On the first Saturday in June — National Trails Day — Juneau’s trail maintenance nonprofit gives volunteers a chance to pick up a shovel and help with trails.
Trail Mix Inc Director Meghan Tabacek stood in the back of a pickup truck, holding up tools for volunteers to see.
“We have the shovel, the tried and true,” she said. “Not a lot of concerns with the shovel.”
She gave volunteers advice on how avoid the shovel’s few dangers.
“My one concern is, I highly recommend holding the shovel both hands on it like this,” she said, demonstrating proper form to avoid injury.
Volunteers file up the trail with rakes, hoes, and mattocks in hand to pack muddy spots with gravel.
The volunteers came out because they care about Juneau’s trails – and lately their work has felt more vital than ever. This spring, federal funding uncertainty meant that trail work on some of those beloved trails could have been deferred. Now, the situation is more hopeful: trail workers have their jobs back, and funding may still come.
It was Rachel Disney’s first time volunteering with Trail Mix. Instead of a hand tool, she pushed a motorized wheelbarrow full of gravel.
“Being able to get out and hike and be in the woods was my main reason for staying in Alaska when I got here,” she said. “So I want to be able to make sure that people can continue being out in the woods here.”
Disney said the future of Juneau’s trails means a lot to her.
But that future has been uncertain. After the Trump administration canceled federal grants and fired federal workers— including dozens of U.S. Forest Services employees based in Juneau—Trail Mix leadership decided to reduce its scope in case its federal funding was canceled.
With that in mind, the organization pivoted to fundraising, and planned to work only on city-owned projects — not Juneau’s heavily-used Forest Service trails.
At the time, job cuts halved Juneau’s Forest Service trail work crew.
Donors stepped in, and Trail Mix raised just over $54,000 to put towards previously scheduled work on two heavily trafficked Forest Service trails and other projects. Tabacek said people often submit complaints about the condition of Peterson Lake and the Amalga Trail that reaches the Eagle Glacier cabin, so the group had planned the work before federal cuts came down.
“The work was already planned,” Tabacek said. “We were already hoping to do it. And so it was really great the community stepped up so we could do it.”
Tabacek planned to use the money to hire fired off Forest Service trail crew, but when she went to extend the offers, she found they had been rehired by the federal government.
“They have one full trail crew of all returning staff,” she said. “Which was really great for them, just because returning people have a lot of experience.”
And Tabacek says it looks like the majority of their expected federal funding will be honored after all. The Forest Service has not confirmed the staffing levels in Juneau.
But she said, RIFs—or Reduction in Force efforts—still loom for the Forest Service employees. Now, federal rulings are blocking them, but Trail Mix is reserving some of the fundraised money to be able to hire two Juneau trail workers who may lose their jobs in future cuts.
“There is still kind of the omnipresent threat looming over the heads of federal workers that they might lose their job,” Tabacek said.
If there are no more cuts to trail jobs in Juneau, then the money set aside will go towards trails people want to see improve, she said.
Trail Mix crews are currently working on a reroute trail to Mt. Jumbo, also called Sayéik, and the Thunder Mountain Bike Park.
