Travel plan and fire repairs mean "mega" Trail Crew for Lincoln Ranger District

For most Lincoln residents, the United States Forest Service Trail Crew- a work force responsible for keeping trails clear and usable - has been a fixture in and around the nearby back country for as long as they can remember. This year, thanks in part to Federal disaster relief funds, the Trail Crew has expanded to include more laborers than any year in recent memory.

Although the Forest Service has had a presence in Lincoln since the 1920's, the Trail Crew as an entity did not begin until after the mid-1960's. When spring flooding ravaged many of the area's most used trails in 1964, the Forest Service implemented an impressive temporary program to repair, extend and reroute some of the Scapegoat's most popular thoroughfares. Since then, there has always been a seasonal Trail Crew operating in Lincoln's back country.

On average, around twenty percent of the Forest Service employees in Lincoln each summer are Trail Crew. Over the years, the Crew has evolved from a two-man team working ten-day "hitches," to an average of four seasonal workers dedicated to trail maintenance. However, for the last couple of years, Crown of the Continent funding has made it possible to almost double that number, allowing the Crew to branch out from basic maintenance and tackle several necessary projects.

After 2017's disastrous fires, Federal disaster relief monies made it possible to expand the Crew even more. Many are returning veterans of the area's trails.

"The year I started we had four [Trail Crew members] and two part-time people on the Rec Department, and now we have 18 or 19," said Crew member Hayley Pines, who returned to Lincoln in May for her fifth year.

"We basically have the same crew as last year, but we have four additional people for BAER crew (Burned Area Emergency Response) – so it's for the burned trail," said Trail Program Leader Forest Moulton. "We got a bunch of additional funding to work on those trails that were burned over last summer. They'll be clearing them and falling hazard trees, first, then...doing drainage and any sort of issues that have come from the burn."

While the BAER crew concentrates on burned trails, the regular crew will continue tackling a few major ventures.

"Our normal trail crew will have...some smaller projects going on in the Wilderness. We've been working on turning puncheons into turnpikes," said Moulton.

Commonly constructed to keep trails dry through wet or boggy areas, puncheons are plank walkways or bridges over wet ground made by laying planks or dressed timbers over sills set directly on the ground. Many of the puncheons in the Scapegoat are three decades old.

"Those were all built after the '88 fire and they're...just kind of hazardous for stock because they get holes in the decking and the horse's foot goes through, and...a lot of them are just kind of falling off of the side hills, too," Moulton said. They're all over the Wilderness. There's a lot in the '88 burn, but we're converting a lot this year.

A trail turnpike is a construction concept developed to be minimally invasive in the natural landscape. The technique builds a trail above adjacent wet areas using fill material.

In addition to replacing aging puncheons with turnpikes, this year the regular Crew will begin a new trails project.

"The other main thing we are doing this year is trying to start on building these mountain bike trails in the Beaver Creek area, which is kind of a big deal because we don't generally build new trails, but they were authorized by the travel plan that was signed a year and a half ago," Moulton said.

"I think we can pay more attention to detail," Pines said of the larger crew. "When it's a smaller group, you just have to first focus on opening the trails, which takes a few months, then with leftover time you can work on smaller projects like re-routes or...building bridges or turnpikes. Now, we can...do more project work."