From Signpost Magazine to 60-Years of Trail Advocacy in Washington
In early August of 2021, lightning in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest about 20 miles west of Naches, Washington ignited a wildland fire that rapidly spread in the areas’s dry trees and shrubs. The Schneider Springs Fire expanded west and crossed into the William O. Douglas Wilderness, killing every tree in its wake and burning the soil’s organic material.
When the fire was fully contained later that fall, an area about half the size of nearby Mount Rainier National Park was affected, with 75 miles of impacted trails. A loss of vegetation made slopes more vulnerable to erosion, and with tree roots burned, some trails had collapsed or become blocked by fallen trees.
The Washington Trails Association (WTA), in partnership with the Forest Service, spent eight weeks through the summer of 2025 rehabilitating trails in the William O. Douglas Wilderness, with volunteers and paid seasonal trail crew staff digging new trail tread, removing just under 1,000 logs, and repairing drainage issues.
For these dedicated WTA crew members, restoring trails after a big forest fire is a multiyear commitment. “Recovery isn't a one season cleanup,” said WTA’s senior communications and marketing coordinator, Joe Gonzalez. “Wildfires are really about long term stewardship. It’s never ‘set it and forget it’ trail maintenance.”
In years prior, WTA volunteer backcountry response teams, along with paid Lost Trails Found crews and youth volunteers, clocked 7,671 hours of work to restore access to areas in the Entiat River Valley of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest after the 2015 Wolverine fire burned over 60,000 acres.
This dedication has been apparent since former WTA Executive Director Greg Ball created the trail maintenance program back in 1993 to forge a deeper connection between hikers in the state to their most beloved trails. With decades of cuts to public land budgets and accumulating trail maintenance repairs, Ball hoped volunteers would step up and work hard.
And work hard they did. In the first year, 250 hours were logged; now over 3 million hours across over 1,000 trails have since been completed from more than 50,000 individual volunteers. WTA has become the largest state-based trails nonprofit in the nation—a feat that would make Louise Marshall, the guidebook author who founded the organization back in 1966, would surely be proud of.
Marshall started a grassroots magazine called Signpost, where hikers in the Northwest could share trail conditions and anecdotes from the backcountry. Nowadays, the core of Signpost are apparent in WTA’s current magazine, Washington Trails, and the Hiking Guide and Trip Report sections on the organization’s website, both of which give hikers a similar opportunity to share knowledge and excitement.
In its 60th year, WTA has the same goals its founding members launched the organization around. They continue to defend protections like the Roadless Rule, and are attempting to renew the Legacy Restoration Fund, which would unlock federal funding for public lands and fire recovery. In the wake of the budget crisis with public lands, the organization is crafting a five-year strategic plan to build an outdoors movement and continue mobilizing volunteers.
“But trail stewardship doesn’t just start and stop at the trailhead,” said Gonzalez, who is a triple crown thru-hiker and former guide who believes that taking action through knowledge sharing, lobbying for funding, and joining the WTA Trail Action Network are equally powerful.
It’s all about feeding into a larger community and ecosystem, from land managers and volunteers, to the everyday hiker picking up microtrash.
“Sometimes volunteers segue into paid staff, and sometimes paid staff want to take a step back or make a change in their career, and they will segue back into volunteerism,” Gonzalez said. “It's really just about continuing to build and develop the community that cares about public lands and cares about each other because then we're more likely to give back.”
—Angie Stevens