Our 2024
Field Season
To prepare for thru-hikers and other visitors each summer, PNTA coordinates teams of professional, student, and volunteer crews from across our trail community. As one of America’s youngest national scenic trails, there is always a lot of work to do from the moment that the trail melts out until the snow falls again.
Performance Trail Crews
Local youth and young adults from across our trail community serve on PNTA Performance Trail Crews each season. In 2024, seven crews were responsible for performing 80% of our annual maintenance on the PNT. Crew members have the opportunity to do meaningful work and camp out in spectacular wild places for up eight days at a time.
Volunteers
Volunteers play many important roles in the upkeep of the PNT. Most volunteers will help maintain the PNT at frontcountry worksites near trailside communities. They may also join us for longer volunteer opportunities, helping to maintain the PNT at backcountry worksites, or by transporting heavy gear and supplies to trail crews working in remote areas
Curious where PNTA Trail Crews are working May through October?
Explore this interactive map to learn about our work to protect and enhance the PNT during our 2024 Field Season.
The North Cascades Region
In temperate rainforests, like those found in the Cascades, the PNT needs annual maintenance to stay protected from nature’s toll. Two of the biggest priorities in this region are log-out and brushing. With heavy rain and winter storms, hundreds of trees fall across the PNT every year, and thick brush springs up surprisingly fast each summer.
Protecting our natural resources is another important aspect of our work in the Cascades. Building walkways and crossing structures can spare fragile alpine meadows from visitor use impacts and provide a better hiking experience. Maintaining the trail’s tread and drainage features not only protects the PNT from washouts it also helps protect sensitive streams and other riparian habitat from erosion.
In 2024, PNTA crews will spend a second season working with our partners to restore fire-damaged tread within the trail closure area in North Cascades National Park.
Recent Trail Stewardship Events in the North Cascades
Volunteer Events in the North Cascades
The PNTA would like to recognize the BOEALPS – Boeing Employees Alpine Society, Class of 2024, for their volunteer service to the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail this season!
BOEALPS offers a year-round program of climbing and social activities for members, as well as basic and advanced mountaineering courses each spring. This year, 50 BOEALPS members joined five PNTA crew leaders out on the Pacific Northwest Trail to fulfill the service stewardship component of the program. With the help of these dedicated volunteers, we made some great progress preparing the PNT for the season ahead.
On Anderson Mountain, BOEALPS members helped PNTA service two and half miles of the PNT through temperate rainforest. Volunteers helped to decommission an aging puncheon walkway and restore the tread of the PNT. Way to go everyone!
Did you know? In addition to hosting dozens of fun public volunteer events, the PNTA also works with groups to provide custom opportunities for their staff, students, or members!
In April, eight amazing volunteers with the Snohomish County 4-H Club traveled to Skagit County to give a day of service to the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail. The Snohomish County 4-H program teaches life skills that lead young people to become self-directing, positive, contributing members of our communities.
Over the course of the day, volunteers of all ages helped to restore the Heritage Hill Trail segment of the PNT on the Harry Osborne State Forest.
Led by PNTA regional coordinator Sterling Collins-Hill, volunteers capped a 60-foot-long turnpike and brushed and logged out the entire length of the equestrian friendly trail. Way to go everyone!
Northeast Washington Region
Did you know? PNTA works with the Curlew Job Corps campus to provide students with a variety of short-term work-based learning opportunities.
In early June, six US Job Corps students helped PNTA crew leaders give annual maintenance to over 18 miles of the PNT on the Colville National Forest. Altogether, crews cleared over 248 logs from the trail system preserving access to the summit of Abercrombie Mountain and a continuous footpath along the PNT between Priest Lake in Idaho and the tallest peak in Northeast Washington.
Over the course of the week, students learned to assess outdoor worksites for environmental and job hazards while working through challenging weather conditions in rugged terrain. Students also had opportunities to train on tools commonly used in trail construction and wildland firefighting, including the crosscut saw and Pulaski.
PNTA crews and volunteers also completed annual maintenance on the PNT across the region. In the temperate rainforests found in the Selkirk Mountains, the PNT needs annual maintenance to stay protected from nature’s toll. One of the biggest priorities in this area is logging out hundreds of trees that fall across the PNT each year. Regular tread and drainage work is also important because it helps shield the trail from damage caused by heavy annual rainfall, and helps protect our natural resources.
Recent Trail Stewardship Events in Northeast Washington
Okanogan Highlands Region
Surrounding the midpoint of the PNT, the Okanogan Highlands defy visitors’ expectations of the Northwest with an arid climate that nears desert conditions.
This region adds much to the diversity of the PNT experience. Stretching roughly between the Okanogan and Kettle Rivers, this complex high country landscape is characterized by ponderosa pine, rolling parklands, fragrant sagebrush shrub-steppes, sweeping grasslands, marshy aspen groves and ghost forests left behind by wildfire.
Following a wildfire, trail crews have more work to do, with increased log-out and brushing work. Many smaller trail structures damaged by fire or by its destabilizing effects need to be rebuilt and replaced.
During our 2023 and 2024 seasons, PNTA trail crews returned to Mount Bonaparte to restore the fire-damaged section of the PNT and reopen the closed stretch of trail for thru-hikers and other visitors.
Performance Trail Crew Dispatches from the Okanogan and Kettle Crest
Pack Support Volunteers
Backpackers and equestrians who carry gear and supplies to PNTA trail crews working in the backcountry help make their work possible. They help PNTA trail crews budget more time for trail work and less time time rucking equipment around.
This July, a PNTA Performance Trail Crew has been hard at work doing a burned area response and recovery project. By volunteering to help the crew pack-out tools and gear at the end of the project, our youth crew was able to get even more restoration work done on the Fourth of July Ridge Trail this season.
Thank you for answering the call for pack-out volunteers on Mt Bonaparte Andre-Boris Corso and Raina Skye. Special thanks for helping to pack our crews in, Sara Kaiser, Crystal, Walter Henze, Erica and Adam Swedberg!
Pasayten Wilderness Region
Maintaining a Wilderness Trail System
In addition to the spectacular 120-mile stretch of the PNT in the wilderness, the third longest in the National Trails System, PNTA trail crews also help maintain other critical parts of the trail network. North-south oriented routes are especially important to the equestrians and packers that PNTA trail crews rely on so they can work longer and more efficiently out in the backcountry, even at worksites that can take two full days of hiking to reach.
Our Pasayten-based crews are fortunate to have pack support provided by volunteers with the PNTA, the Back Country Horsemen of Washington and US Forest Service this season. On our first trip of the season a pack string led by the Mike Buchert carried over 600 pounds of gear to the Louden Lake Camp, a 16-mile round trip from the Goodenough Trailhead.
Performance Trail Crew Dispatches from the Pasayten Wilderness