Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest is huge and is home to some of the largest old-growth stands left in the United States. It encompasses nearly 1,000 square miles of inland coastal forest, and portions of it are quite remote. So remote that the present program to collect fees for recreation, an old-school system where you stuff [ more... ]

Under a pilot program from 2008 to 2011, the Legacy Roads and Trails program got rid of 640 miles of obsolete road, improved 235 miles of usable road, and upgraded 178 miles of trails in Montana. Advocates say the program was among the most successful in the entire Forest Service operation. The pilot program allowed [ more... ]

Ski Colorado’s Crested Butte all you want for $10 a day. The catch is that you have to make your way uphill yourself. The resort plays host to about 100 backcountry skiers per day, people who choose to skin the resort for exercise, practice, whatever and then ski down. They’re subject to a $10 per [ more... ]

It’s probably temporary, but a guerrilla trail network in the Croatan National Forest has been shuttered to mountain bikers. And although you probably think of Pisgah as home to North Carolina singletrack these trails are hard by the Intercoastal Waterway. According to the Forest Service it’s a problem because building the trails may have disturbed [ more... ]

In the face of a public flogging, the Forest Service in Montana has decided not to charge 20 bucks a night to stay at the Gordon Reese cabin near Chief Joseph Pass. When the Bitterroot Cross Country Ski Club built the cabin in 2001 at a cost of $100,000 and many hours of volunteer effort, [ more... ]

The Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is suing the National Forest Service over their decision to allow motorized vehicles on 14 miles of trails in the Rico-West Dolores travel-management area. The vehicles in question are motorcycles that now have access to a section. The hunters claim that no one bothered to check on [ more... ]

I’ve heard of bounties on the heads of invasive rodents taking over national forests. You go in with a pile of carcasses and get paid out for shooting them. But what can our vegan friends do to collect some cash from the government? Pick pinecones. It seems the Superior National Forest need pinecones for their [ more... ]

On Monday dozens of hikers were stranded in the Los Padres National Forest when a surprise rainstorm swelled creeks to levels too high to cross. An entire Sierra Club outing plus several more hikers required rescue. In all, 35 stranded hikers were rescued from the backcountry on just one day of the flooding. Additionally, two [ more... ]

The U.S. Forest Service archives would be an amazing thing to dig through. I feel like you’d find scrawling from guys like Edward Abbey and wildly inaccurate maps of roadless areas. Recently, someone found a photo album of forest service photos (pdf) from the 1940s. They detail part of the Superior National Forest that would [ more... ]