Trail crews repair fire damage

Mike Thompson and Matt Cittadini place a boulder along the trail. photo by Jim Cornelius It's hard, dirty work -- but a mighty satisfying way to spend a summer.

Crews from the Northwest Service Academy wielded chainsaws, Polaskis and shovels, toiling along the north shore of Suttle Lake last week, finishing up a project that will leave the popular lake walking trail wider, smoother and less vulnerable to erosion.

The academy, an affiliate of Americorps, provides summer employment to college-age men and women in exchange for money dedicated to current or future college fees.

Two seven-person crews were working at Suttle Lake last week, one that has spent the summer on the Sisters Ranger District, the other from Bend-Fort Rock. None of the team members hail from the Northwest. In fact, they came from everywhere but the Northwest: New York, Maine, Minnesota, California, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Kansas, Colorado.

Team leader Jolene Johnson was representative of her crew. She wanted to develop some work experience and live in a new place while working outdoors.

"I just graduated college and didn't really know what I wanted to do," said the biology major, a native of Albany, New York.

So she signed on with Northwest Service Academy as a team leader, which means she'll earn $4,750 for 1,700 hours of service to apply toward graduate school. Team members get $2,700 for 900 hours.

But the money is only part of the motivation. Johnson said that she and her compatriots get more time outdoors than they ever got in college. In fact, after their four 10-hour days working on forest projects, they spend their days off hiking.

"Everyone spends it (free time) on trails, it seems," she said. "A lot of people have taken up mountain biking."

The crews at Suttle Lake were cutting fallen logs to make curbing for the trail, to prevent run-off from eroding the trail and washing sediment into the lake. The north shore was hard hit by the B&B Complex Fire and much of the existing curbing burned away.

That was only one of many projects the crews worked on this summer. The Sisters crew painted the lookout tower and cupola on Black Butte, reveling in the opportunity to camp at the summit, which is not allowed to everyday hikers.

They cleared brush at the Head of the Metolius and on the Metolius River Trail and built stone run-off diversions in Bear Valley.

The crews worked under the supervision of the U.S. Forest Service and the workers got a real glimpse of the workings of the agency.

"They gave us a lot of exposure to different departments, which was nice," Johnson said. "It was a good learning experience for us."

The Sisters Ranger District got some significant benefits, too. Heavily stressed by back-to-back severe fire seasons and burdened by the work required for recovery, the district was able to use the NWSA teams to get work done on the district that likely would have languished without them.

A quick calculation concluded that the Suttle Lake project alone soaked up 1,320 man hours of tough labor.

The Sisters team spent the summer encamped at Allingham Guard Station in Camp Sherman. They greatly appreciated being so close to the Metolius, where they could wade after a hot, dirty day on the trail.

The crews are wrapping up their work in Sisters and will soon disperse back to their homes and colleges -- fitter, more experienced and with a new appreciation for the wilder areas of the Pacific Northwest.