West Fork Cabin gets TLC
Photo By Tanna Yeoumans Between the beds, is the table where visitors can find the logs, showcasing the history of the cabin, with a brand new metal overlay.
Photo By Tanna Yeoumans A few members of the crew finishing cleaning up around the cabin. Pictured are the new benches around the fire pit and new staircase, among more subtle changes.
Photo by Tanna Yeoumans The wood stove in the cabin received a backsplash that reduces the chance of fire, and the new chimney pipe leading to the ceiling. The pictured window has a table that folds down onto the porch that also got a new metal finish, which reduces the wear on the tabletop itself.
Photo by Tana Yeoumans Martin Rice packing his string of horses up to the West Fork Cabin.
BONNERS FERRY — The West Fork Cabin received some tender loving care Aug. 6 through Aug. 11 by a group of volunteers from the National Smokejumper Association. The crew came from all around the United States to help restore and update the historical cabin.
The cabin was built in 1931 and originally used as housing for smokechasers by the U.S. Forest Service. The smokechaser crews packed into cabins and lookout towers located all over the mountains, and using a telephone system linking the rural structures, they were able to strategically dispatch fire crews and smokejumpers at the first signs of smoke.
The West Fork Cabin is located about 1.5 miles off the West Fork of Smith Creek Road in the Selkirk Mountain Range. It is now used for housing trail maintenance crews, snow and game surveyors, and recreational visitors.
There are logbooks kept in the cabin with logs dating back to the early 1930s, and they provide people with the history of the location, the names of visiting parties and their stories, and restoration crews, their names, companies, and what they did.
People travel to the cabin at all times of the year. One of the many stories in the logbook told of a grueling hike in the depth of winter. The grateful adventurers wrote an account of their visit: “Bruce Paul, Rob Bradshaw, and Peter Davis stood in front of the cabin and couldn’t believe they were finally here. Mark Rosman’s toes are blue from frostbite in spite of the fact he broke trail for four miles up the hill.”
The group was 16 in total, from the Rocky Mountain Academy, and were on an 11-day cross country skiing trip in December of 1984. The log book goes on to say that they were surprised by another group of adventurers consisting of six more people and four dogs from the Coeur d’Alene area. “We’re all glad the cabin is here and in good shape,” was written in the log book.
Some of the National Smokejumper Association members, including Karl Maerzluft, Chuck Haynes, Bob Renner, Jim Deeds, Carl Gidherd, Bob Savage, Dotty Yerkes, Dave Kopas, Martin Rice, Dwight Opp, Jim Mishaud, Merle Olsen, and Nate Demmons, many of which are retired military and retired smokejumpers, among other professions. The group packed in supplies to update the cabin and spend the week there.
The men and women worked hard over the week to wash and apply a new coat of oil on the outside of the log structure, build and install new steps, put metal tops on the wooden tables, and add a horseshoe coat rack. They also updated the windows and their functionality, replaced the stove pipe, cleaned the chimney, as well as added a fire safety metal backsplash behind the stove. They added a new metal strip to the roof ridge, log benches around the fire pit, strung up a zip line to tether horses and pack animals to, and provided about a cord of firewood for cold weather visitors to utilize.
They are not the first volunteers who have visited not just the West Fork Cabin, but other historical structures, and provided services to keep them in good shape for all to enjoy. Like the West Fork Cabin, there are other structures with logbooks kept on the premises detailing their histories.
The USFS, volunteer maintenance crews, and visitors both past, present, and future would like to remind people to respect our public lands and historical places by acknowledging and following the Pack it in/Pack it out laws and help keep our forests clean and garbage free as left items can be detrimental to our wildlife and the lands they occupy.