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OFF PAGE ONE
Wallowa County Chieftain
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Trails:
Another part of the
group’s mission is to work
on heritage sites, such as
cultural resources, historic
structures and Nez Perce
crossing of the Snake River.
“Our biggest project
to date has been the Lick
Creek Guard Station … it
has a lot of rot; it still has a
lot of rot,” Bombaci said of
the building that was erected
in 1930 and is now listed on
the National Register of His-
toric Places. “It was in dan-
ger of falling apart. We man-
aged to clean up the grounds
around the building, moved
some outbuildings that were
causing snow to build up
against it and exacerbate
the moisture problem, we
repainted the whole thing,
we cut a hole in and I was
down there in the dirt to dig
out the crawlspace to make
it bigger and put a vapor
barrier and pulled out some
rotten timbers and replaced
them.”
But the project is still not
done.
“We were unable to fi n-
ish the job and I think if the
Forest Service really wants
to save that building, they’re
going to need to come up
with probably a few hun-
dred thousand dollars to get
some professionals in there
to do the rest of the work,”
he said. “But we did save
a lot of the building so that
it’s not going to continue to
deteriorate at least.”
This year, the group also
replaced a footbridge on BC
Creek, Bombaci said, show-
ing slides of the work there.
“This was a thorn in our
side for several years, Todd
can testify to that,” Bom-
baci said. “That Forest Ser-
vice bridge blew out in
2002. Almost 20 years had
gone by without the For-
est Service replacing it and
we nagged them and tried to
get them to move a suspen-
sion bridge up there, but that
didn’t pan out. As a result
of our eff orts, they did get
in gear and now we have
this great footbridge there.
That tree (used as the basis
of the bridge) was grow-
ing right there. They didn’t
have to move it; they just
had to winch in into place.
… That’s vastly improved
the usability of that trail. It’s
a very popular trail. … That
was a great win for us this
year.”
The trails group also
goes high-tech when pos-
sible. Bombaci said that
since money from Travel
Oregon granted for the BC
Creek bridge wasn’t used on
the suspension bridge, the
group asked if it could use
those funds to buy comput-
er-controlled router to make
signs. They’re now man-
ufacturing signs that their
volunteers and the Forest
Service both are putting up.
Bombaci said they will con-
tinue making signs this win-
ter so they’ll have some to
erect in the spring.
“It’s a very visible sign
that something’s happening
out there and we’re getting
a lot of positive public feed-
back,” he said.
Bombaci
emphasized
that the trails group is in no
way political.
“The organization was
formed with the explicit
intent that we’re not a polit-
ical lobbying group,” he
said. “We’re just a bunch of
folks who want to get out
there and do some good.”
like a big deal to someone
in the city, but it’s a big deal
to the reader of the Chief-
tain, and Elane understood
that. I hired lots of journal-
ists over the years and they
didn’t all get that. She did.”
Her daughter added that,
with more than 3½ decades
of her work on hand, she
had a “tangible legacy” of
her mother that lives on,
even with her gone.
“I have bins of arti-
cles she has written. For
35 years all the (people)
of Wallowa County have
things that are tacked on
their bulletin board, in their
keepsakes, just things she
wrote from them and docu-
mented,” she said.
And Wandschneider per-
haps put into words what
most who met feel about the
longtime reporter.
“I have great admiration
for Elane,” he said. “She
did a good job.”
The family will have a
memorial for Dickenson in
Wallowa County sometime
in the spring or summer
of 2022.
Continued from Page A1
“We certainly appreci-
ate the work your group has
done,” Nash said.
He also pointed out that
Sage DeLong, a new fi eld
representative for U.S.
Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ore.,
was visiting at the meet-
ing and urged Bombaci to
make Bentz aware of any of
the group’s needs through
DeLong for “largest wil-
derness in the state of Ore-
gon.” Nash also urged Bom-
baci to continue to make the
commissioners aware of any
way the county can assist the
group.
“We’re making a diff er-
ence,” Bombaci said. “The
Forest Service hasn’t been
able to fi eld more than about
three people per trail crew
for the past decade or so.
There’s no way they can
keep up with more than
1,200 miles of trails. We’ve
probably doubled or tripled
the amount of work that’s
getting done. … But that still
isn’t enough to keep up.”
In his presentation, Bom-
baci updated the commis-
sioners on the trails group’s
status.
“Currently we have two
part-time staff , that’s me and
Asch,” he said, introduc-
ing co-worker Asch Hum-
phrey. “I work out of an
offi ce at Wallowa Resources.
The organization initially
was active just in Wallowa
County, but we have been
expanding and now we have
just about as much activity
in Union County as we do in
Wallowa County.”
He said the group also is
beginning to make contacts
in Baker County.
“But right now, we’re
taking things slow and try-
ing to make sure we have
a good volunteer base in
Union and Wallowa counties
fi rst,” he said. “Right now,
we have about 125 pay-
ing members. More or less
half of them are in Wallowa
County, a quarter of them
are in Union County and the
rest are scattered all over the
place around the state and
the Northwest. It’s mostly
people over 50. ... I’d say
the average age of our vol-
unteers is someplace in the
60-year-old range. We have
a pretty even split, almost
exactly 50-50 male-female
so there’s a lot of participa-
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
From left, Wallowa County Commissioners Todd Nash and Susan Roberts listen to Rick Bombaci and Asch Humphrey of the
Wallowa Mountains Hells Canyon Trails Association give an overview of the group’s work on trails in the county during the
commissioners’ meeting Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. Commissioner John Hillock is not shown.
FOR THE FUTURE
The trails group aims to:
• Continue current trail
maintenance and expand as
capacity allows.
• Continue sign manufactur-
ing and installation.
• Develop greater skills and
capacity to address trail
erosion.
• Possibly expand into Baker
County.
• Resume partnerships with
tion out there.”
The group has support-
ers far beyond the active
volunteers.
“We have an email list
of about 450 folks,” Bom-
baci said. “A portion of them
are active. Many of them
are just ‘window-shoppers’
who are following along and
cheering us on.”
Social media also pro-
vides support, he said, intro-
ducing Humphrey as the
group’s social media out-
reach specialist.
“I’ve been working on
social media over the past
year and one reason is that
we’ve been trying to bring
some folks into our organi-
zation so we can continue to
grow,” Humphrey said. “It’s
been neat to see how having
a regular presence on Face-
book and Instagram and also
our website so we can do
updates ourselves. We’ve
also been able to create
online forms for projects.”
She gave some statistics
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• Employ a trail ambassador
concept by having volun-
teers stay at trailheads to
educate hikers.
• See a transition in staff .
Bombaci plans to step
down as part-time director
for fi ve years. The group
currently is advertising for a
replacement.
on the online popularity of
the trails group.
“With Instagram and
Facebook, we’ve grown
our membership by about
50% in the past year,” she
said. “We have 1,200 Insta-
gram followers and almost
800 Facebook followers.
We’ve been able to open up
conversations through that.
So we’re reaching younger
folks who are working full
time who want to do day
trips and projects and we’re
incorporating that into our
next season of planning.”
Bombaci spoke highly of
Humphrey’s ability — as a
younger person — to con-
nect via social media.
“Asch has done a great
job of getting the word out
there because I sure am not a
Facebook or Instagram per-
son, I don’t know about you
guys,” he laughed. “She’s
been very successful at that.”
Showing their work
Bombaci gave a slide
show to the commission-
ers showing photographs of
their work, maps of the trails
systems and charts detailing
the work.
“We primarily work in the
Eagle Cap and Hells Can-
yon wilderness areas,” he
said. “We have done some
work outside the wilderness,
but most of our work’s been
inside the wilderness bound-
aries. We’ve done a little bit
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WALLOWA
MOUNTAINS
HELLS CANYON
TRAILS
ASSOCIATION
What: Trails maintenance
group
Website: www.wmhcta.
org/
Email: info@wmhcta.org
Facebook or Instagram:
@WMHCTA
of work in the Wenaha-Tu-
cannon Wilderness in the
north part of the county and
that has been in coordination
with the Umatilla National
Forest. We’ve done a lit-
tle bit of work on the trail
at the Nez Perce Wallowa
Homeland and a couple
other places that have noth-
ing to do with the Forest Ser-
vice, but it’s mostly the For-
est Service land that we’re
working on.”
Emphasizing the scope of
the group’s work, he noted
that most of their eff orts are
in offi cial wilderness areas
and come with restrictions.
“I think there’s about
1,200 miles of trails,” he
said. “Because most of our
work is in the wilderness,
almost all of our work is with
hand tools. We use loppers,
crosscut saws, Pulaskis.
There’s a lot of teamwork
involved.”
He then showed a photo
of men lifting a log off a trail.
“These guys were just
using brute strength,” he
said.
“We do, occasionally, do
work outside the wilderness
boundary where motorized
equipment is allowed,” he
said.
Commissioner John Hill-
ock sought further details on
this.
“Would a battery-pow-
ered chain saw be legal?”
Hillock asked.
a dairy. It is a grind and a
half. She did it for a long
time. That alone is a mon-
umental feat in my book
because of the diffi culty of
the work.”
The former editor also
said she was the picture of
a community newspaper
reporter.
“She understood that
there was nothing too insig-
nifi cant to consider in a
hometown
newspaper,”
he said. “What’s going on
up the Imnaha River at the
grange hall may not seem
But Bombaci said even
an electric-powered tool is
banned from federal wilder-
ness areas.
Nash talked about the
diffi culty working just with
hand tools can bring.
“I’ve cut my share of
trees and I can only imag-
ine how discouraging it
would be to get in there
with a crosscut saw and see
it wedge into place and not
be able to move it,” he said.
“I’ve had to cut those four or
fi ve times with chain saws in
order to get the fi rst piece to
move.”
The main job the trails
group does is clearing trails
for recreationists.
“No. 1 is we clear trails
using crosscut saws,” Bom-
baci said. “Much of the trail
clearing is just about cutting
out logs, but also there’s a
huge brush problem, espe-
cially in areas that have
burned, as you can imag-
ine, the timber’s burned up
and there’s a lot more sun-
light hitting the ground so
we have these terrible brush
problems. It’s very labor
intensive to do brush with
hand tools. I’m not quite
sure what the long-term
game plan is for that. We had
a group of people … and in
four solid days of work they
covered less than 2 miles.
The brushing is going to be
a challenge.”
Heritage sites