Volunteers from the National Smokejumper Association and Seeley Lake Ranger District Recreation Manager Katie Knotek stand in front of a sign the retired jumpers helped to restore as part of their week-long trail maintenance project.
Volunteer Eddy Ward stands near a large tree stump he helped fell during the week of work he and his fellow TRAMPS did at the North Fork Trailhead.
OVANDO - This week, retired smokejumpers returned to Seeley Lake, an area that many of them have a deep connection with, to continue to do work that protects and maintains public lands by volunteering for the Forest Service.
The retired jumpers who volunteer their time on trail maintenance are called TRAMPS, Trail Restoration and Maintenance Program Specialists. This week they updated important infrastructural elements at the North Fork Trailhead.
According to Barry Hicks, the squad's leader, everyone brings their own tools to use on the project. The work done by the volunteers helps the Forest Service maintain trails they might not have the resources to fix themselves.
"It's a struggle to maintain all these areas, even with all these volunteers," Hicks said. "It's a pretty big deal that we [the smokejumpers] get all these things pulled together to help them out."
Each year, the National Smokejumper Association organizes 20 week-long trips in eight different states that give old jumpers the opportunity to spend time together and reconnect while also volunteering their time to help maintain and build trails, restore cabins and corrals and provide other assistance to the Forest Service.
The North Fork Trailhead is the gateway to 1.5 million acres of the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex and is the most heavily used access point. Because no wheeled vehicles are allowed in the wilderness, the crew's work on a corral and hitching posts is especially important for those using horses or mules to access the Bob.
The TRAMPS rebuilt an old corral on the site, felled trees marked by the Forest Service for cutting, put new stain on a historical sign, rebuilt hitching posts and even cleared part of a trail.
Though some of the smokejumpers are from Missoula, others came from as far away as Alaska to volunteer their time. The area holds a special significance to the volunteers because one of the first smokejumping trainings took place in Seeley Lake beginning in June of 1940.
"Both Seeley and Condon were used as early jump bases," Hicks said. "This area has a strong connection to the start of the smokejumper program. In 1940 there were jumpers stationed at Moose Creek and they were jumping into the middle of the Bitterroot Wilderness."
Many of the men on the crew began their careers working on trail crews for the Forest Service during the summer and worked their way up to being smokejumpers. This has given them a lifelong appreciation of forests and public lands.
"When these forests were set aside more than 100 years ago, they were set aside for all of us," said Eddy Ward, a volunteer. "There's no other country in the world that has this much land that's owned by all of their people."
Katie Knotek, Seeley Lake District recreation supervisor, said that the organization depends on a great deal of volunteers to maintain the spaces that give Montanans access to their public lands.
TRAMPS are just a few of the more than 100 volunteers that help the District each year on everything from trailhead and trail maintenance to ski and snowmobile trail maintenance in the winter.
Knotek said that of all the volunteer groups that she works with, the smokejumpers are some of the most experienced. Several of the volunteers have used personal time to earn certifications that allow them to fell trees without supervision from the Forest Service.
"All we have to do is tell them what the project is and they can do good work while doing it safely as well," Knotek said.
For Ward, protecting and maintaining trailheads and other recreational sites is important because he wants to make sure that younger generations still care for the land the way he does.
"We're a bunch of old guys," Ward said. "But this land is passed on to the next generation to care for. The forests mean a huge amount to us. We all have green blood."
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