“Maybe it’s because of my Midwest roots that I believe in volunteerism and stewardship,” Louise Suhr said about her commitment to trail work and her concern that more people who love and use our trails don’t help maintain them.
Louise sent me an email about a “trail work fiesta” that piqued my interest. Louise, along with Joe and Dianne Hofbeck, who Marcy Stamper wrote about in the May 25, 2017, News, and the Methow Valley Trails Collaborative (MVTC), are organizing four separate weeks of trail work to tackle different trails in the Valley. Louise wanted to spread the word that volunteers are needed to work with the first project on the Twisp River drainage on Thursday (May 22).
Louise worked for the U.S. Forest Service seasonally until she attended nursing school in the mid-1990s. She missed being in the woods, so she joined the Washington Trails Association (WTA) as a volunteer and eventually became an assistant crew leader.
After retiring and moving to the Methow, she wanted to give back to the community by participating in trail work projects. She has volunteered as a trailhead ambassador at Pipestone Canyon and worked on projects on the Cutthroat Lake Trail and Wolf Creek Trail, and continues to work with the WTA.
Joe Hofbeck, an engineer from Seattle, and Louise met through WTA. Since the 1990s, they’ve kept in touch and continue to collaborate on trail work projects. As stated in The News article, “Joe and Dianne Hofbeck have spent a lifetime exploring the natural world on foot, kayak, and bike. When they retired in 2000, they began volunteering on trail crews with WTA and later, directly with the Forest Service.” The size and remoteness of the Pasayten Wilderness appealed to the Hofbecks: “a large wilderness with so many miles of trails and so little money to maintain them.”
In 2017, the Hofbecks, who have no children, decided to contribute a significant portion of their estate to improving trails and established a trust to help fund seasonal trail crews working primarily in the Pasayten Wilderness. According to Louise’s email, “the Hofbecks have pivoted their focus this season given the ‘chaos’ that is happening to the USFS now.”
The MVTC, founded in 2016, “builds and strengthens relationships among trail managers, advocates, and user groups to support and enhance sustainable trail experiences in the Methow Valley.” This organization has three main program areas: facilitating collaborative trail projects, building relationships, and acting as a community resource around trail information.
Allen Jircik, hired in 2022 as director of the MVTC, is coordinating volunteers for the trail work fiesta and would like volunteers for the week beginning on Thursday, May 22nd. In his memo, he states: “A week of work will focus on the first few miles of several trails leading into the Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness. Our main focus will be to support chain sawyers to clear logs to the Wilderness boundaries before the WTA volunteers push further up trail in June. Each day, we meet a group of volunteers camped at Poplar Flats Campground at 8 a.m. and aim to return to the cars by 3 p.m. at the latest.”
A U.S. Forest Service crew cleared logs on the Hidden Lake Trail in 2024.
MVTC provides tools, personal protective gear, training, and light refreshments. You can sign up via the MVTC website for the days you want to participate.
Dianne Hofbeck said, presciently, in the 2017 News article: “The important thing for people to know is how endangered a seasonal trail job is — and the whole trail system across the nation. Those trails take maintenance — you can’t just let them go.”
