CASCADE
Fifteen to 20 wilderness rangers spent Tuesday through Thursday camping in the wilds here to brush up on skills they use in the backcountry.
The work they do is fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act being observed this year, said Brian White, who is coordinating this year’s Wilderness Ranger Academy. The interagency program held its training in Arizona last year.
Wilderness as defined in the 1964 legislation is “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
White is the recreation and wilderness program manager for the San Juan National Forest. The San Juan, Rio Grande and Grand Mesa/Uncompahgre/Gunnison national forests in which this year’s academy participants work, contain slightly more than 6.5 million acres, of which 1.35 million acres are designated as wilderness.
Those answering roll call at the academy this summer range from Anne Dal Vera, a 31-year Forest Service veteran, to Christopher Ridener, a sophomore environmental studies major at Fort Lewis College, who was in his second week of an internship that will take him to mid-August.
Among the topics addressed this year were the history of wilderness creation, campsite rehabilitation, use of primitive tools (power tools are prohibited in wilderness), field safety, noxious weed identification, inventory and management, weather conditions, survival skills and interaction with wilderness visitors.
Training in the use of primitive tools Tuesday placed an emphasis on safety. Using shovels or a Pulaski with its double-bladed head of ax and grubbing hoe requires the user to be alert to the presence of others, White and co-instructor Lisa McClure said.
The tools can’t be used with abandon, they said.
Among other tools they will become acquainted with in the backcountry, some of which must be packed by horses or llamas, are the peavey (a pole with an attached hinged arm to move logs), crosscut saw, saddle saw and come-along,
McClure, a 20-year Forest Service employee, is the lead wilderness ranger in the Rio Grande Forest. She is the Forest Service regional crosscut-saw adviser, and she teaches volunteer sawyers from such groups as Backcountry Horsemen, who maintain certain trails for the Forest Service.
Ridener was hired by the Mountain Studies Institute and Southwestern Conservation Corps for the summer. He participated in restoration of a fen (a wetland) at Ophir Pass with the former and did trail work with the latter in the first week of the internship.
The wilderness training provided him a solid understanding of the Forest Service mission as it relates to wilderness, Ridener said. He was impressed with the “leave no trace” philosophy, he said.
“I’m not sure about the long-range future,” Ridener said. “But what I took away this week was how super-passionate everyone I met in the Forest Service is about keeping the wilderness wild.”
Two seasonal wilderness rangers from the San Juan National Forest’s Pagosa Ranger District attended the academy. Their season will be over at the end of September.
Zach Staley, with a degree in biology from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, worked for Volunteers of America and the California Conservation Corps in Inyo National Forest before arriving in Pagosa Springs.
“We practiced here at the academy what we see as rangers,” Staley said.
Staley likes wilderness work but ultimately wants to do research into animal behavior, specifically wolves.
Kristina Schenck, who received a degree in environmental science and policy from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, came to the Pagosa district in a roundabout way from the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho, where she worked for a nonprofit with ties to the Forest Service.
Schenck found drills with map, compass and radio helpful. She also liked role playing to simulate encounters with visitors to the wilderness.
She would like to continue seasonal wilderness work but dreams about one day becoming a writer who specializes in the outdoors.
daler@durangoherald.com
