Volunteer Spotlight: Brayden Donnelly
On the weekend of January 17, 2026, our staff led a small crew of volunteers into the Red Buttes Wilderness Area. For some, it was their first time wielding a crosscut saw. For others, it was routine – their weekly dose of wilderness stewardship with Siskiyou Mountain Club. But for one participant, this trip may have been one of their last, at least for a while. “It was almost four years to the date of when I’d started with SMC,” says volunteer Brayden Donnelly. “It was almost a perfect day to be out in the woods. Blue bird skies, almost no wind.” Brielle and Joe crosscut a log on the Frog Pond-Cameron Meadows loop. Photo by Brayden Donnelly. Together with his wife, Brielle, and volunteer Joe Boyd, Brayden embarked on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest’s Frog Pond-Cameron Meadows loop. As they hiked, the trio paused to remove fallen logs from the trail using a crosscut saw. This spot isn’t far from the site of his first outing with the Club in 2022, when he joined a crew to maintain the Horse Camp and Butte Fork Applegate Trails. Brayden (second from left) on his first volunteer trip just outside the Red Buttes Wilderness area. Photo by Alex Relph. On that first trip, Brayden wasn’t sure what to expect. With his background in wildland fire, he was accustomed to “chainsaw and heavy machinery, and things being so loud and chaotic. But with SMC, there was quiet and solitude. That got me hooked,” he says. He remembers being struck by how “a bunch of volunteers could get together in such a wild place and get so much done with hand tools.” From left: staff member Nick Hodges with volunteers Joe Boyd and Brayden Donnelly camping out on the Illinois River National Recreation Trail in March, 2025. Photo by Trevor Meyer. Brayden is a transplant from the east coast, having moved to central Oregon in 2019. He worked on a fire crew for the Deschutes National Forest before his wife’s nursing job took him south to Ashland. It was then that he began working for Lomakatsi, an organization focused on forest management. Brayden’s love for hiking, ecology, and working outside made him a perfect fit for Siskiyou Mountain Club’s volunteer program. He became a regular, averaging “about 5-8 weekends a year,” he says. These trips ran the gambit from quick day-trips to multi-day spike-outs. But “the best way to experience trail work,” according to Brayden, “is a backpacking trip.” Brayden (third from right) prepares to cross the Kalmiopsis at the Vulcan Lake Trailhead. Photo by Trevor Meyer. His most memorable excursion was the annual Memorial Day Trans-Kalmiopsis trek. Beginning at Vulcan Lake, Brayden and the crew hiked rugged, primitive trails down into a sweltering hot canyon. Then, they forded the Chetco River, and hiked back up the other side, covering 26 miles with thousands of feet of elevation gain in five days. As they hiked, they carried new trail signage and tools, spending long hours maintaining the trail. A selfie from Brayden on the Trans-Kalmiopsis Route. “I got absolutely humbled by that wilderness, the terrain, the early season heat, the poison oak,” he says. “That many days in a row of trail work while sleeping on the ground was such a challenge.” The following year, Brayden set out into the Kalmiopsis again, but this time with a different goal. He and his wife, Brielle, combined the Memorial Day route with the Kalmiopsis Rim, completing a 50-mile route dubbed the Leach Memorial Loop. A view from the Kalmiopsis Rim Trail with views of the interior of the Wilderness. He admits that the landscape of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness is not the postcard-perfect lush forest that one would expect of Oregon. It has been scarred by large-scale wildfires such as the Biscuit, Chetco-Bar, and Flat fires, to name only a few. Many of its forests, once green and shaded, are now arid swaths of land. While small patches of live timber still stand, “snags” or dead and burned trees, are all that remain of the rest. Brayden with his camera. Photo by Alex Relph. Brayden has taken particular interest in these burned areas, so much so that he began documenting them with his camera. “What keeps me coming back to photographing snags is how creative the form is that nature creates. It’s abstract and different and unique,” he says. “You’re never going to get the same snag twice because it’s created by fire and wind.” Image of snags captured by Brayden south of Eagle Mountain on the Kalmiopsis Rim Trail #1124. At first, he says, the Kalmiopsis can appear “hot and ugly.” But while fire can be “destructive, through our human lens,” he believes that “there’s a lot of beauty to be found” in its wake. One day, the Kalmiopsis may become a green place again. Its forests could grow back, in one form or another. But Brayden knows that he won’t live to see that happen. It’s an important reminder that nature works at a geological scale, not by the decade. “I’ll never see the Kalmiopsis ‘come back,’ because it’s just going to take a really long time,” he says. “I really like the humbling aspect of that.” An image of snags captured by Brayden south of Eagle Mountain on the Kalmiopsis Rim Trail #1124. By the summer of 2024, he had built up such a catalogue of snag photographs that he exhibited his collection at a presentation with Siskiyou Mountain Club. Brayden is now moving back east, where he and his wife can be closer to family. But they’re planning one last hurrah before settling into their new home. In April, they plan to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. “We did five days on the Leach Loop last spring,” he says. “I think if we did that, we'd be pretty solid for the PCT.” When I asked what the future holds for him, Brayden said he still wants to support Siskiyou Mountain Club’s mission. “When our kids get old enough,” he mused, “they might be spending a summer out in the Kalmiopsis."
