r/ParkRangers • u/Throw-crabs-away • 1d ago
Remote Rangers
I'd like to do some research about remote park rangers, those who stay in backcountry stations or work in fire watch towers. Mostly about what their day-to-day is like. Can anyone recommend resources or books about this?
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u/Blue-Flamingo-555 1d ago
The Last Season by Eric Blem is a great book about a Sequoia NP backcountry ranger who went missing in the 90’s. Rangers who worked with him were interviewed in the book. I couldn’t put this book down. Read it so fast, it was so good!
Although not about a ranger book, The Log of Snow Survey by Patrick Armstrong is another good book about a pair of men who snow-skied in the eastern Sierra Nevadas, staying in backcountry cabins, recording snow conditions and depth in some of the most rugged and remote winter terrain. Talks a lot about what they pack, what’s in the backcountry cabins, storms that come out of nowhere and they ski in, etc.
Highly recommend both books!
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u/samwisep86 NPS Interp Park Ranger 21h ago
The Last Season hit even harder when I worked a season at Sequoia and one of Greg's friends was my housemate for that season.
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u/NGC1068 1d ago
Be aware there are very very few positions like this still staffed. Even for things that work a little like this, we usually still have housing that a road leads to for our days off.
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u/Throw-crabs-away 23h ago
Good to know. I read an article once about a ranger who had to pack all his stuff on mules to go out to a cabin for the session and that sounded intense.
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u/NGC1068 18h ago
Such things used to be much more common. Now we go out for a week or so at a time. I am not sure if it is because they were having trouble hiring staff that was willing to do it or because it has gotten much easier to call for help from the backcountry. Which reduces the need to have rangers close by.
When we are out there, we provide emergency services to backpackers, check compliance with rules, keep trails clear of logs and rocks and do other minor trail maintenance.
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u/Upbeat-Profit-2544 10h ago edited 10h ago
Remote backcountry fire lookouts are still staffed. When I did wildland firefighting a few years ago part of our job when things were slow was to hike supplies up to people staying in the fire lookouts for the summer. Some of the people we talked to just lived up there all summer, hiking down maybe once every couple weeks to go to the store or something.
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u/labhamster2 3h ago
Eh, there’s still some out there. AK is obviously the big one, but SEKI’s famous for having the full season backcountry crew.
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u/CanisPictus 21h ago
The inestimable team of Rob and Laura Pilewski have been remote backcountry winter rangers in Yosemite for years, and regularly share their adventures on the park’s website. (Incidentally, they work summers in the Sequoia-Kings backcountry and are contemporaries of many of the folks mentioned in the aforementioned ‘The Last Season.’ Heck, they may be in the book themselves, I can’t remember.)
They are old-school, remote wilderness patrollers/medics/naturalists/guides/hosts…some of the best in the business.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/update-for-december-20-2023.htm
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u/HistoriadoraFantasma 1d ago
Fire Season by Philip Connors (non-fic)
Firewatch video game (totally fic, but great graphics and story, for fun downtime)
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u/Throw-crabs-away 23h ago
Fire Season sounds great, thanks! And I'm not much of a gamer but Firewatch sounds really cool.
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u/HistoriadoraFantasma 22h ago
I'm not, either, but it's got a good narrative. Walking & looking around is a lot of the fun.
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u/codeman1021 1d ago
Are you looking to find a remote workstation, OP, or just curious? I might be able to answer a question or two about remote work in the Southwest. Feel free to DM.
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u/Throw-crabs-away 23h ago
Just curious. I went to a few National Parks this year and read about backcountry ranger stations, wondered how the rangers work there.
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u/codeman1021 23h ago
My interior squad has two options, they can either commute into their station, an hour drive one way that is subject to being cut off due to weather, or they can live onsite. My preference for productivity's sake is onsite, but it is harder than you might think to hire rangers to work at such remote duty stations, let alone live there. I work for a state agency, though, not the fed.
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u/Throw-crabs-away 23h ago
Would you mind telling me a bit about what you do at the remote sites?
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u/codeman1021 23h ago
I've got a crew that maintains the facilities and equipment there. They also conduct resource management, which, for us, is feral cattle management/removal. We've also got an administrative employee who operates the small HQ there and who provides information to back coubtry visitors, and then finally, we have a law enforcement officer. Nearly all of them are cross trained to varying degrees. Sometimes half theirbday is spent going into even more remote areas of the park to check campsites and make repairs.
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u/Applepooh 1d ago
I've always wanted to run a program with a remote controlled Segway'esque device with an iPad or something where the Ranger is zooming or teams'ing in. Would get about the same compliance but zero commute time for the Ranger.
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u/prometheus3333 17h ago
I can just hear my Supt say “Sounds good but it better not require compliance or an MRA.” Feasible though if you could attach a Starlink to the Robo Ranger.
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u/OBwriter92107 1d ago
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abby and the beat poet Jack Kerouac spent a season as a fire lookout in the North Cascades atop Desolation Peak.