Ode to the Pulaski

by Oliver Vernon, 2023 WS Intern

The original Pulaski built by Ed Pulaski himself  

Working as an intern with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation has given me opportunities to learn and develop in the beautiful country that northwest Montana has to offer, namely the Great Bear Wilderness which forms the northern part of the greater Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Through the extensive training sessions and through the work itself, I’ve developed soft skills such as leadership, communication and teamwork, and mental endurance. I've also learned and refined some hard skills such as backpacking, and tool use and maintenance. Since I’m definitely somewhat of a tool nerd, the tool use and maintenance has been one of my favorite parts of my work this summer which is why I’ve chosen to do a writeup on one of my personal favorite tools: the Pulaski.

A brand new Pulaski tool

 First, I’ll begin with a brief history on the tool starting with the man who invented it, Ed Pulaski. Ed, born in 1868 in Ohio, left school and struck out to make a living at around fifteen years old. He made his way west into Montana and Idaho where he worked a variety of outdoor jobs where he became very familiar with the region until he joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1908 at forty years old. Shortly after this in the summer of 1910, the most intense and devastating wildfires the nation had ever seen began to ravage the forests that Ed worked on and he was assigned to lead a team of about forty-five firefighters to battle the blaze. The fight however didn't go well for the crew. They became surrounded by the inferno when their escape route down a canyon was engulfed by the fire. Ed, with his knowledge of the land and quick thinking, led his crew back up the canyon to a mineshaft that he knew of where they would take shelter. It was there that he famously guarded the exit of the mineshaft and even held some of the panicked crew at gunpoint to keep them in the mineshaft until the danger subsided. Hours later when the fire outside had finally died down, his crew found him lying face down presumably dead at the entrance of the mineshaft. When one exclaimed “the boss is dead,” Ed raised his head up and said “like hell he is.” In the end, only six of his crew perished in the incident and Ed Pulaski was regarded as a hero.

My personal Pulaski tool

 With his history as a blacksmith combined with firsthand experience in wildland firefighting, it’s not much of a surprise that Pulaski would then go on to design one of the most renowned tools in wildland firefighting. While similar tools did exist before, Ed refined the design into the Pulaski that we know today, and there have been only slight changes to the design since he made the original. Now the tool is ubiquitous in any wildland firefighting crew and is also used by trail crews and even gardeners. The Pulaski tool combines an ax and a grubbing blade into the ultimate digging and chopping tool. The user can be digging away and then with a flick of the wrist, chop through some roots or other woody debris, and then go back to digging.

This brings me to the reason I wrote any of this which is why the Pulaski is one of my favorite tools and what I even use it for since I work on Wilderness trails, not wildland fire. I’ll start with the reason I like it so much. Mainly I just love how simple yet versatile it is, allowing it to do many jobs. The ax half may not be as finely engineered and tuned as a European competition ax, but in my experience it still does a fine job of chopping through logs and stubborn roots. And the grubbing tool isn’t as heavy and capable as that of a pick mattock, but I’ve found that for my purposes it does just fine digging up unwanted foliage and moving dirt. This ‘jack of all trades’ quality means less tools I have to carry and its simplicity lends itself to durability and ease of maintenance.

It’s for these reasons that the tool finds its way into the hands of wilderness trail crews as well as wildland fire crews. This summer I’ve carried a Pulaski for countless miles and I appreciate its usefulness almost daily. The Pulaski often does the dirty work that you wouldn’t want to use a fine ax for due to the risk of damaging it. This work is typically chopping through rotten logs that are partially buried and roots that are growing into the trail or preventing a fallen tree’s root ball from being moved out of the way. I’ve also often used the grubbing part to retread sections of trail and to dig up brush that’s attempting to overgrow the trail which seems to be a common problem in the Great Bear Wilderness. And finally, one of the most valuable uses for the Pulaski in my opinion, digging catholes! When I’m on the job, I’m usually dozens of miles from the closest toilet, necessitating the use of catholes and the Pulaski makes quick work of this task.

Overall, the Pulaski tool is an undoubtedly versatile tool even today, over one hundred years after its design which is why it is still widely used by outdoor professionals and the public alike. I like the tool so much that I simply couldn’t resist buying one that I found in an antique shop and since then it has served me well. I’ve used it for tasks ranging from clearing ice off my driveway in the winter to make it passable, to chopping firewood while camping, to cutting a miniature fire line around a bonfire to help it stay under control. And due to its simple and durable design, it will remain useful to me for decades to come.