Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance is asking local towns to support its volunteers this summer, as the U.S. Forest Service keeps trimming budgets and seasonal positions.
The alliance came to Silverthorne town council this week with a pitch for grant money and donations. The nonprofit says it needs about $160,000 to pay for $275,000 worth of work. Unlike many nonprofits, including Friends of the Dillon Ranger District, the alliance has no paid staff. All of that money goes back to projects.
In their presentation alliance members claim the Forest Service is facing a “perfect storm” of surging use and shrinking support.
New district ranger David Ilse is one of BLHA full-time rangers on the Dillon Ranger District, which is consistently the busiest in the nation with more than 8.5 million visitors and all four Summit County ski areas. His team oversees 312,000 acres of public land and 400+ miles of trail, including the Eagles Nest Wilderness, home to the Gore Range, and the Ptarmigan Peak Wilderness northeast of Silverthorne. The newly created Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument straddles his district just south of Breckenridge.
But the district is losing money for seasonal employees. Colorado Sun and more report it has been since last year. Soon after joining the district this March, Ilse told Krystal 93 that new community partnerships are a top priority at the Forest Service.
This, argue members of the 30-year-old alliance, is why volunteers are more important than ever, and why they need local towns to pitch in. Their expenses are growing too. The $160,000 ask for this year is $40,000 more than nonprofit raised in 2023 and nearly double what it spent on contractors, supplies and training.
Today nonprofit has more than 250 volunteers spending more than 7,800 hours building trails, trimming trees and talking with hikers. Members have been pitching almost every local town for support.
The tricky thing about wilderness is the same thing that makes it appealing. Cars, dirt bikes and even bicycles are outlawed. So is motorized equipment like chainsaws. Horses and other pack animals, like llamas, are the only transportation allowed.
Clearing deadfall from trails, especially in the Gore Range, is one of the alliance’s biggest missions. Last summer sawyer crews spent 850 hours clearing 616 dead trees by hand, using old-school two-person saws for trees so big you cannot reach around them. The group itself calls this work “grueling, but essential.”
Images from Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance presentation to Silverthorne town council May 27 2026.