Talking shop on a hike with the Washington Trails Association CEO

SAUK RIVER ADA TRAIL, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest — On a scorching spring day, Jaime Loucky is on the trail.

No matter the weather, you’ll often find Loucky trailside — or at public meetings in small mountain towns and congressional offices on Capitol Hill in D.C. — in his role as the CEO of the Washington Trails Association. After seven months in an interim role, Loucky became the permanent head of this nearly 60-year-old nonprofit, a staple resource for hikers across the Evergreen State, in December.

On a May day sweltering under record-breaking heat, Loucky, 43, is keeping cool in the shade of evergreen trees along the banks of the roaring Sauk River. He grew up in Bellingham, enchanted by North Cascades backpacking destinations like Yellow Aster Butte and Tomyhoi Lake. After college on the East Coast, he forged a successful career in New York City and Washington, D.C., as a management consultant and international development professional. But when Loucky and his wife decided to start a family, he knew it was time to come home and give his children the same outdoor opportunities that were so fundamental to his upbringing.

Today, Loucky is a Greenwood resident and soon-to-be father of two. He calls the top job at WTA “the culmination of a childhood dream.” The Seattle Times joined Loucky for a hike to discuss his priorities for the organization and the future of outdoor recreation in our rapidly growing state.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What doesn’t the hiking public know about WTA that they should know?

Washington state benefits from the largest trails-based nonprofit in the country, with more than 60 full-time staff and an $8 million annual budget. We have a hiking guide on more than 4,000 trails across the state, which as far as we know is the largest collection of trails on a single website. We have almost 30,000 members. We have volunteers that provide 150,000 hours of trail maintenance per year — that’s head and shoulders above any other organization. When I go to D.C. to meet with our elected officials for [lobbying event] Hike the Hill, Washington state is seen as an incubator of solutions. We’re seen as the leading edge of what it means to invest in trails and trail systems.

What are your priorities for WTA under your tenure?

We are at a pivotal time for outdoor recreation. We’ve come out of the pandemic, where we saw so much more use, and we’re starting to ask the right questions about what the future of outdoor recreation looks like for our state. How do we maintain it? How do we protect it? How do we make it sustainable? How do we make sure it’s welcoming and inclusive to everybody who lives in our state and wants to recreate? How do we bring in perspectives that haven’t been brought in before? Now we need to figure out what are the right solutions.

My priority for WTA is that we continue to be a driver of solutions for outdoor recreation. How do we get more people the information they need to get outside to find the hiking experiences they want? How do we connect hikers and everybody who loves outdoors with opportunities to give back to trails through things like volunteering? How do we get folks to speak up for policies that support trails? WTA is kind of an engine for connecting the hiking community to solutions.

How does this trail, the Sauk River ADA Trail, reflect some of those priorities and solutions?

One, you can see that trails don’t maintain themselves. You saw the number of downed trees, the amount of work that had to be done this spring to get this trail open and ready for hikers. Two, the importance of having green spaces for climate resilience, that you can go and get some respite from the heat. It was a lovely river walk and it was 20 degrees cooler than it is in Seattle right now. Three, the accessibility piece: making sure that everybody can feel welcome and included in outdoors. We’ve been working over the last couple of years to make sure that accessible trails are very prominently featured. Last year we rolled out a wheelchair-friendly search function, so you can filter for trails with a flat, easy grade. And for those of us with kids, it’s nice to know where you can go with a jogging stroller.

Is overcrowding a priority problem for WTA?

It’s totally a priority. People recreating is not a spigot you can turn off. They’re choosing to get outside, and that’s a good thing. But they need information on where to go and resources on how to get outside respectfully and safely. A big role that WTA plays is helping inform hikers about where to go. Hiker education means that if they get there and it’s crowded, then they have backup options about where else to go. We have thousands of trails and we can help spread those people out.

What role does technology play both in straining the capacity of Washington’s outdoor recreation infrastructure and in providing relief valves?

It has been really interesting over the past few years to see all of the different places people go to get information. It’s not just the trail books anymore. It’s Instagram, social media and word-of-mouth. We’re trying to meet people looking for that information. They tend to use their phones. So we have our Trailblazer app, which has our entire hiking guide searchable by location. Unless you have the information on what are the alternatives, you’re just going to go to the place that was featured on Instagram or the place that you’ve seen the photos of. Technology does have a good role to play in helping hikers have more informed decisions about where to go.

Compared to our neighbors, Washington takes a comparatively light touch on regulating day-use access to trails during peak seasons. BC Parks requires day-use passes at popular trailheads on the Sea to Sky Corridor. Timed entry permits are required at Multnomah Falls, Oregon. Mount Rainier National Park is considering a similar concept. What is WTA’s stance on this approach to managing public lands?

There are definitely places that are not being adequately resourced to handle the level of visitation that they’re receiving. WTA believes that there is a place for permits and for restrictions on use. But that it is really a tool of last resort. Because one of the things that we firmly believe is that everybody should have the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, and that people benefiting from the outdoors is what sparks a love of the outdoors, so that people will then protect those places. We believe there are other tools, like landscape-level management around building alternate trail systems and other destination locations, that we can use in addition to and before restrictions on use.

What are some examples of alternative trail systems that WTA has been involved in?

I recently visited Silver Star. It’s kind of like the Teanaway [Community Forest] or the Mountain Loop, a product of years of collaboration with a lot of different user groups to build a vision for what a trail system could be near a major urban area. Silver Star is outside of Vancouver, Wash., and Portland. It provides fantastic volcano views, and if it’s properly invested in, it can provide multiuse recreation for the entire region in a really cool way.

How did WTA create such a strong culture of volunteerism, from work trails to trip reports?

WTA was started in 1966 by Louise Marshall as Signpost magazine, a place for hikers to help other hikers find information on how to get outside. That’s been core to the DNA since the beginning. There have been many phases. This year, we’re celebrating 30 years of our trail maintenance programs, connecting volunteers with opportunities to get back to trails. The first work parties were 30 years ago. It’s the 20th anniversary of Hike-a-Thon, which is our annual August celebration of trails. It’s the 10th anniversary of our outdoor leadership training program and gear library. So we have these big milestones of different ways that WTA is connecting hikers with opportunities to give back, to get outside and to help others get outside. That’s the real secret sauce of what WTA does.

As for how we’re evolving, we have really great opportunities because we are seeing population growth. Think about how you got introduced to trails. Likely it was with somebody helping you get outside, teaching you what you need to get outside, helping you get the right gear. For me, it was my dad, but we [play that role] for many transplants: Welcome to Washington, we’ll help you get outside.

Sparking the love of getting outside is the first step, then turning people into trail champions. Then people catch the bug. I get so much out of trip reports. How do I give back? How do I write trip reports for other people? It’s totally infectious and it’s a lot of fun. If we’re not having fun, we’re doing something wrong.