This season, the town of Glacier View allocated funds to develop a new route up Gunsight Mountain at Sheep Mountain Lodge, connecting it to their cross-country ski trails.

The historic Sheep Mountain Lodge sits at mile 113 on the Glenn Highway, about 10 minutes east of MICA Guides. Sheep Mountain and MICA have long enjoyed a good working relationship, and interns living at MICA gladly put in community service hours developing new trails while gaining valuable experience and skills.

Starting in mid-June, two of us interns joined Don, MICA’s owner, and his two dogs to set out for the new trail site. We brought pulaskis—tools with both an axe and an adze on the head—used frequently in trail building and wildland firefighting. Pulaskis can serve as both shovels and brush cutters to trim trail edges.

A seasoned trail builder himself, Don talked us through using both the axe and the adze on the pulaski. We began by cutting out squares of the top sod layer and pulling them out with the adze. That first day, we cut back the brush about 3ft on either side of our existing 3ft trail, creating a total of 9ft of open space. Although our section of the trail to be cut and built was quite short, working with just two people made it a monumental task.

We only got about 15 or so feet done by the end of the first day, but Don assured us we’d be back with more hands next time. Since we worked for a company that runs helicopter tours, the three of us also got a ride in an R44 with Mark, the owner of Sheep Mountain Lodge, to “scout out the route” on day one. Riding in a helicopter has been on my bucket list for years, so I was excited.

By the time we returned for our second day of trail building in July, our crew had grown from two to five. As a result, we accomplished nearly ten times as much as on the first day. The increased speed came partly from the technique: everyone lines up in equal spacing along the trail and moves forward together. The first person cuts out the sod and starts removing pieces; those behind continue the process, and the last person focuses on details, such as smoothing the surface and eliminating pesky roots.

In our process, we found it helpful to have one or two people move ahead and get started. They removed large alder root masses that required a lot of time and energy. This let the rest of the group breeze through. By the end of the second day, we were all exhausted. We felt proud of the huge amount of work that we had gotten done in a few hours. Pro tip: always bring a wireless Bluetooth speaker when doing trail work, it makes things a thousand times more fun.

Our third and last day at Sheep Mountain was spent with a whopping group of 7 MICA interns. We even had our very own trail crew expert, a local Glacier View resident named Carl. Carl was a useful addition to the group; despite being more than three times our age, he worked just as efficiently and quickly as the rest of us, if not more so. This master of the trail had the knowledge of years of building trails all across the American West.

Carl was very interested to know how we were able to play whatever kind of music we wanted all the time. We made sure he got introduced to streaming music. By the afternoon of the third day, we had made it to the creek that crosses our trail. We were almost finished with our trail. Here, on the loose, rocky streambed, Carl taught us how to build rock steps and flatten a path along the creek’s cut banks. This only took us about 45 minutes to complete the trail feature on the third day.