In this case a 275 dollar fee may be a bit much, you may be paying to work in an awesome location but with no pack support at spike camp it sounds like your going to be eating typical trail food, the crews I have been on had all the beer, wine, soda and good food you could want, never had I eaten so well in the back country, in that case I would probably be willing to pay 275 dollars to go on a crew.
One upside though is the fee may bring you more serious people, I have heard stories of people on trail crews that were worthless, even heard of a guy that was going to hike 20 miles to a lake after work because he just had to have a bath, he got lost and had to be rescued.
