Two Hikers Whose Love of the Land Became a Lasting Legacy

By Caroline Woodwell

It’s not surprising, really, that hikers end up at INLC. Not surprising that people who like to hike also support land protection. This is the story of how two dedicated hikers became dedicated members, pursuing their outdoor passions along the way. Both from Spokane County, their paths to the Conservancy are similar: as beginning hikers years ago, they found themselves talking with Conservancy members and walking on lands the Conservancy had protected.

Today, Elaine Edwards and Galen Chamberlain are INLC members, volunteer land stewards, and legacy donors. In addition, they have logged thousands of miles outdoors in Washington and all around the world, Elaine geocaching and Galen hiking. Both trace their early hiking experiences to Waikiki Springs.

Elaine had been hiking at Waikiki Springs for years when she began to see geocachers on the property now known as Glen Tana. Geocaching is like an old-fashioned treasure hunt, but the treasure hunter uses a GPS in a smartphone to read coordinates and navigate to the cache. The game began in 2000 when satellite technology, which had been available mainly to the military, became available to the public. She was intrigued.  

She found her first cache, on Legacy Ridge in Liberty Lake, and since then, she has been geocaching in every state and in 31 countries. She has found a total of 17,540 caches. Now she has set her sights on geocaching in every national park.

She “caches,” as geocachers call it, almost every day. “We admit, it’s our addiction,” she says. When you get close to a cache, she says, “your geo-sense starts to tingle.”

But she has not left hiking or land conservation behind. As a volunteer INLC land steward at Saltese Flats and Uplands, she leads INLC hiking trips to educate the public, works on habitat enhancement projects, and monitors protected land. Always, she picks up trash. “Cache in, trash out” applies for Elaine in geocaching and hiking. “One piece at a time, she said. “That’s how I’m going to help the Earth.”

Galen Chamberlain began serious hiking when he retired from his job in construction in Spokane. Already a skier, at 60, he took a backpacking class, a mountaineering class, and a mountain biking class, all from the Spokane Mountaineers. He, too, had been hiking at Waikiki Springs for years before the Conservancy announced its protection project. And he, too, had met hikers and Conservancy members.

Thirty years later, Galen has hiked every one of the 100 hikes described in Spokane author Rich Landers’ seminal book, 100 Hikes in the Inland Northwest. He estimates he has hiked 15,000 miles. At almost 90, his goal is to hike 500 miles a year. That means hiking every other day, sometimes alone, as he heads out the door of his house in Spokane County, and often as a hike leader for INLC and others.

Galen was a small-plane pilot and owner for 65 years, often flying to his backcountry hiking destinations, landing on a small air strip in rugged terrain. He would fly in, hike and camp for a few days, and fly home.

Back in Spokane, it is still Glen Tana and Waikiki Springs that inspire him most these days. Last time he led a hike there, he said, they were fortunate to see the resident eagle. The group stood still on the trail with the eagle in a tree, “watching us watching it,” he said with a chuckle.

Both Elaine and Galen have left gifts to the Conservancy in their wills, both of them eager to protect the open spaces that provide land for their outdoor passions and protection of open space in the countryside they love.

If you’d like to talk about how your planned gift can help the forever work of land conservancy, contact Carol Corbin, Director of Philanthropy at ccorbin@inlandnwland.org or call (509) 328-2939, ext. 4. Find out more about the ways to give and planned giving.