icons/avalancheicons/bootscompassfacebookicons/gloveshandsicons/hearticons/helmeticons/ice axeinstagramminusmountainicons/pathsMap Pinplusicons/questionicons/guideicons/ropeicons/gogglesicons/stafftenttwitteryoutube
Mountain Madness
Access Fund volunteer work leavenworth mountain madness

Giving back, the hard, physical way at our climbing areas with the Access Fund and the U.S Forest Service

Trail build­ing, stop­ping ero­sion, and mov­ing rocks — hard work to be sure. But, MM guide Jake Skeen puts a pos­i­tive spin on mak­ing things bet­ter and the rewards of some hard work.

It was a fun and unique expe­ri­ence get­ting to work on trails with the Access Fund between a cou­ple of guid­ing trips this sum­mer. It is easy to take cer­tain things for grant­ed in the climb­ing com­mu­ni­ty. How many peo­ple think about all of the work that goes into main­tain­ing belay plat­forms, pre­vent­ing hill­side ero­sion, and clear­ing trails around pop­u­lar crags in the US? It is the mis­sion of the Access Fund to keep climb­ing areas open and con­serve the environment. 

Moun­tain Mad­ness own­er Mark Gun­log­son and I first met our trail work crew at the Fun Rock crag in Maza­ma. It was com­prised of full time Access Fund staff, US For­est Ser­vice rangers, and oth­er vol­un­teers. Some may think that guid­ing is a phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing job… Try work­ing on trails. We moved huge boul­ders all day. When the rocks were too big for me and Mark to move we called in a heavy lifter vol­un­teer who was built like a foot­ball play­er. But there were even some that he couldn’t move — and that’s when they intro­duced a com­plex sys­tem of drilling holes in gran­ite, sledge ham­mer­ing steel wedges into them, and haul­ing the remain­ing blocks with sys­tems and equip­ment make crevasse res­cue look easy. This was an hon­est day’s work. 

hammering man giving back with volunteer work mountain madness
moving mountains volunteer with Access Fund Mountain Madness
access fund and mountain madness guide volunteer in Mazama

I was accom­pa­nied by MM guide Kyle Hornor on my next trip with the Access Fund. We hiked 6 miles into the enchant­ments and set up camp next to Nada Lake. Alpine swim­ming con­di­tions were prime with low­land temps in the triple dig­its. Kyle and I joined the Access Fund staff and three oth­er vol­un­teers on a cou­ple days of trundling huge rocks off the trail. This work should be the pre­scrip­tion for ADD in teenage boys. It involved build­ing mechan­i­cal advan­tage sys­tems (the biggest one I cal­cu­lat­ed was 128:1) and pry­ing rocks with steel levers down the hill­side. When we became fatigued from this we recov­ered with some hill­side weedwhacking.

Leavenworth volunteer work with Access Fund and Mountain Madness
Trail and climbing area work volunteer mountain madness and access fund

The Access Fund staff mem­bers, Anna and Jake, trav­el around the coun­try hit­ting up famous climb­ing des­ti­na­tions dur­ing their peak sea­sons. I encour­age you guys to look them up and offer a day of vol­un­teer work, as it is a demand­ing work­out with a reward­ing outcome!

Cheers,

Jake Skeen