Andrew Skurka's Blog, page 13

Guide profile: Alan Dixon

I’m 60 years-old and live in Washington, DC, with my wife and adventuring partner, Alison. I have two children and two grandchildren. Five years ago I retired as an environmental engineer, and now focus mostly on Adventure Alan, one of the oldest and most respected sources for ultralight backpacking.

Since joining Andrew’s program in 2012, I have guided 30 trips (including 19 where I was the lead guide) in Alaska, the Sierras, Utah, Alleghenies, and the Appalachians, and the Great Northwest Woods.

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Guide profile: Joe McConaughy (“Stringbean”)

I live in Seattle with my wife, Katie and Australian Shepherd, Crash Bandipooch. I work as an ultrarunning coach and Andrew’s Program Manager for both his guided trips and the online planning course.

I’ve set Fastest Known Times on the 2,600-mile Pacific Crest Trail (52 days, supported in 2014), the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail (45 days, self-supported in 2017), Ireland’s 100-kilometer Wicklow Round (17 hours in 2018) and Vermont’s Long Trail. I’m an athlete for Columbia Montrail.

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Apply now: Our 2021 guiding season has started

Yesterday I switched on the Application Form for our 2021 guiding season. Each year I do this, part of me still wonders, “Will anyone even sign up?”

Thankfully, there’s been no basis for this concern — some new applicants always find us, and some alumni always return. The more significant challenge usually is finding everyone a spot.

Last year was a tough season, primarily due to Covid and then wildfires. So I’m excited to start anew. Next year will likely present a few unique obstacles, but I think and hope that 2020 will go down as being exceptional.

If you are planning to join us in 2021, please apply during the open application period, which closes December 28 for the Utah and Alaska trips, and January 4 for the other locations. And it’d be better to apply earlier than later — to get a jump on the workload, we will start reviewing applications and drafting loose groups before these deadlines.

The rate of applications today has been flattering, and I think most of the 5- and 7-day trips will be full by these deadlines.

Apply now for a 2021 trip

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Guide profile: Jessica Winters

This will be Jessica’s fourth season with us. She’s a full-time yoga teacher, and also organizes whitewater-and-yoga expeditions on the Colorado, Salmon, and Tatshenshini Rivers. After completing the Triple Crown of thru-hiking in the early-2000’s, she’s gone on to traverse Iceland, complete the Arizona Trail, and climb dozens of peaks in the Cascades and Olympics, which are in her backyard.

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Guide profile: Scott Christy

Scott has taught backpacking skills for over 20 years with NOLS, where he helped develop the NOLS lightweight backpacking program. In that capacity, he’s backpacked and trained a diverse range of participants including NASA Astronauts, MBA students, US Marines, and Google directors.

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A call to action: Sensible forest management

When I suggested to Andrew that I write a guest blog on the subject of wildfires, I wouldn’t have imagined that there would still be wildfires roaring in December.

Indeed, this year has been truly devastating on the West coast. Over 5 million acres have burnt in Oregon and California. Wildfires remained active in Colorado into late-October. And new fires sprung up in eastern California in mid-November. For a period in late-summer and early-fall, all the National Forest lands in California and Oregon were closed. 

Hikers and backpackers obviously have a love for forest land and wilderness. Generally, we have been lucky enough not to be directly impacted, although there have been occasions where hikers have had to outrun wildfires. Regardless, trails now need to be rebuilt and trail-side communities have lost vital income.  

Our forests and rural communities are in a crisis and all the stakeholders need to come together to support reasonable solutions.

These include:

Prescribed burnsForest thinningBuilding fire-resilient communitiesManaging areas of forests as a sustainable resource to support the country’s economic needs.

Sure, there are complications: Wilderness areas pose a specific challenge, lack of infrastructure prevents mechanical thinning, and prescribed burns are often too risky because of the same extreme fuel load they are targeting to reduce. 

Dave Mihalic, the Superintendent Yosemite National Park from 1999-2003, summed up the situation well:

“Many people seem to believe they can have un-cut, Fire-dependent forests that shouldn’t burn, and should never be cut. But that belief only continues to build up fuel loads, and then they are surprised when forests burn as wildfires and turn into conflagrations.”

In short: We can’t wait to solve the climate crisis and hope it solves the wildfire problem. The climate crisis is just another reason we need to act now, or wildfires will continue, and they will grow in size and frequency.

Photo by USFS



So what can YOU do?

As a backpacker, I reached out to Andrew to look to garner support from the backpacking community. We have created a group of citizens from all walks of life and views, but all of whom have an overriding desire to help build and maintain healthy forests and support the rural communities that rely both on the forests, either directly or through the support of tourism.

Our goal is simple: To pressure groups, whether state or federal, private or public, to urgently move on sensible forest management.

You can find us at the following places:

Facebook: Citizens For Sensible Forest Management Web: csfm.netChange.org

It’s truly hard to grasp the impacts that these fires have. From the loss of lives, destroyed communities, air quality impacts, loss of renewable resources, and huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

This year the CO2 emissions from forest fires will be 110 million metric tons. That’s 10x as large as the savings in CO2 from the California residential solar program! The longer-term impacts are also tremendous. Now that the fires are just about out for the year, the assessment and restoration can start. This includes analysis of the impacted burns areas, restabilizing areas to prevent runoff into watersheds, and rebuilding infrastructure, and communities. This will take many years.

Possibly the most moving and poignant firsthand account of the wildfires I’ve read is from Dave Daley, he is a rancher in Northern California – you can read his account around the bear fire here.

U.S. Forest Service photo by Mike McMillan.



Some Background Information

There are many reasons (some well understood, some less well understood) why these fires are getting worse. First, the fire season is getting longer and the climate is getting drier, due to climate change. But forests have also become unnaturally dense too. What we recognize today as common dense pine forests covering the landscape are the result of over 100 years of fire suppression, a policy enacted and supported by the Forest Service, after the big burn of 1910.

As a result of this unnatural fire suppression, these dense forests were less able to adapt to drought years, making them more susceptible to disease. Making things worse, Pine Beetles have left millions of trees dead in Colorado and California, the understory is rarely cleared, and there are so few natural fires allowed to burn. As a result, when there is a fire, they are hotter, more intense, and much more difficult to control. 

At the same time that forests have become more of a tinderbox, more people have moved into the wilderness-urban interface. As the population grows and cities become increasingly expensive, there are more new homes built closer to forested areas that are at risk from wildfires – placing more communities at risk.

Finally, legislation introduced in the ’70s around the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have not kept pace with the need to manage forests. Thus, legislation designed to protect the environment is ironically having the opposite impact.

There are some pretty staggering bureaucratic barriers to the USFS on this front. They estimate that for every 1,000 acres of land they need to treat, they must now complete over 500 pages of paperwork. To put this in perspective, they have over 25,000,000 acres in urgent need of treatment.

Also, even though logging has dropped dramatically on the west coast, national consumption has continued to increase, requiring more imports of timber from outside the United States, which comes at a higher overall carbon cost.

I hope this has been enlightening, but even more importantly I hope it inspires you to act quickly!

Thanks for your support – and if you have any questions, please reach out to us by emailing me: matt@csfm.net

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Our Covid-19 protocols for 2021 trips

This pandemic has been dynamic since spring 2020, and I expect it to remain so in 2021. As the circumstances change throughout the season, our protocols will also change. I’m optimistic that mass vaccinations, widespread rapid testing, and effective therapeutics will destroy this virus in 2021, but until real progress is made I’m looking at 2021 as a continuation of 2020.

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Guide profile: Christy Rosander

Christy was new to our program in 2020, and an instant hit. She lives in Tehachapi, California, the gateway to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with her husband of 32 years, Dan, and has three children and two grandchildren. In 2021 she will be guiding trips in Colorado and Yosemite.

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Apply for 2021 trips starting December 14

Next Monday, December 14, 2020, I will start accepting applications for our 2021 trips. Initially, it’s an open process, and all applications received will be considered mostly equally.

The open application period closes on Monday, December 28 for Utah and Alaska trips; and on the following Monday, January 4, for our trips in Colorado, California, and West Virginia.

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It’s live: Our 2021 guided trip schedule

Last year was disrupted first by Covid and then by wildfires, so my primary goal in 2021 is simply to get through our original 2020 schedule (plus a little bit). We start the season in April, when spring arrives in southern Utah; and we finish in early-October, during West Virginia’s peak foliage.

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