Five women laugh as they sharpen the blades of their pulaskis in a tool shed behind the Bridger-Teton’s Ranger District office in downtown Jackson. The ‘Forest Corps’ trail crew is fresh off its last hitch.
In the backcountry near Togwotee Pass, you can see the crew’s work on the burn scar of the 2024 Pack Trail Fire. Over eight days, they helped clear over 200 fallen trees and place fresh posts and signs marking a stretch of the Continental Divide Trail.
“It was good,” 22-year-old Kat Ergil said. Soot still covers her hands and band-aids cover blisters on her fingers as she files a half-inch blade edge to a precise angle. She’s the youngest member, fresh out of college with a couple of years of trail work experience.
“It was a lot of cutting the first couple of days. You get real dirty, working in a burn, a lot of ash all around.”
It’s been about half a year since the so-called “Valentine’s Day massacre,” when thousands of federal workers lost their jobs, including about 40 in the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
The legality of those firings has been in question. Some employees have been hired back, some have resigned. Many warned it would be much harder to keep 3.4 million acres clean, accessible and safe this summer.
But excluding fire personnel, the forest is down 25% to 30%, according to Jackson District Ranger Todd Stiles last month.
To help fill the gap, Friends of the Bridger-Teton hired this group.
Each member of the crew has trail work experience, some working with the Forest Service as recently as last season near Pinedale. But none has ever been on an all-female crew.
“When you’re working with men, you have to prove that you are working just as hard,” Ergil said, “or can do the same things they can do and I think we all have a lot of trust in each other that we are working our hardest and can do these things that we’re being asked to do.”
They’re working across all six of the Bridger-Teton’s ranger districts. The Forest Service has not made available a list of staffing cuts between districts. But the Jackson Ranger District’s three-member trail crew, the women said, is typically seven or eight.
That’s who they were helping out on their eight-day hitch.
“We’re doing our best,” member Sage Abbott said, “We’re doing what we can every day.”
“A project in every district isn’t enough, but it’s a start,” 25-year-old Jillian Greene added.
The Forest Service was already understaffed before this year’s cuts.
The women haven’t noticed any unique trail deterioration this summer in the Bridger-Teton. They said it’s still early. Understaffing will become more noticeable over time as regular maintenance isn’t done.
“When you build a turnpike, when you build these trail structures, it takes time and energy and hands,” Greene said, “and over time, trails are going to fall apart if there are no people there to take care of them.”
Scott Kosiba agrees. He leads Friends of Bridger-Teton, the nonprofit that hired the crew.
He’s seeing blocked trails in some areas, at some times, but it’s hard to say how that differs from other years.
“I think we’ll have to do an autopsy at the end of the season to be able to compare, you know, year over year, the impacts on programs and on-the-ground work,” Kosiba said.
On-the-ground work includes responding to wildfires. Though this area has seen a relatively tame fire season so far, drought conditions have primed much of the Rocky Mountain West for wildfire. Missing staff could be felt most in late summer, if fires ignite.
The investigative journalism outlet ProPublica reports nationwide that about a quarter of firefighting jobs the Forest Service wants are vacant despite the agency’s assertion that they are nearly fully staffed.
In the Bridger-Teton, here’s what Kosiba does know: morale is down and there are fewer workers on each of the forest’s four trail crews. Those cuts hit each district differently.
“It’s been tough,” he said, “[When] you have fewer resources, you have fewer personnel and fewer things get done. That’s just the net result.”
It’s an open question: how many forest employees are enough? Outfitters, hikers and other recreators near public land will tell you they lend a hand maintaining trails in national forests.
Kosiba’s not convinced that’s a reasonable way to upkeep the BTNF.
“I am a heavy backcountry user, and I do bring a foldable saw with me when I’m in the backcountry,” he said. “However, if I’m on a trail that has 40 or 50 downed trees, I’m not gonna spend three days by myself clearing open that trail.”
Stiles said partner organizations like Kosiba’s make staff lives easier.
“It’s really helping to leverage boots on the ground with people out there,” he said.
That’s exactly what Ergil and her trail crew expect to continue doing this summer and have since June.
“What we’re doing is not like something incredible or heroic,” Ergil said. “We’re just going to support those people who have managed to stay in the forest service, managed to stay employed.”
Kosiba’s worried about further staffing reductions or funding cuts in the future. The Supreme Court ruled in July that DOGE could move forward with federal firings while not deciding their legality.
