Woody White: Not Done Yet

“Every time Jack Swope tells my story, I get younger and younger,” chuckled Woody White as we sat down for an interview. 

Woody did indeed start his career very young, 11 to be exact. Woody is still young– under 30– but has nearly two decades of experience in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. 

Woody is a packer, someone who manages the teams of horses and mules used to support park staff working in the backcountry (mostly trail crews, wilderness rangers, and fire crews). In remote wilderness areas, there are typically only two ways of getting heavy tools, equipment, food, and supplies into the backcountry: helicopter or mule. 

Stock packing is a niche profession within the niche world of wilderness work, and the trade has its own deep culture, history, and cast of characters. But it’s also a speciality that seems to be disappearing, especially in the Sierra Nevada. 

Woody alluded to some of the challenges and issues facing packing in Sequoia and Kings Canyon, but was hesitant to get too specific on the record. Suffice to say, the state of packing in the Sierra parks seems to be in decline. 

Nonetheless, Woody’s love of the lifestyle and for his animals shines through and provides hope for the future of packing. Other packing programs, such as the Center of Excellence, managed by Shasta-Trinity and Inyo National Forests are training the next generation of packers. There is hope for the art of packing yet. 

Photo courtesy of Woody White

Woody White: “My grandpa was a career park ranger. He moved around a bunch and was the district ranger in Kings Canyon for the last 14 years of his career. So my family ended up here. He instilled his love of the backcountry and the mountains in me.

When I was 10, my dad spent the summer down in Cedar Grove. He was felling a bunch of hazard trees and milling them up. They built a grain shed at the pack station with all the lumber. At the end of the summer my family took a pack trip and I fell in love with it. 

After that summer, I was like, ‘Can I come work for you guys?’ I convinced my parents to just drop me off down there for the summer when I was 11. I was as useful as I could be. I could barely saddle my horse. I was usually the camp jack.

A “camp jack” is typically hired by an outfitter to provide general help around camp: tent setup, kitchen assistance, cleanup, etc. 

That's about the best thing I could do: fetch water and firewood and all that. We'd usually keep a couple animals in camp just for getting firewood, taking people fishing, or whatever. I was a jack for a couple years. They paid me in empty beer cans my first year. I’d just take all the beer cans to the store and get a 5 cent deposit. Then I’d buy all the fishing lures and shit. 

Joe Gibson: How much would that get you? How many beers are they drinking? 

WW: A lot. There's a lot of beer being drunk. Especially in those days. Even more going on at the pack station. 

I did that until I was 14. At 15, I started taking trips by myself. 

When I was 19, I got hired by Sequoia as a packer helper. I was pretty much a packer the next year with 12 animals assigned to me. I did that for eight years. 

This year was the first year I’ve taken a hiatus. It’s not really a great year to be a packer in the Sierras in general. 

I have my reasons. I had a permanent job with the park, working roads in the winter. There's a lot of contention going on within the stock program and some retaliation. We brought some tension when we moved things up the ladder and I kind of made myself a pariah in some regards. So I thought it'd be good to leave for my mental health if nothing else. 

I'm not really packing this year, but I don't think I'm done doing it.

JG: When things are functional, what does that usually look like? 

WW: In Sequoia we used to have a stock program that was pretty tight-knit with the trail crews. 

The packers would usually live with the trail crew, ride out once a week, pick up resupply, and ride back in. The trail crew would use the stock at work, and sometimes they'd be left to take care of the stock by themselves. Pretty much every trail crew person has their horse or mule that they ride, and there's a tool mule that stays in camp. 

The crew would utilize the animals to get work done. We'd go on logging runs with a really broke horse. Somebody would take the loppers and ride down the trail lopping stuff, getting all the hat knockers. You’d get to a tree that's down, get off, cut it, get back on, and keep rolling. When we get to a good stopping point, we'd get off, string up all the animals, and everybody would walk back with shovels, and ground pound your way back. 

A lot of people don't like using stock for trail work, but there's efficient ways to do it. It’s like a chainsaw. If you don't know how to maintain, sharpen, or fix a chainsaw, it's probably easier to use a crosscut. Using livestock is a lot of work, but at the end of the day, it's a lot less time beating feet and carrying a pack and hiking a saw. It was a cool program for a long time.

JG: Does it seem like that style of program is disappearing?

WW: Oh absolutely. I'm afraid it's dying. I won't really go into the politics of what's going on there but the program is kind of falling apart. The program has thrived on inertia. There’s not a lot of inherent structure, so there’s a lot of turnover. Things get lost. It might be a thing of the past unless something changes. 

There's been a lot of pressure to have less stock in the backcountry. People have their agendas and what they think wilderness is. Even for commercial pack stations, it's hard to make it.

JG: The alternative would be helicopters, right? 

WW: Right. Or just hiking the shit out and working a hitch schedule. 

A hitch schedule is typically a rotation of eight days on, six days off. During their off time, crew members typically disperse to their own housing before returning to the backcountry for the next hitch. 

We have wilderness crews that stay out all year. There's some other CCC wilderness programs that do that, but pretty much all the Forest Service and other parks are all hitch-based it seems. Even if they're packed out with stock, they don't really stay out there and spend weekends in the wilderness. 

It seems like less and less people are interested in doing that. I've had a hard time hiring people. They get out there and then realize, ‘I don't want to do this,’ and bail. Last year, they had two or three people that hiked out on the weekend to go see family or something and just didn't come back. The poor crew leader had to pack up like two or three different people's stuff and pack up their tent for them. 

Photo courtesy of Woody White

JG: Why keep pack stock over helicopters? To you, what is the reason to keep that culture going?  

WW: I think it's part of the character of wilderness.

I don't think helicopters really follow wilderness ethics. I think it's pretty invasive. I guess you could say the same argument against stock, but there are ways to do it in a far less impactful way than it's been done in the past. 

People are concerned about overgrazing, which I am too. I don't want to damage meadows and lose them. But I think what is now seen as overgrazing is not nearly as bad as what used to happen. The Sierra Club used to take three month pack trips, where they'd go out with hundreds of heads of stock and there'd be huge groups, like 50, 60, 70 people. They’d just camp in a meadow and turn it into a mud hole. Of course I don't want to see that, but I also don’t want to hear a helicopter buzzing or a jet over while I’m trying to enjoy a lake or meadow. I'd rather see some stock in a meadow, hear a bell at night. It's part of the wilderness experience for me.  

JG: If you could wave a magic wand to fix the current situation, what would that look like?

WW: More accountability in government. It's really hard to hire competent people, and it's really, really hard to fire bad people. 

I've just seen a lot of stuff in Kings and Sequoia that would never fly in the real world. But it seems like you can get away with murder. It’s pretty discouraging to people that care and want to do a good job. It's like, ‘What? Why even play by the rules?’ 

I think if there's more accountability, more things would get done to maintain public access to public lands, which is a huge thing for me. 

JG: A barrier to entry with packing is that it is very niche. It’s a niche within the niche of trailwork. How would you suggest people who don’t have experience with packing enter the field? 

WW: I know a lot of people that have gotten into it, it's possible. But it's harder these days because there's less of it. Now there's not enough of the industry to really support apprentices in the field. 

There are apprenticeship programs that the Forest Service has started. Especially in Region 5, it’s called the Center of Excellence. They started the program because a lot of the career packers of the Forest Service were getting pretty old and going to retire. 

The commercial experience is kind of necessary to learn the ins-and-outs of it. As a government packer, maybe 20-30 percent of the job is actually packing, at least in my experience. I'm also shoeing, I'm feeding my own animals, I'm cleaning up after my own animals, I'm hauling my own animals. I gotta pick up food, pick up resupplies at the office, do some trail work. 

So I think commercial packing is important to keep the skills and teach people. At a commercial pack station, you’re usually helping another experienced packer, going on other trips, learning the ins and outs. It's very niche, and there's a lot of nuance. Commercial packing is how you become a journeyman. 

Photo courtesy of Woody White

JG: What do you think has led to the decline of commercial packing?

WW: The land management doesn't necessarily make it easy to be a commercial operator. 

I think there's less interest from the public to go on pack trips. Relatively, the cost to run a pack station is pretty high, and to take a trip, it's expensive. I used to take ordinary families on pack trips, but now they can't afford that. It's pretty expensive. 

There's only one pack station in Kings and Sequoia, and that's Cedar Grove Pack Station. Who knows how long it'll continue to be a thing. Tim Loverin bought Cedar Grove in the 80s, he purchased it. He bought the land, he bought the buildings, he bought the business, the stock, all of it. A few years down the road, the park forced him to sell the land, and he leased the land but he owned the buildings. And then at a certain point they forced them to sell the buildings.

There used to be pack stations in Mineral King and Wolverton until the 90s or early 2000s. You used to have to take two or three different pack stations to get into the wilderness, like train stations. And they just got rid of the pack stations. So for most of my career in the park, I've just packed out of these abandoned pack stations that the park has taken over as admin sites. 

It's kind of depressing because you start poking around and you're like, ‘Oh, this used to be a going-on place’. Now it's just a decrepit scene. These buildings that aren't being maintained are probably historic.

It’s not really on the radar for the Park Service. They don't really care to fix it.

Photo courtesy of Woody White

JG: Packing, generally, is something that a lot of people don't even really know about. There are a lot of people who are outdoorsy and into hiking, mountain biking, and climbing, but don’t even consider a pack trip. How would you sell the idea of a commercial pack trip to somebody like that? 

WW: My grandpa was fond of saying that on a backpacking trip, you can live. But on a pack trip, you can live like a gentleman. Civilized. I've gone on pack trips where we've eaten steak on plates. But I've also taken pack trips where I was using a Pocket Rocket and boiling ramen. 

There’s the experience of riding through the high country or the woods or wherever it might be. In the wilderness, it gives you an opportunity to really soak in your surroundings. As opposed to your heart pounding and you just listening to yourself breathing and looking at the ground. But riding down the trail, you got your eyes out, looking at stuff.

It's a very unique way to experience the wilderness, and I think everybody should give it a try. 

It can also be spiritual working with an animal. There’s equine therapy that’s being used for PTSD. It definitely has a lot of therapeutic benefits, especially being in the woods, being in the wilderness. And you’re working with these animals that you love, you know? One of the hardest parts of leaving the park is that I left my animals in the care of somebody I don't necessarily trust. 

I had pretty much the same string year after year. I might retire an animal or get a new one. But I'd work with the same animals year after year. I'd have more continuity with the animals, more of a connection with them than I did some of the trail crew members. 

When you turn them out to graze in the wilderness, they're absolutely fucking stoked. They go run around the meadow, try to nibble some sage or sedge, some other grass, a variety of things. It's the best part of their week. 

A lot of people like to just look down their nose and, like, ‘oh, those poor animals.’ But I sympathize with animals that are stuck in a stall. Our animals work, but they're cared for. I love them and give them attention and try to make them as comfortable as I can and don't overload them.

It’s just like working with people. If he was swinging a hammer all day yesterday, I'm able to give him something lighter today. So they don’t get burnt out. Otherwise at the end of the season they get kind of grumpy.

There's a morale amongst them. Mules have an insane amount of character. More than most people understand at first glance. I think it's a spiritual experience for some, if not most.

Interested in going on a pack trip or a day ride in the high country of the Sierra Nevada? Be sure to check out Cedar Grove Pack Station, which is run by multiple generations of the Loverin family. They are the only outfitter located within the park boundary offering overnight pack trips in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.