The U.S. Forest Service does a great deal to maintain forests and landscapes throughout the country, including behind-the-scenes work that often goes unnoticed right here in the gem state.
The Forest Service provides constant trail maintenance in the Salmon Challis National Forest, located just over 100 miles northwest of Rexburg.
Ashton Smith, a fisheries technician, and Bart Gamett, a fish biologist, help lead teams that clear debris such as rocks and fallen trees from trails to give the public access to the lakes in the area that contain fish.
"It's been extremely rewarding to be able to go up to these beautiful areas and to be able to provide access to the lake for people to go enjoy," Smith said.
The Forest Service puts in a lot of time and effort to keep these trails clean. Crews range from two people simply going to walk through and check a trail, to teams of up to 15 members if larger sections of trail need to be cleared from debris like downed trees. Crews will also sometimes reroute trails or build new sections.
Crews will use a variety of tools such as hand saws and chain saws to break up trees. They will also use drainage techniques to get water off trails to avoid erosion.
Smith and Gamett spend a good amount of their time focusing on a trail called Kane Lake.
"That particular trail has a lot of stuff that can go wrong with it, like the trees tipping over," Gamett said. "You can step over or around or walk around one tree, but if you let that go too long, you'll have hundreds of trees on the trail and that makes the access really, really difficult, and if you don't regularly maintain these trails like the Kane Lake trail, eventually it'll be very, very difficult for people to even use the trail."
The U.S. Forest Service holds trail maintenance in high regard.
"Our chief, Tom Schultz, has made recreation a priority for our agency, and this includes trails," Gamett said. "Doing the work we need to do on those to make them as functional as possible for the American public to use."
For anyone willing to make the trek out to the Salmon Challis area, Smith says the journey there alone is worth the time.
"That's also been a really fun perk of driving to go maintain these trails," Smith said. "I have these beautiful mountains that I get to admire as we're making our way out to go to work."