Volunteer appreciation 2025: Celebrating the people who give back

At WTA, our volunteers, like our members, power everything we do. From hiking guide correspondents and trail crew members to ambassadors, advocates, magazine contributors and app developers — our volunteers share a passion for the outdoors, a generous spirit, a sense of humor, a love of learning and dedication to giving back. 

While we are grateful for our volunteers year-round, once a year we host a full week of events to celebrate everyone's efforts together. 

"Plein Air" painting was part of the many fun events we hosted to say thanks and enjoy the company of our awesome volunteers. 

We just closed 2025's week of celebration out. And here's a roundup of how we welcomed longtime and new volunteers as well as WTA members to celebrate their efforts this year [PDF].

Mapping our impact 

Every dot on a map represents a crew of hard-working volunteers who worked through sunshine, rain and snow to improve and build trails this year. To repair bridges and shore up popular trails. They cleared downed logs and trimmed back overgrown brush. With good spirits and a can-do attitude, 2,500 trail volunteers, including 410 youth volunteers, dedicated over 128,000 hours, so far. Click around the map to explore the work.

But WTA is lucky to have more than trail volunteers. Our technology volunteers help maintain our Trailblazer mobile app and Hike Finder map. They talked to more than 8,000 people at trailheads, festivals and events around the state. They clean and waterproofed 213 pairs of boots and inspected and patched 111 tents in our gear libraries that help get communities of youth outside. They mailed thousands of letters and sorted thousands of photos. They fixed tools and showed up, again and again. 

Celebrating Volunteers with a bit of Fun 

Over the course of the week, we held events to officially recognize the volunteers who went above and beyond, or put in a truly miraculous number of days of volunteer work. You can see all the winners at our Rock Wall of Fame.

Mixed in with those events were some less traditional events just for fun, from painting to yoga, hiking, camping, learning about lichen and campfire sing-a-longs. 

Handing out prizes and smiles at the Puget Sound event. 

Serving up pancakes after a night of camping in the Teanaway Community Forest

Handing out awards for above and beyond volutneers! 


The volunteer week of fun hit the bullseye. 


Laughs in Eastern Washington's event. 

Connecting over a laughing yoga. 

Volunteers at the Northwest regional appreciation event. 

Learning about the wonders of lichen in Beacon Rock State Park. 

A final message of thanks

Washington Trails Association has always been an organization of community, of people who care about wild places and each other. Whether volunteers have contributed a single day or hundreds of them, they are part of something greater. 

"On behalf of all of us at WTA," says WTA's CEO Jaime Loucky, "I want to share our gratitude to everyone who has volunteered your time, skills, and creativity for trail users across the state ... You all play a critical part in advancing our vision of trails for everyone, forever. Thank you for being an integral part of the WTA community."

There is so much to be proud of in 2025, but best of all its the community our volunteers have created. We are grateful for you and all you bring and we can't wait to see what we achieve together in 2026.