The BFTA aims to keep 12 board members who will serve one or two, three-year terms.
Michael Kauffmann
Board President
Works as an author, educator, grant writer, and researcher in Humboldt County, California. For the past 5 years, he has written and managed state and federal education grants to enhance the county’s educational systems. Currently he is the director of math and science for the Fortuna Elementary School District, the program manager for Save the Redwoods League in Humboldt County, and a research plant ecologist.
Michael lives in Kneeland, California, with his wife, Allison, his son, Sylas, and dog, Skylar where the family enjoys building forts and trails in their 5-acre redwood forest. He first hiked the BFT in 2009, authored the original write-up in 2010, and co-authored V2.2015. He is the author of three books: Conifer Country, Conifers of the Pacific Slope, and Field Guide to Manzanitas, which explore the natural history of the West and holds a MA in Biology from Humboldt State University (see C.V. and follow his Blog).
email: michael (at) bigfoottrail.org
Gretchen Ziegler
Memberships
Growing up in Kansas didn’t offer much in the way of wilderness or hiking, but Gretchen was lucky to have parents who took her and her brothers camping every summer in Colorado or the west coast. She left Kansas for good in her 20’s to live briefly in Oregon before landing in Humboldt, where the fabulous public lands and trails have kept her for over 28 years. Her 35-year career was in the zoo profession, and she retired as the Director at Sequoia Park Zoo in 2020. Along the way she has backpacked in the Rockies and Trinity Alps, triked some awesome rail trails with her family, and enjoys day hikes wherever she can find a trail. In 2019, she had one of the best weeks of her life, in the Yolla Bolly wilderness helping with trial maintenance on the Bigfoot Trail.
Gretchen has served at times on various local non-profit boards in Eureka, including the former Humboldt Bay Trails Trust, and currently volunteers for Redwood Coast Village and the Eureka Sequoia Garden Club, helping coordinate efforts to maintain and enhance native landscaping at the zoo.
email: gretchen (at) bigfoottrail.org
Karen Orso
Karen Orso was born and raised in New Jersey, in a household that delighted in the “Great Indoors.” Nevertheless, due to a quirky gene or out of pure rebelliousness, she has always loved being outdoors. She began practicing what would these days be called “intentional hiking” around the age of ten, wandering, exploring, enjoying the orchids, rhododendrons, Mayapples, Jack-in-the-Pulpits and more in the nearby Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. On arrival in California Karen was so dazzled by the state’s biodiversity she enrolled in classes at Merritt College in Oakland and earned an AA degree in Environmental Studies. In many ways this was a more meaningful achievement than the BA she had received from Wesleyan University years earlier. While attending Merritt College she began her 30+ year association with the California Native Plant Society. Karen commenced volunteer trail work with the Mokelumne Trailbusters in the l990’s and shortly after that also joined the Calaveras Big Trees State Park Volunteer Trail Crew. Her backcountry volunteer trail work began with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance and soon also included trips with the Los Padres Forest Association, The Arizona Trail Association, the Pacific Crest Trail Association and The Bigfoot Trail Alliance. Other outdoorsy activities include working as a guide for Nature Outings, co-leading Coastwalk’s annual Lost Coast Backpack Trip for 10 years and working at the Kirkwood Cross-County Ski Center.
email: karen (at) bigfoottrail.org
Steve Salzman
Steve escaped the San Francisco Bay Area, in 1973. He moved to the north coast to attend HSU where (as a gradual student) earner degrees in both the Industrial Arts and Environmental Resources Engineering programs. During that carefree time of his life he did a lot of backpacking, tree planting and stream restoration work with a small, worker-owned collective (NRG), homesteaded for a couple of years in the Mattole, then started a family and built a home, in Arcata. Steve worked as a consulting engineer for 30 years in Humboldt County, 10 of those with his own company, Greenway Partners, which he retired from, in 2018.
As a recovering engineer, Steve still has the need to plan, design, build, and fix stuff. He is an active backpacker and mountain bike rider. As such, Steve welcomed the opportunity to get involved with trail work through the Humboldt Trail Stewards and the Bigfoot Trail Alliance. Steve and his wife (Joan Levy) are active in other local community organizations and nonprofits.
email: steve (at) bigfoottrail.org
Gabrielle Gopinath
Gabrielle is a writer and educator. Her writing about art explores places where culture, geography, and embodied experience interface. She writes from an ecologically grounded perspective, often exploring works of land art that invite a somatic experience of place. Her art criticism appears regularly in Sculpture magazine. She has also written on art and culture for publications including Art Practical, San Francisco Art Quarterly, the North Coast Journal, and the Oxford Art Journal. She received a Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University and has taught in art history departments at the University of Notre Dame, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Cal Poly Humboldt. Currently she teaches classes in art history and film history at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California. She is working on a longform essay about mountain trails as cultural networks.
Shortly after relocating to Humboldt County, Gopinath hiked a section of the Bigfoot Trail through the Trinity Alps and fell under the mountains’ spell. Since that time she has taken advantage of every opportunity to explore the high country, returning repeatedly to the Alps in addition to hiking and backpacking in the King Range, the Marble Mountains, and the Russian Wilderness. She enjoys reading, writing, and observing the fauna, flora, and fungi of the Pacific Northwest, especially mushrooms and birds. She has been hiking and volunteering with the Bigfoot Trail Alliance since 2024.
email: gabrielle (at) bigfoottrail.org
Mary Kwart
At age 6, her father showed her how decimal points work by using an old metal trail sign that said “Tuolumne Meadows 25.3 miles” while on a family vacation in Yosemite National Park. The trail behind that sign mysteriously disappeared into the woods and started her interest in hiking. Long distance hiking was interrupted by a 30-year career in wildfire management working for various government agencies traipsing around wildfires by foot or by helicopter in 13 western states carrying a shovel or notebook as the job required. She also occasionally helped write land management plans and provide NEPA input to projects and received a degree in Forestry/Fire Management from Colorado State University. After the formal work interlude was thankfully over, she retired and continued to hike around the U.S.—finishing the Pacific Crest Trail in 2010 and the Bigfoot Trail in 2016. She spent a couple years on the board of the American Long Distance Hiking Association-West and is living in Ashland, Oregon teaching backpacking and wildfire education classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is active in a local non-traditional age backpacker group.
email: mary (at) bigfoottrail.org
Emily Sinkhorn
Has a passion for all things trails, forests and community. Since moving to the northwest in 2004, her favorite places to roam have been the less-traveled forests and streams of the Klamath Mountains and Oregon Coast Range.
Emily works as the Environmental Services Director for the city of Arcata and oversees Arcata’s Environmental Services Department which encompasses the City’s parks, natural resources, facilities, recreation, streets, utilities, water and wastewater divisions. In the past she worked with the non-profit Redwood Community Action Agency, collaborating to further active transportation and community-led change in Humboldt County. She leads many Safe Routes to School, trail and community-building projects and co-founded the Community Bike Kitchen in Eureka. Since 2011, Emily has co-hosted a weekly trails radio show “Happy Trails” on KHUM in Humboldt County, focusing on local efforts to a complete a regional trail system and sharing successes from other communities.
Emily can often be found cycling the roads and trails Humboldt County, do-si-do-ing at a barn dance or organizing a local event or meeting. She lives in lovely, funky Eureka in a great old house with her partner Dan and cat Snowball.
email: emily (at) bigfoottrail.org
Ken Mizierwa
Coming soon.
email: ken (at) bigfoottrail.org
Laura Chapman
Secretary
First backpacked while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, where she designed and built footbridges on rural mule trails. She began exploring local wild lands soon after moving to Humboldt for grad school, and her love for the area grew during many years with the Six Rivers National Forest. Laura and her husband Bob, a fellow Nepal volunteer and English teacher, ran the Eureka High School backpack club for 25 years and introduced hundreds of students to our local wilderness areas; those experiences inspired a number of club members to pursue careers in environmental education, conservation, and natural resource management.
Laura currently works in international disaster management and humanitarian assistance. Although she’s traveled to spectacular places while on assignments, she always feels lucky to return home to the rugged beauty and diversity of our region.
email: laura (at) bigfoottrail.org
Harvey Kelsey
Harvey grew up and attended college on the east coast. In 1972, he enrolled in graduate school at UC Santa Cruz; and the move out west solidified his trajectory to remain in the mountains of the west, where he has day-hiked and backpacked as much as possible.
He has taught in geology departments at Western Washington University, the University of Oregon and has been a member of the Geology Department at Cal Poly Humboldt since 1992.
Participation in several week-long volunteer trail crews solidified his interest in remaining active with the Bigfoot Trail Alliance.
His other service activity is his commitment to the board of trustees of the Arcata Community Pool, on which he has served for the last 17 years.
email: harvey (at) bigfoottrail.org
Thanks to previous board members:
- Mike Splain
- Jacob Shinners
- Dennis Houghton
- Jeff Morris
- Terri Vroman-Little
- Sage Clegg
- Rees Hughes
- Ian Nelson
- Jason Barnes
- Chris Turner
- Mitch Timbanard
