed out the remains of an airplane that had crashed in a wilderness area. In Hawaii, volunteers worked on exotic plant control on top of an extinct volcano. In California a team built a section of trail near Preston Peak in the Siskiyou Wilderness Area.

Our group was brought together by the American Hiking Society and worked under the direction of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the 920,000-acre wilderness area.

We were a diverse group, people whose paths wouldn’t have crossed elsewhere but who developed a special bond after 10 days of working, cooking and playing together in the rain and sun. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 47 and included several students, an emergency medical technician, a social services administrator and a blue collar municipal employee.

We were working in a remote location, so the organizers had insisted that everyone have backpacking or other wilderness experience. Projects closer to civilization are open to novices.

Camp Near a Stream

After an eight-mile hike from the nearest dirt road, we set up camp near a stream in a large meadow filled with wildflowers. Moose and mule deer frequented the meadow while we were there, and coyotes howled nearby. Elk and grizzly bears also live in the mountains, but neither species put in an appearance.

Near us towered the Absaroka Mountains, and from the top of those mountains we could see the meadows and mountains of Yellowstone and the jagged peaks of the Beartooth Mountains.

With a workplace like that, any job could be a vacation.

Our tasks involved rehabilitating some muddy sections of the Jardine-Lake Abundance Trail. Pack horses used on the trail would sometimes sink in the mud up to their bellies, a forest service officer told us. After looking at the trail, we could believe him.

In keeping with the wilderness character of the area, we used only hand tools and muscle power. A forest service mule helped with some of the heavier work.

New Trail Built

Over most of the trail we installed water bars, five- or six-foot logs dug into the trail to control erosion. At one place we built a new trail around a swampy section.

At another spot we built a simple bridge over the mud. We waded through knee-deep mud and water to lay the foundation for the bridge, a task that turned out to be a good bit of fun once we got too muddy to care.

In an era of federal budget cutting, the use of volunteers has become critical in some forest service districts. One district in Montana, for instance, has only three paid employees to maintain 270 miles of trail. In part, this is because the forest service has emphasized road building rather than trail building.

Whatever the cause, there’s plenty of work to be done. One-third of the 144,000 miles of national forest trails that existed after World War II are gone, but more people are using the remaining trails than ever. That means trails erode more quickly and need more maintenance.

“There’s so much to do all the time,” said Theresa Roberts, a forest service employee who supervised the work on the Jardine-Lake Abundance Trail. “If there were no volunteers, much of this work probably wouldn’t get done for a couple of years.”

Many Sore Muscles

The work is not easy. If it’s not installing water bars in the rain, it can be broiling in the hot sun, cutting and carrying six-foot logs to cover the muddy trail. After a day of this, there are many sore muscles to tend to around the evening campfire.

But while the work is exhausting, volunteers find the experience exhilarating. “I have never seen so many people have such a good time working,” Roberts said.

Part of the appeal is the opportunity to get away from civilization and spend a week or more surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery on the continent.

“This was the first vacation I came back from feeling satisfied,” said Evelyn Maher, 47, a New Jersey secretary who describes her usual vacation as “hanging around somewhere aimlessly and coming back home more tired than when I left.”

Maher said she’d always wanted to go on a wilderness trip. “Starting at 47 is pretty tough,” she said, but added, “I love this. I love the mountains.”

Friendships Develop

But as important as the surroundings were, friendships did develop among a group of strangers working together, sometimes under difficult conditions, to accomplish a goal. At the end of the trip, Maher wrote in the group’s diary: “The friends I have made allowed me to touch their lives and I have gladly shared my life with them. There has been laughter, lots of it, more for me than I have experienced in a long time. I have remembered how to be young again. . . .”

The vacation also had an effect on her attitudes about her job, which Maher described as “sitting in one place and typing all day. I’m more sure now that I don’t like what I do,” she said after returning home. “My goal is to spend more time doing what I did in the mountains.”

Volunteers also found great satisfaction in the work they accomplished. After some strenuous work on a muddy but scenic section of trail, we took great pride in hand-crafting a sign proclaiming a rough bridge we built as the “Pulaski Skyway,” named after a tool we used and after the immense structure that carries traffic past the chemical plants of northern New Jersey.

As we headed home, Marilyn Mudge expressed what many of us felt about the volunteer vacation program. Mudge, 35, a second-grade teacher from Vail, Colo., who spends a lot of her time hiking and camping in the mountains, said: “This was my chance to give back to the trails what I have taken out of them.”

Most organizations operate on a shoestring, so in writing for information, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

The American Hiking Society, P.O. Box 86, North Scituate, Mass. 02060, plans 25 trips this year. Trips typically last 10-11 days. Volunteers work in national parks and forests from Hawaii and Alaska to Montana, Wyoming, Michigan, Kentucky and Maine. The cost is $25.

The Colorado Mountain Club, c/o Trail Coordinator, 5855 W. Quarles Drive, Littleton, Colo. 80123, will be working to complete the main line of the Colorado Trail this summer. Fourteen weeklong trips are planned, but volunteers can stay one week, two weeks or the entire summer if they wish. A one-time registration fee of $25.

The Appalachian Mountain Club, P.O. Box 298, Gorham, N.H. 03581, organizes trips in the Northeast, West, Virgin Islands and Alaska. Most last 10 days. Fees range from $15 to $150, with the Northeastern trips the cheaper ones.

The Sierra Club, 730 Polk St., San Francisco 94109, will run about 26 “service trips” all over the country, including raft trips where participants clean up trash as they float down a river. About half the days are work days, half are free. Cost averages $90, with some scholarships available. Expenses are not tax deductible. Trips are for Sierra Club members only, although you can join ($29) to participate in a trip.

One-day work trips are organized by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, 232 Madison Ave., New York 10016, on Saturdays and Sundays, all year. Regularly maintains 750 miles of trails in the two states.