MCCLUSKEY: In 2006, two backpackers went on a hike.
They wanted to explore a remote wilderness
in southern Oregon.
But what they found was a challenge
they weren't expecting.
We were in way over our heads,
but we didn't care, and we are stubborn.
- And then we started descending,
and it was a complete disaster, and we lost the trail.
JILL: It was sunny, and it was hot, and it was hard.
And it was during that trip, on our hike out,
that we had the experience
of just physically throwing sticks off the side of the trail
as we were hiking, because we were so pissed
about hiking and stomping over
these same little sticks in the trail
over and over again.
Gabe and Jill had found the Kalmiopsis.
It's one of the largest wildernesses in Oregon.
In 2002, it burned in a massive forest fire.
The fire destroyed all the trails,
including the Trans-Kalmiopsis
that crosses from one end of the wilderness to the other.
It wasn't clear if the Forest Service
would ever rebuild the trails again,
so Gabe and Jill had an ambitious --
maybe even crazy -- idea.
They would rebuild the trail themselves.
JILL: We didn't have agreements with the Forest Service
until we were at the trailhead with our tools, ready to leave.
Clearing fallen crisscrossed trees over rugged terrain
was a huge obstacle,
but they actually had another challenge.
They had to do all the work by hand.
[ sawing ]
Because of federal wilderness regulations,
they couldn't bring in trucks or chainsaws.
The young couple from Portland soon realized they needed help.
Wild Rivers, this is SMC Rad.
We are in service, working the Babyfoot Lake Trail.
They found that help in Aaron Babcock.
GABE: He grew up around forestry
and, you know, working in the woods.
I didn't.
And right away, I could see.
I was like, this guy's good.
So you do a slight angle to the downhill side
and then another slight angle here,
so that this log that's going to fall
will actually fall all the way down to the ground.
- 1, 2...
- Oh!
AARON: How about we get everybody over here?
- No, that's the one that's in the dirt.
AARON: How about you, Daniel? You want to help too?
- DANIEL: Yep. - AARON: Sweet.
[ indistinct conversation ]
LUKE: When I first started doing trail work,
I was drawn to tools like the double crosscut saw.
There's something about it that just makes you
feel like an old-timey lumberjack.
The tools are strong, they're burly, they're coarse.
It fits my personality.
[ tree cracks and man grunts ]
That's how it's done, you know?
[ laughter ]
- No, Luke!
LUKE: I don't know, I guess I'm just that kind of person.
I like to chop things, move things,
roll chunks of logs down the hill.
JILL: When we started working on the Kalmiopsis route,
we thought it was going to take one year.
It took, like, five.
The trail they had chosen to take on
was no simple walk in the woods.
It climbs up ridgelines
and plunges down deep river ravines.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
It twists 26 miles through the heart of the Kalmiopsis.
The more that Gabe and Jill worked in the Kalmiopsis,
the more it began to reveal itself to them.
They discovered that they were not
the first couple from Portland to fall in love
with this strange and wild place.
Lilla Leach and her husband, John,
came from Portland in search of undiscovered flowers
at a time when this wilderness
didn't even have an official name.
One day, Lilla came across a flower
she had never seen before.
GABE: And she was struck right away by it, in bloom.
And she sat down, and she said, "This is something new."
But Lilla had to fight to be recognized
for her discovery.
Because back then, botanizing flowers were the --
it was a man's world.
So Lilla was this amateur botanist
trying to fight tooth and nail to get recognized
for finding this plant.
Lilla eventually won her deserved recognition.
The plant was named after her: the Kalmiopsis leachiana.
But her discovery actually created a new threat.
The nursery owners were pillaging these populations
of the leachiana.
It was soon clear that the small clusters
of rare flowers were in peril.
So Lilla and John pressed the Forest Service
to create a protected area.
It was named after Lilla's flower, the Kalmiopsis.
The protected area was later expanded
and is now Oregon's third-largest wilderness area.
[ child chattering ]
Gabe and Jill have devoted their lives
to keeping the Kalmiopsis accessible for other folks
to discover and fall in love with, as they have.
[ splashes ]
When not clearing trail, they spend their vacations here
camping and swimming.
They now bring their kids.
Their son, Carter, is named after one of the creeks.
And their daughter, Azalea,
is named after one of its flowers.
JILL: The one that's, like, right there,
next to that one on the same pole.
GABE: I've gotten to know this area, like, really intimately,
where you know every footstep, you know every turn,
you can see the changes year by year.
It becomes this character of your life.
It shapes you, and then with working out here,
you shape it a little bit.
There's a lot of give and take.
[ boots crunching ]
What started as a challenge to reopen a trail
has become Gabe and Jill's life work.
A once-impromptu group of friends and family
is now an official nonprofit organization,
restoring trails across the Siskiyou Mountains.
JILL: Looking back, I think that if we hadn't
started doing it when we did,
that to try and attempt those same areas now
after all these many more years
of trees falling and brush growing,
I don't know if it would be possible.
I think we hit it at a time where it --
we were right on the cusp of it actually being too much work.
And it's really good to be in a place now
where regular maintenance once a year does it.