Lou Dawson, the rather cranky godfather of ski mountaineering in Colorado, has a funny post on his blog www.wildsnow.com today. He hiked into American Lake south of Aspen and saw a ranger sitting by the shore:
"I was amazed. This was one of the few times in decades of wilderness travel that I’ve seen one of our forest stewards anywhere but at a trailhead or in an office," he writes
Seems true to me (not that I think its necessarily the rangers' fault). They always are around the office, but I have never, ever seen a Forest Service employee on local trails or forest roads. What gives? Too much paper work?
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I've seen wilderness rangers in the backcountry on several occassions (though not as often as I would like either). Usually what I see are seasonal wilderness rangers - mostly college age interns paid a pittance to patrol and clean up backcountry sites.
A couple years ago we ran into a whole herd of rangers on horseback with a packstring at Rio Alto Lake in the Sangre De Cristo where the San Carlos RD was holding a training.
In the 80s in CA, where wilderness permits are a near universal thing, I ran into wilderness rangers all the time in places like Desolation and Emigrant Wildernesses. They usually patrolled on horseback with the purpose of checking permits. Fines for not having a permit could be steep.
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