It’s All Yours
In mid-August, nine intrepid young people from Seattle spent a week in the Mt. Baker backcountry to develop leadership skills, assist rangers with trail maintenance, and immerse themselves in the wildness offered by local public lands. The high school-aged youth were participating in the long-running Youth Leadership Adventures with North Cascades Institute. I joined the group in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to make photographs with iLCP for the “It’s All Yours” campaign. The initiative is a partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Forest Foundation to highlight the diversity of young people who visit our national forests.
It was all new ground for most of the youth. They’d never slept in a tent before, seen a crevasse up close or made pad Thai for 11 on a camp stove. But when I met up with them in Mazama Park on their third day, the adventures of backcountry living had become routine. Their day began at dawn, with a hot bowl of oatmeal in the crisp air, then after some stretching facilitated by the leader-of-the-day, they shouldered packs and headed up the trail. Their objective was to complete trail repairs under the guidance of Leif and Brandon, two rock star USFS climbing rangers who patrol the mountain from parking lot to summit. The trails on the south side of Mt. Baker are heavily used by day-hikers, backpackers and innumerable climbing parties and the group got to work closing informal trails in the alpine heather. All day, passing hikers stopped to thank the students for their work and a growing sense of stewardship of these public lands was palpable.
Over a decade ago I worked at North Cascades Institute, and it was great fun to run up into the alpine for a night and see the important work that they continue to do. Youth Leadership Adventures endeavor to empower the next generation of conservation leaders, and it’s clear that these students will leave the program feeling that public lands are both easily accessible and theirs to steward. And with the National Forest Foundation’s help, many more young people may venture out to explore their local national forests in the summers to come.
