Ted McManus | SBFC Board Member
North Cottonwood Creek Trail #041
Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness
July 28-August 13, 2026
Some of the Whisky in the Woods Crew
It felt a little like stumbling into a two-week-long inside joke. The good-natured jabs and jokes started almost as soon as the planes landed at Cold Meadows in the Frank. These folks clearly knew each other well and had developed a way of communicating and working together over many years. It took me a few days to make my way into the Whisky crew’s orbit. Most volunteer trail trips throw a group of strangers together who take a few days to figure each other out. That is not the whisky crew. I was a newcomer to this, the 9th year of Whisky in the Woods, a group of dedicated trail volunteers who are mostly from the Moscow-Pullman area. They are brought together by their love of wild trails, excellent whiskys, and years of friendship.
Some people get the wrong idea. They hear the name “Whisky in the Woods” and think of a bunch of charlatans sipping whisky around a campfire. Although there is some whisky sipping around a fire, these folks know how to clear trails and they work as hard as almost any paid crew. The de facto leader is former SBFC Board Chair Jim Heidelberger. He keeps the crew together and does months of organizing and meal planning throughout the year. Jim serves as camp chef throughout the two-week hitch each summer. It is quite a treat to return to camp after a hard work day to a lovingly prepared meal and cold drinks. The crew leader is U of I Philosophy professor Bert Baumgaertner. He takes a few things very seriously - teaching philosophy, running very long distances, clearing trails with traditional tools, and sipping excellent whisky. His knowledge of trail work runs deep, and maybe a touch philosophical. His wife, Mandy, a renowned country music DJ and former SBFC board member, loves this scene almost as much as Bert. Other long-time, dedicated members of the crew are Lovina and Karl Englund, the Executive Director of the Palouse Land Trust and a WSU Materials Science researcher. There is also Seth Sjoholm, an IT specialist by trade but a trail worker at heart. This is just a sampling of the diversity of background and expertise to be found in this group.
The Whisky hitch this year took the crew in late July by plane from McCall to Cold Meadows in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to clear a remote stretch of trail that had become completely impassable due to thousands of fallen trees. That seemed to be the theme of this trail season. Due to high winds in central Idaho in two separate “wind events” this past December and January, most hitches involved clearing WAY more trees than usual. Many of them were live and green and very heavy. It was no different in the Cold Meadows area. Each day’s progress was measured by the tree count (often hundreds daily) and the length of trail cleared (sometimes only a quarter or half a mile). This sounds like grueling work, which it is, but the attitude and especially the laughter of this crew made the days fly by. Over the swishing sound of the crosscut saws, it was easy to hear well-honed jabs and jokes mixed in with lots of laughing. It certainly didn’t sound like the work it was.
A sampling of whisky
Each day for the whisky crew ends with a cold beer (kept shockingly cold in a frigid spring right next to our camp), a Heidelberger feast, and then a session of whisky tasting. Now, you may have noticed the unusual spelling of “whisky” throughout this post. You may be asking yourself - is it “whiskey”? Here, though, we are referring to special, single-malt “whisky.” If you have been picturing a group of people swilling glass after glass of Jim Beam, you have the wrong idea. Led by the expertise and generosity of Jason Johnstone-Yellin, a native of Scotland and founder of the Single Malt Whisky Society of the Palouse, each person takes a small, ceremonial SBFC whisky glass and then slowly passes around a sampling of delicious, lovingly chosen whiskys from small batch distilleries, mostly in Scotland. Jason tells about the origin of each, sounding a little like a violin luthier discussing the origin of the wood in a hundred thousand dollar violin. There is some discussion of the merits of each whisky, but it’s mostly a time for this group to catch up and reconnect after a year of working and raising families. Not everyone is cut out to spend their precious vacation time clearing trails in a wilderness area, but this dedicated group of volunteers relishes their chance to give back, hone their trail skills, catch up around a campfire, and share a passion - fine whiskys. Put that way, maybe it sounds a little like a vacation after all.
Ted McManus is an SBFC Board Member and Treasurer. He lives in McCall, Idaho.