Here’s where the Enchantments stand for WA summer hiking season

The lone ranger is alone no more.

A year after the Enchantments became a nationwide symbol of understaffing and overcrowding on public lands, the prized wilderness destination in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest outside of Leavenworth will see more rangers, trail crews and other stewards this year through a combination of renewed Forest Service hiring and partnership arrangements with recreation nonprofits.

But those friendly faces in uniform will have their work cut out for them as the July Fourth holiday weekend approaches. A year ago, hikers shattered records during the unofficial start to Northwest summer as over 2,400 pounded the trail to Colchuck Lake in a single day. With a low snow year melting out Enchantments trails earlier than usual, the fragile alpine zone can expect a similar or worse battering as the Forest Service declined yet again to put in place any day-use management this hiking season.

The state of the Enchantments this year is a microcosm of the situation currently facing Washington’s great outdoors — an aversion to active management from land managers, but more boots-on-the-ground staffing after a chaotic year-and-a-half of arbitrary firings and hiring freezes that mean playing catch-up on overdue trail maintenance.

Offseason inaction

Nowadays, a lottery is in place to secure camping permits — which are scarce — for the Enchantments. Although overnight camping is strictly regulated, all day hikers need is a free, self-issued wilderness permit from the trailhead.

Last year’s overcrowding, paired with severe understaffing, led to an uptick in trailside trash, graffiti and overflowing pit toilets at the Enchantments, with just one ranger overseeing it all. The crush of hikers also increased demand on search-and-rescue teams, while parked cars on Eight Mile Road — the forest road that leads to the Colchuck Lake trailhead — impeded emergency response.

U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Issaquah, whose district includes the Enchantments, demanded that the Forest Service hire more staff. Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison weighed closing the last gate on the federal road leading to the Colchuck Lake trailhead in an effort to tamp down crowds. 

Ultimately, neither the Forest Service nor Chelan County took any action last year to limit access to the Enchantments. 

As last year’s hiking season wound down, the planning wound up. Simmering in the background, an environmental finance consultancy had been studying options for more proactively managing day use in the Enchantments with funding from the Forest Service and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities.

In September, Washington, D.C.-based Quantified Ventures presented four options to Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest leadership: controlled gate access with managed entry, day-use permits with advance reservation via recreation.gov, shuttle service from an off-site parking lot, and “baseline improvements” like additional signage and more volunteers. The proposal’s business plan estimated all four options would make money for the Forest Service if implemented.

Mat Lyons attended the meeting as the executive director of TREAD, the recreation nonprofit that applied for the study grant. He said the Forest Service’s response was curt. “Thank you for the presentation,” he recalled. “That was it.”

In December, Tara Umphries, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest supervisor, designated Jared Bowman, the unit’s recreation, trails and wilderness program manager, as her point person for the Enchantments. According to Lyons, Bowman conducted his own due diligence on possible remedies over the winter.

Then, in April, the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest convened an Enchantments Management Leadership Discussion at its Wenatchee headquarters. Bowman presented his own set of ideas that included imposing day-use limits, making access more difficult, adding more recreation infrastructure like additional parking or outright closing the area.

The conclusion, once again: Do nothing.

A little over a week later, Umphries began a four-month temporary assignment in Alaska.

The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest declined to make Bowman or Umphries available for an interview.

“Several conceptual approaches have been raised through planning discussions, including transportation options, permit structures, and infrastructure adjustments, but none are developed enough for implementation,” Okanogan-Wenatchee spokesperson Victoria Wilkins wrote via email. “Significant work remains to refine these concepts, understand operational and resource implications, and evaluate potential impacts before any decisions can be made.”

Suzanne Cable, who retired two years ago from the job Bowman now holds, disputed that characterization.

“It’s another kick the can down the road response that has gone on for years,” she said. “There have been plenty of opportunities to make a decision and move forward but the Forest (Service) has not committed to taking action.”

Schrier, meanwhile, has been keeping tabs on the issue. In March, she co-authored a letter with 22 other members of Congress calling on Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz to address deteriorating trail conditions following a damning internal report.

Last month, she sent another letter to Schultz detailing a litany of concerns in the Enchantments and urging him to “address these persisting issues by restoring sufficient staffing and implementing a thoughtfully-designed day-use management system that aligns with the capacity of the landscape and infrastructure.”

Schultz’s response noted the new hires but did not address limits to day hikers. “The added workforce capacity, combined with permanent staff and support from partner organizations, strengthens our ability to manage high-use areas like the Enchantments,” he wrote.

In the wake of federal inaction on day-use management, Morrison reiterated his threat to close the gate on Eight Mile Road, adding 7 round-trip miles of road walking and reducing parking to a handful of spots. He told The Seattle Times that a forecast intense wildfire season could mean search-and-rescue teams are more needed elsewhere. (Already this month, the Chelan County sheriff’s office has received three calls for help in the Enchantments that prompted search-and-rescue responses.)

“If we get to a point where our resources cannot adequately take on the challenges in our county, I will make a decision,” Morrison said.

Boots on the ground

A depleted Forest Service is slowly rebuilding its ranks. This year, the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest will deploy three wilderness rangers and six frontcountry staff on the Wenatchee River Ranger District, which includes the Enchantments and several thousand acres spread across three federal wilderness areas.

As recently as 2024, that ranger district had 11 wilderness rangers. Last year’s sharp reduction came as a result of Trump administration staffing cuts that followed a Biden-era hiring freeze on seasonal workers.

The replenished corps can now tackle one of Washington’s dirtiest jobs: preparing 30-odd backcountry pit toilets for helicopter removal. Those flights are tentatively scheduled for early July — to remove last year’s full toilets, which overwintered due to the staffing shortage — and September, the normal time frame for this end-of-season duty.

While these new hires do not make up for the staff lost in 2025, they will be complemented by recreation and conservation nonprofits that are filling the gap. Colorado-based climbing advocacy organization Access Fund hired two climber stewards who migrate from Icicle Creek and Tumwater Canyon to Mazama and the Enchantments over the course of the climbing season.

Although the Access Fund has funded climbing site maintenance in the Pacific Northwest for over a decade, this year marks the first time it has hired stewards in Washington.

“As the budget cuts and staffing shortages continued to worsen and the visitation numbers continued to increase, mitigating the impacts on the landscape became a top priority and required us to expand our Climber Steward program to the Okanagan-Wenatchee National Forest,” said Loryn Posladek, Access Fund stewardship manager.

‘We are a year behind everywhere’

The Forest Service paved the way for these extra hands in February, when the agency lifted the freeze and announced plans to hire 2,000 seasonal workers. As of May, that decision resulted in an influx of recreation hires across the state’s national forests, including 38 on the Okanogan-Wenatchee.

Additionally, the Forest Service is once again tapping into the more than $11 million that it was recently awarded by Washington’s recreation and conservation office, including grants specifically allocated for Enchantments wilderness areas. Wilkins, the Okanogan-Wenatchee spokesperson, said the seasonal hires were funded by Congress, which means RCO money is now being used to fund supplementary roles like the climbing stewards.

“These partnerships remain an important part of our long‑term strategy to manage recreation access across the forest,” Wilkins wrote.

According to RCO spokesperson Susan Zemek, the state agency extended several grants during the hiring freeze and anticipates the Forest Service will utilize all of its state grant funding. 

“We have milestones and checkpoints in the contracts. If they aren’t meeting those, then there are repercussions,” she said. “They’re maintaining and stewarding some of the most popular places in the state, and we want to make sure that they’re cleaned and the campsites are ready for the public this summer, so our goal is to help them make sure they can spend the money.”

But funding recipients caution that the resumption of a more normal pace of work does not alleviate a significant deficit — whether that’s the Enchantments or other parts of Okanogan-Wenatchee.

“We’re still playing catch-up on deferred trail maintenance across the district,” said Allen Jircik, director of Methow Valley Trails Collaborative. His organization received $267,000 from the RCO and hired four trail crews and two wilderness rangers to work on the Methow Valley Ranger District (both former Forest Service staff), as well as chipped in for the climbing stewards.

A similar sentiment is playing out in the Chelan Ranger District, where the 2024 Pioneer fire torched a number of trails around Lake Chelan. Last year, the district had a single employee on trail duty, according to the Washington Trails Association.

“Since the trail system burned, snags will keep falling. We have now had two winters of rain, snow and erosion. This is all harder because we are a year behind,” said Michael DeCramer, WTA’s policy and planning senior manager. 

“That would be one thing if this were a story about a single ranger district, but every ranger district in the country had a version of this story last year,” he said. “We are a year behind everywhere.”