A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to find out about the volunteer work that can be done with the Forest Service in clearing wilderness trails. This is very physically challenging work as no power tools are allowed in the wilderness areas. All fallen tree removal is done with hand tools - saws, pulaskies, and wedges, etc.
The llamas are used to carry all the camping gear and some of the tools as a group of volunteers will spend 3-4 days at a time clearing sections of trails. A good day can get 80+ fallen trees cleared on a 5-6 mile section of trail. OK, some are dinky trees that take 5 minutes, but some are really big whoppers (24” diam) that take a couple of hours. We also collect any trash found along the way that the llamas then pack out and remove any illegal camp fire sites (ones set too close to lakes).
