Julian Brastow
Wilderness Ranger Fellow
Lookout Mountain Ridge Trail | Payette National Forest
Hitch #3 ~ 7/5/23 - 7/12/23
One thing I’ve learned after three hitches of immersing myself in the Lower 48’s largest contiguous wilderness area, is to hike into each day of work expecting absolutely nothing. With my crewmates Dylan and Ariel, I’ve walked up and over mountains, across rivers, and through both vibrant, green, shaded forests, as well as large swaths of scorchingly hot burn scars. It seems that the type of trail maintenance we do involves never knowing what’s around the next corner of trail, which can manifest physically as an easy stroll through a beautiful subalpine forest, admiring the views and moving a log off the trail every ten minutes or so, or a soul-crushing cluster you-know-what of 50 burnt trees fallen across a 100-foot stretch of the trail that is nothing but demoralizing and makes for painstakingly slow progress. During this past hitch on the Lookout Mountain Ridge Trail, we encountered these two extremes, as well as everything in between. It makes for maintaining a steady optimistic attitude an uphill battle, but adds to the adventurousness of our work, and can be extraordinarily rewarding once you learn how to cope with the wildly variable nature of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness: go into each day of your hitch with no expectations, and focus on pulling saw through one log at a time.
Before: a particularly rough section of trail
After: the same section of trail after being cleared, with Ariel and I posing with the crosscut saw
The first day of our hitch involved waking up nothing but well-rested and eager to get on the road after America’s favorite holiday, and spending over five hours in the trusty old green suburban, most of which was spent on dirt roads pushing deeper and deeper into the Payette, driving along the beautiful South Fork of the Salmon River and East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River (why???). We also learned never to trust Google Maps in Central Idaho. We arrived at Thunder Mountain Trailhead, where we started hiking the next morning, not knowing what to expect, of course. Within the first half mile of the trail we came across cuts that had recently been made, which confused us as to why there had been someone working on the same trail in the same season as us. However, we soon ran into a burn scar chock full of dead trees lying across the trail ready to be cut. Much of the next few days were spent alternating between burnt sections of forest with lots of work, and sections of shaded forest with living trees that did not require much work, as well as bumping our base camp from the trailhead to an enchanted campsite along refreshingly cold and delicious Telephone Creek.
Myself trying to avoid the mosquitoes
On day 5 we made it to Lookout Mountain, which provided sweeping vistas of the rugged Frank stretching to the horizon in every direction, and where we had an impromptu LinkedIn profile photo shoot. The next day we pushed our work farther, and soon encountered the soul-crusher I spoke of previously. This is where my seemingly never-ending optimism reached a breaking point. Clearing a trail that is in this bad of shape can be best described as solving a complex puzzle, starting from the top of the pile of logs and moving to the bottom, deciding which size saw (or brute force) is best suited for each log. We lightened the mood by yelling out names of the various tools we had at our disposal: “Zubát! K-Booooooooy! Visger!!! Liiiiiiiift!”.
Before: the soul-crusher!
After: almost a day's worth of work!
It was a tough, beautiful, and rewarding hitch, and on the last day we hiked our sweaty, dirty, fatigued, and emotional selves back to the trailhead, where on the way we unexpectedly ran into a literal angel. His name was Clay, and within the past year he had become an ICT through hiker, trail angel, and independent guerilla trail maintainer. It turns out he was the one that had cleared that first bit of trail before we arrived. He was so ecstatic that we had done all his work for him, that we were invited back to his campsite and were force-fed ice cold Ahas, Oreos, Fig Newtons, chips and salsa, and the now infamous cracker/pepperoni/cheez whiz combo. I really couldn’t have come up with a better combination of post-hitch snacks. Thank you Clay! I’m looking forward to continuing to develop as a team with Ariel and Dylan on our next two hitches, where I will go into each day expecting nothing, but at the same time knowing I will continue to grow as a wilderness steward, whilst working and frolicking in one of our nation’s most valuable resources.
Work on this hitch was funded by private donors and Idaho Parks and Recreation.
JULIAN BRASTOW
Payette National Forest | Frank Church-RONR Wilderness
Lewis & Clark College
Major: Environmental Studies
Julian grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. While living there, he spent a lot of time with his family going camping and exploring the outdoors and hasn't stopped since. Julian recently graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, with a degree in Environmental Studies. He was a trip leader for the College Outdoors program, leading groups of students on outdoor trips in the Pacific Northwest. Julian maintains a strong respect for public lands and wilderness areas and is stoked to spend a summer with SBFC exploring and learning about how to be a great steward to these beautiful places.
