BCRTs Accomplishments - 2010

Before: Where's the trail? A washout dating to 2006 made the Loowit Trail at Mount St. Helens impassable.

Backcounty Response Teams (BCRTs) are a unique blend of a Volunteer Vacation and your own personal backpack trip. On a BCRT, a group of up to eight volunteers head into the backcountry for three to five days to respond to challenging trail issues. WTA's one-day work parties can only address the first couple miles of trail, but BCRTs can address deep backcountry trail maintenance needs, which is what makes them so important and so attractive to volunteers.

In 2010, 115 hardy volunteers signed up for one (or more) of 31 BCRT trips. The work done on these trips is simply amazing. Here's a taste of what was accomplished:

• Five BCRT trips helped to restore round-the-mountain access to the Loowit Trail at Mount St. Helens. BCRT crews worked in dusty, steep and exposed conditions to repair washed out trail that had made sections of the trail impassable to hikers. This was one of ten Signature Trails WTA worked on this year.

  

  After: WTA BCRT crews have restored access to the Loowit Trail near Muddy River.

  
  
• Volunteers on the 5-day and 30-mile Devil's Dome-Jackita Ridge BCRT in the North Cascades removed 61 trees over the trail.
• In working on the South Coast Wilderness Trail - a popular backpacking route between Oil City and Third Beach - BCRT crews performed much-needed brushing, log-out and some trail relocation for sections of the trail that pass over headlands along the coast.
• A BCRT in August improved some of the notoriously rough trail descending to Blanca Lake, installing a new switchback and re-benching sections of the tread.

A big thanks goes out to all of the volunteers who made this work possible! Learn more about Backcountry Response Teams and return January 31 to see the line-up for 2011.

Locations of BCRT Trips for 2010