Wyoming: Volunteers on horseback clear hundreds of miles of trails

Trib.com - Full Article

Mark Davis Powell Tribune Via Wyoming News Exchange
Jun 29, 2019

POWELL — With storms threatening, a half-dozen horsemen loaded their saddle bags and panniers with serious looking saws, lunches of canned sardines and jerky, and rain slickers. They climbed aboard their steeds and headed west into the North Absaroka Wilderness.

Through rushing Sunlight Creek, canyons lined by yellow stone buttes and meadows blooming with Indian paintbrush and deadly but beautiful larkspur, the horsemen rode for hours, searching for obstructions on the trail. They had been here before — the mostly clear path leads between a myriad of cut tree trunks and brush, cleared by hand by crews in years past.

It’s hard to imagine the commitment it takes to keep a trail open, but that’s the resolve of a small group of area community servants: the Shoshone Back Country Horsemen. One of the busiest chapters in the U.S., the well-seasoned volunteers have cleared thousands of miles of trails in the Shoshone National Forest one obstruction at a time. But Little Sunlight Trail is designated as wilderness, so the group had to go old school...

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