MISSOULA — The floors, walls and ceiling of Schreiber Gym will seemingly fade away and transform into a vibrant century-old logging town brought to life with music, dancing, a jail, a chapel, a barbershop and more. It’s a tradition unique to the University of Montana, which has hosted the ever-vivacious Foresters’ Ball going on 107 years.
The campus event draws students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members otherwise unattached to UM all together for a “swingin’ good time” — many clad in flannel and sporting boots made for stomping. All proceeds benefit UM forestry student scholarships.
The 107th celebration of the Foresters’ Ball will take place 7 p.m. to midnight Friday, Feb. 6, and Saturday, Feb. 7, in UM’s Schreiber Gym. Tickets are available for purchase on GrizTix or in person until Feb. 6 at the University Center foyer. Different prices are available for students, community members and couples.
While the spectacle of the Foresters’ Ball is impressive, many might not realize the entire effort is spearheaded by a group of students who for months have brainstormed, planned and worked hard to make the festivities a smashing success.
The work offers students across majors opportunities for leadership, career learning and memory-making. All students involved with the ball must put in 80 hours to qualify for scholarships, but many exceed that.
“I probably had easily more than 100 hours of my time put into the ball last year just as an officer, and I’ve already probably put in a couple hundred hours this year over the summer,” said Alden Whitney, a UM forestry senior and this year’s “Chief Push” Foresters’ Ball Committee leader, speaking back in September.
“There’s a lot of coordination that goes into it, a lot of different parts that are behind the scenes,” he added. “But it all comes together.”
The first big lift happens in the fall, months before attendees are scheming their boot and flannel combinations and whether to gamble on a haircut at the event’s barbershop.
Last October, Whitney was among about 40 Forestry Club students who dedicated their weekend to the “pole run.” They crammed together in cars and the backs of trucks to travel two hours from campus to UM’s Lubrecht Experimental Forest, felling trees that will become the scaffolding of the Foresters’ Ball.
The unique 21,000-plus-acre forest is managed by the University’s W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation as an outdoor classroom for students and a recreational retreat for the public.
Lubrecht is home to a variety of trees and other flora and fauna that provide students with cutting-edge experiments, field laboratory experience and research opportunities in forestry, resource management and ecosystem science. Its second-growth forest creates a landscape that is typical of the forests future managers might oversee, and its variety of timber classes gives students on-the-ground learning about planting, thinning, prescribed burns and forest management.
During the pole run, less experienced students develop some of those skills under the mentorship of more seasoned classmates like Whitney, honing expertise that will set them apart in the summer and post-grad job markets.
“Our students take the concepts they learn in the classroom and bring them to life through the creation of the Foresters’ Ball,” said Libby Metcalf, dean of the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation. “They devote countless hours to selecting, harvesting and treating trees that become the backdrop for this event. I am continually impressed by their dedication to their chosen profession and deeply humbled by their commitment to one another.”
With fresh snow on the road and bluebird skies, this year’s pole run was just about perfect for boosting morale and building excitement for the Foresters’ Ball. The group usually takes a whole weekend, but they managed to finish in one long 12-hour day.
Spread out in a lodgepole pine stand, junior and senior veterans of the pole run primarily handle the chainsaws or supervise the lower-classmen as safety officers. The group selects trees that are manageable to haul – usually about 30-feet in length and 6 inches wide at the base. They take anywhere between 300 to 500.
“We go through and we basically thin out those stands, taking a lot of the dead trees and a handful of live trees,” Whitney said. “And those are the poles that make the Foresters’ Ball.”
While some students run saws, others haul the poles down to the road to be stacked into piles. At the end of the day, when the number of poles nears the needed number, upperclassmen break off to teach first- and second-years how to run chainsaws and other skills.
Whitney said the pole run is a unique chance for younger students to become comfortable with expertise that will launch them toward additional goals or opportunities.
“I was lucky, I had thrown around a chainsaw quite a bit before I came here, but there’s people that grew up in the middle of a big city but want to work on fire and have never seen a chainsaw in their life,” said Whitney, who is from Olympia, Washington. “And so it’s really great to get out there and be able to teach people chainsaws and just working safely in the woods, driving gravel roads and all the other things that come with just being outside.”
The group headed back to campus after the long, but efficient, day. The material is stored until the Foresters’ Ball construction. Another group returned to Lubrecht in January to collect fir trees. During the months between, the ball committee worked hard to get all safety and logistics details in order, fill out forms, order merch, raise donations and plan construction.
“Of the last three years I’ve done the pole run, this by far felt the easiest and the smoothest,” Whitney said. “Which I think speaks to leadership being around for a couple years and people knowing what they’re doing and finding a new groove.”
The Foresters’ Ball had a rare two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic but was revived in 2023. Whitney and other ball leaders have since focused on bringing the celebration back to a stable place.
“Those two years of COVID, the club kind of dwindled and people who knew how to put on the ball were graduating,” said Miranda Allen, a senior forestry major and the ball’s publicity officer. “Those freshmen and sophomores didn’t have a ball; they didn't have that learning opportunity. So, it’s definitely on us, making sure all of that gets passed down.”
The Forestry Club has steadily grown since the ball’s return, going from a solid group of 20 to 40 to 60 this past year. It largely draws forestry, environmental science and wildlife biology majors, but is open to any undergraduate or graduate student. Allen, who is from Longview, Washington, joined as a transfer student to make close friends on a new campus.
Outside of Foresters’ Ball preparations, the club puts on other social and educational events throughout the school year and offers skills-learning like hand digging lines for fire or timber cruising. Many members overlap with clubs like the Woodsman Team.
The club’s consistency and its talented cohort of younger students make Allen and Whitney believe the Foresters’ Ball is back on track.
“We have an insanely strong group of sophomores,” Allen said. “They have so much knowledge already, and they’re going to continue that.”
This year’s Foresters’ Ball theme is “Timber Fallin,’ Trucks a’ Haulin.’” After a couple wildland fire-centric themes, the committee’s leadership wanted to bring the event back to its forestry roots this year.
As the group gathers for construction this week, they’ll spend the first two days giving extra attention to rebuilding and repairing the reusable floors and panels, ensuring that its framework is solid enough to last another 20 years of Foresters’ Balls.
“This is such a big event and legacy to have to leave,” Allen said. “Being so involved in the ball is such an honor. I've worked with foresters that graduated 10 years ago who went and know what it means.”
