Work on the Savage Alpine Trail!

The Savage Alpine Trail is to be a newly constructed trail in the summer of 2010. The trail will be approximately 4 miles in length and will connect the Savage River Campground (mile 12) with the Savage Rock Trail (mile 15) on the Denali Park Road. The National Park Service crew working on this trail will be doing lots of rock work. This job isn’t for the meek, but for those who want to embrace the art of building rock steps and the like, this job will come with a million dollar view!

This crew will work 10 hour days, sometimes 4 days at a time (i.e. 3 day weekends), perhaps 8 days (6 day weekends) at a time. We start early around here and stretching at 7:00 AM will be followed by a short commute to the worksite and hard work until 5:30 PM. The park service crew working on this trail will consist of 10 members who will live at Savage River Campground.

Life at a Campground?
That’s right… there will be no red carpet rolled out at the Savage River Campground. You’ll have to let go of daily Facebook updates, flushing toilets, cellular access, and a hard-sided roof, but on the other hand, life at the Savage River Campground will come with some enticing amenities. The camp will boast a shower house with hot running water, a weatherport with a cozy wood burning stove for hanging out, a view of Mt. McKinley, and easy access to 6 million acres of wilderness. Crew members will each have a canvas wall tent to live in, with shared kitchen and food storage facilities.

Transportation
Crew members will be responsible for their own transportation to Alaska. Once living at the campground, crews will have access to a free shuttle that services the entrance area of the park. Otherwise, parking for personal vehicles will be available.

Weather
Nearly guaranteed – snowflakes will fly during the course of the summer and days that make a dip in the glacial Savage River seem possible will come around as well – this might all happen in the same day.

Hope to see you here!

(Photos above: Savage River Campground from above - the campground is at the far edge of the forest on the right hand side; The second photo is taken looking up at the worksite. Below: a map of Denali National Park - look for the Savage River Campground. Home Sweet Home).

2010 Season

2010 will be a big year for the program. We'll have ten new positions (~34 total) ranging from WG-02, WG-03, WG-5, WG-07 and WG-08. Stay tuned for more information about the projects, camp and housing possibilities and more. Pay ranges from $16.34 to $26.86 per hour.

The season will be approximately May 15 - Sept 30 2010 and we typically work 4-10 hour or 8-10 hour days.

USAjobs.gov

All you trails job seekers should know that the http://www.usajobs.gov/ website is the only "normal" way we can hire employees (exceptions include STEP - student hire, and few others). Seasonal jobs are typically posted in January and may be open for as little as one week.

Check out that website and if you need to, find a geek to help you set up a "JOB SEARCH AGENT". If you do it right, it will email you whenever a job is posted that meets the criteria you set up in the search agent. But be careful, if you make a mistake like misspell the word "trail" it won't give you the results you want.

The days of paper applications by mail or fax are going away (they're gone from Denali). Good luck in your search

Follow Us on Twitter!

Yea, we're trying to stay current, and have set up a Twitter account. With a little luck, we'll tweet when jobs are posted to the government jobs website, and when we post to this blog. Of course, we're all pretty busy and cannot promise to send notice, so be sure to watch for 2010 job posting on www.USAjobs.gov in January.

To "follow" us, create an account at www.Twitter.com and search for "DenaliTrails". Follow us to get our tweets (or watch this blog for updates).