Written by Max Skolnick-Schur, Field Crew Leader.

We drove up the bumpy McKnight road again to the McKnight Cabin, with plans to continue our work from the previous hitch on the Black Range Crest Trail. We were doing a little bit of everything this week. In total, we brushed and spot-treaded 1.37 miles of trail, cut 67 logs, built six cairns, constructed five drains, and built one check dam. By the end of the hitch, we had worked our way to about 0.15 miles past the junction with Lake Trail #110.

This week our small but mighty crew removed lots of locust, aspen, and raspberry from the trail corridor. Armed with loppers, hand saws, tread tools, and a crosscut saw, the brush did not stand a chance. We were able to move fairly quickly through much of it, opening up the corridor and making the trail much easier to follow. Most of the logs down across the trail were fairly small and quick to cut, but there were also a few larger-diameter trees that took quite a bit more effort to remove.

Throughout the week, we were welcomed by beautiful views of the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wildernesses. Though there were not as many as the last time we were here, the raspberries were still plentiful. A few of us had also attended an invasive plant training the previous week, so we entertained ourselves along the trail by trying to identify the various grasses we encountered.

There were quite a few thunderstorms this hitch as well. Most days we spent at least some portion of the day sheltering from lightning and rain. Even with the storms slowing us down, our small crew still managed to get quite a bit of work done and push farther north along the Crest Trail.

The post Return to McKnight — Revenge of the Lightning appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Samuel Baggenstos, Conservation & Wilderness Associate.

Heat and rocks. Erosion and heat. Rocks and erosion. Pick whatever combo of those three words you want and they would accurately describe the experience of our most recent hitch. For eight days we labored in the wild world of Tucson in August, battling the sun, the sweat, the rocks, the dirt, the dogs, the cats, and the cones (more on that later). I don’t want to presume, but it was the sort of hitch that may earn its place in Wild Arizona lore among such infamous events such as “the snow hitch” and “the rainy hitch” and “the windy hitch.” But I don’t have the right to start naming things. A title such as “the hot hitch” can’t be decided by an individual: it must mysteriously emerge on its own in crew parlance.

August 19th through 26th our Wild Stew Field Crew spent our hitch working at Sunland Vista, one of the two Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) sites that Wild Arizona manages for the city of Tucson. There are over 900 GSI assets throughout the city, all managed by Tucson’s Storm to Shade program. Among other things, this program aims to utilize storm water to nourish a biodiverse population of native plants. Essentially the city of Tucson is rewilding the urban landscape one small (or sometimes large) installation at a time, which fits nicely into Wild Arizona’s larger mission of habitat restoration.

Sunland Vista is a 0.3 mile stretch of wash that runs through a neighborhood on the south side of town. This particular area has experienced several high rainfall events recently, causing significant erosion to the accessible foot path that winds along the edge of the wash. Our main goal this hitch was to use medium brown rocks to armor the eroding edge of the path and better retain the compacted decomposed granite that makes up the top of the walking surface.  After receiving 14 tons of medium brown rock via dump truck delivery, we set to work: digging two parallel trenches on the wash side of the path, setting the rock inside these trenches, and filling in the gaps with interlocking rocks (often called rip rap). A secondary task was to address the erosion of parts of the side of the wash. We did this by constructing a sort of terrace on the hillside. We also did a variety of other tasks including grubbing/hand-pulling of non-native invasive plants, trash removal and a variety of other smaller erosion control projects.

All this brings me to a most peculiar event. At the end of each work day, we would mark our remaining piles of unused rock with orange cones to mitigate tripping hazards. One morning, we returned to the site and realized our cones were missing. When we scanned the area we noticed a shopping cart nearby in the wash, sitting upside down and covered in rocks. Contained inside the metal cage was one of our cones. Taped to the bottom of the cart was a rock with a hand written note attached to it that read: “find your last cones.” The hunt was on. After a five minute walk around the site, we found our three other cones, one which was hidden inside a pile of rock with a note taped to it: “why you kill the ant house so find your cones.” It was then I remembered that the previous day I had removed a strange compilation of trash on top of a small ant hill. We believe that this was the ant house in question. So we did what any sensible person would have done: constructed a replacement ant house out of rocks and wrote an apology in the dirt. The next day our cones were untouched. We can only assume the Sunland Trickster was satisfied with our efforts.

On the final Wednesday Rebekah soldiered on solo for the entirety of the final day, while Max and I worked a couple hours and then joined Joe and Jonathan in attending two-day training on Sonoran Desert plant ID taught by Tucson Bird Alliance in collaboration with the Storm to Shade program, which included a classroom day and a field day during which we put our skills into practice by walking around the Sunland Vista site and IDing plants. In invasive plant work, ignorance is bliss. We are now a lot less ignorant about low-elevation invasive grasses, and the wash is looking slightly less blissful as a result. Needless to say, we have work to do in the future.

Happy Trails!

—Sam

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Written by Rebekah Sutherland, Assistant Crew Leader.

This past week, the Wild Stew Field Crew returned to the Gila National Forest for a high elevation hitch in the burn scar of the Black Fire. The Black Fire burned over 300,000 acres of forest in 2022. Today, 4 years later, the trails impacted by this fire are in a stage of regrowth where lots of locust (and other thorny plants) have encroached on the corridor, and burned trees have fallen across the trail. With the goal to open up a section of the Black Range Crest Trail #79, we made our way up an impressive, long, and bumpy road to McKnight Cabin where we set up camp amongst a pocket of live trees and soft grass.

We headed north along the Crest Trail from McKnight Cabin with a crosscut saw, loppers, and tread tools, and began clearing fallen trees and sharp plants from the trail. Along with locust, we were faced with dense brambles of raspberry growing into the trail. Hand pulling proved to be a good tactic to clear back the raspberry, although the small thorns often found their way through our gloves. Luckily, we were gifted with ripe sweet berries to incentivize us to continue. At the end of the hitch, we had brushed 1.9 miles of trail, logged out 79 trees, and built 2 drains and  2 cairns. With a small crew of 4, we were quite proud of these accomplishments!

Throughout the week, it was amazing to see the trail unfold before us. This section of the trail follows along the ridge line, and eventually put us at the top of McKnight Mountain, the highest point of the Black Range at 10,144 feet. The views were vast and beautiful, but staying along the crest posed potential hazard as we are still in monsoon season, and a lightning storm at that elevation can be very dangerous. Each day we watched the clouds closely, and only had to retreat to camp once! Instead of scary daytime storms, we mostly received gentle nighttime showers to lull us to sleep in our tents.

With beautiful views, a great campsite, and good weather, there’s not much we could complain about. Some days, the task of brushing a trail can get monotonous, but we keep our minds busy with riveting questions such as “if you could only have 5 sauces for the rest of your life, what would they be?” or “how would this world enforce such sauce restrictions?” We have some ideas about answers to these questions, but overall our actual reality where we get to eat wild raspberries, work outside, and daydream about silly alternate worlds is a pretty good one. We left feeling grateful for that, and returned home to Tucson to eat all the sauces we could ever want.

The post wild stew field crew: A McKnight’s Tale – Back into the Burn appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Sam Baggenstos, Conservation & Wilderness Associate

Greetings from the balmy Mogollon Mountains! This hitch we returned to the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico to continue our work on the Redstone Trail reroute. This reroute moves the Redstone trailhead up to Silver Creek Divide and provides a more sustainable way to get over the ridge from Bursum Road and into the Gila Wilderness. The start of the old alignment of the Redstone Trail was steep, eroding and overall not an enjoyable hiking experience. The new alternate route greatly improves it.

This hitch was a continuation of the work begun earlier in the month which had been cut short by the then rapidly expanding Sacaton Fire which burned through a portion of the Gila high country. Now that the fire had been contained, we were able to safely return to Redstone Trail and pick up where we had left off. After spending the first couple days of hitch cutting the remaining vegetation and logs off the trail, we transitioned into digging in tread (i.e. trail surface) and constructing a sustainable path for hikers and other recreators to enjoy. In all, we dug 0.8 miles of new tread, installed nine drains, felled four snags and cut 73 logs from the trail corridor.

Construction of the Redstone reroute provides a good example of the practical considerations involved in building new trail on public land. Even with careful planning, terrain, vegetation, and other constraints can limit where a trail can be placed. Where sections of the reroute required additional protection from erosion, we constructed grade reversals and drainage dips to direct water across and off the trail rather than allowing it to run down the tread. We also added curves and short switchbacks in steeper areas to reduce the trail’s grade and create a more durable alignment.

Summer trail projects at elevation often produce a wide variety of temperatures and precipitation. This hitch was no exception. Almost every workday began with me dutifully applying sunscreen and ended with me frantically digging through my pack to grab my rain jacket. We experienced several hectic thunderstorms in the middle of the night, one of which sent Max running to the truck after his tent began to fill with water. One afternoon we were forced to quickly retreat to camp after lightning started to strike the ridge above us. The ever-changing weather definitely kept us on our toes!

By the end of the hitch we managed to tie in the reroute to the junction with the old Redstone Trail. Although there are some stretches of tread that should be widened in the future, the whole reroute is now walkable and clear. Redstone Trail, it’s been good knowing you. I’m sure we will see you again in the future!

The post wild stew field crew: Completing the Redstone Reroute appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Max Skolnick-Schur, Wild Stew Field Crew Leader.

This hitch, we returned to the Allie Canyon Trail #100 in the Gila National Forest to continue post-fire Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) work following the 2025 Trout Fire. This was an abbreviated partial hitch, totaling just three workdays in Allie Canyon.

Earlier this year, a Forest Service falling crew removed hazardous fire-damaged trees throughout the canyon, leaving numerous tall stumps along and near the trail corridor. Continuing from where we stopped during our previous hitch in late May and early June, we worked farther down the canyon cutting these stumps closer to ground level and cleaning up the trail to improve safety and aesthetics.

Reaching the worksite required a 5.5-mile hike while carrying chainsaws and other trail tools. We hiked the full distance in and out on the first day, but Forest Service staff were able to provide UTV transportation over the steepest initial three miles after that, giving us more productive time at the worksite.

During our time on the main project, the crew cut 190 high stumps closer to ground level, lowered 33 cut logs as part of erosion mitigation work, and cleared seven trees from the trail. We also improved drainage, tread, brushing, and trail marking, including building eight cairns and three drains and completing approximately half a mile of tread and brushing work.

Because the Trout Fire removed vegetation and changed how water moves through the watershed, flash-flood risk in Allie Canyon is significantly elevated during the summer monsoon. Forest Service staff asked us to be especially cautious when storms were building. When conditions became unfavorable, we left the canyon bottom and shifted to a safer fallback project near the Wilderness Ranger District office. This reduced our time on the main project but still allowed us to make good use of the workday.

For the fallback project, we constructed an approximately 500-foot connector between the ranger district office parking area and the beginning of the Allie Canyon Trail. Previously, visitors had to park on the opposite side of NM Highway 35 and cross the highway to reach the trailhead. The new connector will allow hikers to park at the ranger district office and access the trail more safely without needing to relocate their vehicle. Several crew members also scouted and assessed the two legs of a possible Allie Canyon loop from the trailhead for potential future improvements.

For the second half of the hitch, the crew transitioned to City of Tucson Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) work at Sunland Vista Park. A recent large rain event had eroded sections of the pathway and damaged portions of the stormwater basins.

The crew repaired eroded areas and drainage features, cleaned up storm damage, removed trash, cut and moved fallen branches, and improved the pathway corridor. This work helped restore the site and improve how water moves through the basins and surrounding landscape.

The post wild stew field crew: Return to Allie Canyon and Tucson GSI Work appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Rebekah Sutherland, Assistant Crew Lead.

The Wild Stew Field Crew returned, once again, to our beloved Gila National Forest this past week. If you pass the tiny town of Mogollon, NM, weaving through windy mountain roads, you reach an area of the National Forest that provides access via several trails to remote canyons and ridges within the Gila Wilderness. This hitch, we set out to begin constructing a reroute on one of these trails, the Redstone Trail, a trail we worked on and used for access into Whitewater Canyon multiple times in the past year. The first mile of the original Redstone trail alignment ascends steeply up to the Wilderness boundary, and because of this extreme grade, is not very enjoyable or sustainable. In an attempt to make the start of this trail more user friendly, easier for pack animals to use, and with better trailhead parking, the Gila National Forest asked Wild Arizona to construct a new path along a more sustainable alignment to become the new start of the trail. With this mission in mind, we set off from our camp at Silver Creek Divide to see what work lay ahead.

Our first scout of the new alignment gave us a taste of what was ahead. We scrambled up and over huge log jams, crawled under large suspended trees, weaved through thousands of small aspens, and traversed a loose, gravelly hillside that slid out from under our feet as we walked. Despite the difficulty of travel, the views from the trail were awe-inspiring. With chainsaws (for the non-Wilderness portion) and crosscut saws (for when we crossed into Wilderness) in hand, the crew began clearing a corridor for this new trail. In total, we cut approximately 325 downed logs from across the new trail over nearly 3/4 mile, and removed brush and small aspen to open up a corridor. We also began the process of removing roots and stumps and digging new tread. The contrast of before and after was quite fun to see, and in the end, our travel time through the area took only a fraction of the time it took to do our first scouting trip.

As we worked on our reroute, we could see the smoke from the nearby Sacaton Fire, a fire that was started by a lightning strike in steep terrain a few drainages from us in the Wilderness. Fire activity was mild during the first part of our hitch, but we monitored closely and received frequent updates from our partners at the Gila National Forest. When winds picked up drastically towards the end of the week, our project partners made the call to move us from the Redstone trail out of an abundance of caution. We were very grateful for their attentiveness to our safety, and we got to finish out our time in the area scouting the nearby Whitetail Canyon Trail. We spent our last day descending this spectacular canyon, documenting needed work along a trail that sent us on a real adventure. Once again we found ourselves climbing over and under trees, traversing fire impacted hillsides, and pushing our way through patches of thorny plants. But in return we got to meander through flowing creek corridors, look up at stunning cliff faces, and eat as many raspberries as our fingers could pick. We returned to camp feeling very tired, and also very lucky to get to do what we do.

The more time we spend in the Gila National Forest, the more it starts to feel like home (a summer home, if you will). Whether it’s looking out across the landscape and seeing distant peaks and ranges we’ve worked on previous hitches earlier this year, or talking with our helpful and kind project partners, or even going to the same small town gas stations to grab ice cream on our way back to Tucson, the familiarity of being out here feels special. I can’t wait to keep seeing new beautiful corners of this amazing part of the world, and continuing to feel connected to it through the work that we get to do.

The post wild stew field crew: Gila Summer — Return to Redstone appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Kile Stumbo, Field Crew Leader.

Last week our field crew drove to a remote part of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest to work on McBride Mesa Trail #25, part of the larger Eagle National Recreation Trail. This trail and many others in the area have large segments that are highly eroded or almost untraceable due to effects from the large Bear Wallow Fire fifteen years ago.

After meeting up with Alex from the Forest Service, we set up camp near the trailhead and scouted the first mile of the trail. Over the next two days, we worked in two groups: one group brushing and treaded the upper section of McBride, while the others worked as a chainsaw team cutting logs out of the trail corridor, before transitioning to rockwork: building 3 rock retaining walls to help protect freshly re-treaded trail from eroding and guide hikers across rough, rocky portions of the slope.

While work continued on McBride Mesa trail, Sam Baggenstos, our Conservation & Wilderness Associate, took a couple days to scout the very faint and sometimes non-existent Bear Spring Trail, designing two reroute proposals to potentially move the trail up out of the flood zone in the future. Much of the original Bear Spring route sustained large amounts of erosion after the Bear Wallow Fire, which led to many sections getting fully washed out during seasonal flooding. The reroutes would help to increase the longevity of the trail by climbing up out of the flood zone, minimizing seasonal erosion. 

After a long day of scouting, treading, and brushing, the crew once again celebrated Bean Friday with Jonathan’s time-honored crunch wrap dinner, a welcome delicious meal after a hard day’s work.

By the end of our hitch, our crew re-treaded and brushed 1.51 miles of trail, built 3 retaining walls, 2 cairns, and cut/moved 81 logs out of the trail corridor from the top down to the junction with the Highline Trail #47.

We were glad to have Sam back with us after a few months leave where he was living and working in Georgia. At the same time, we were also heartbroken to lose three of our crew, Eric, Foster, and Sage, due to budget constraints brought on by the increasingly challenging funding climate facing conservation nonprofits. 

The important work Wild Arizona and the U.S. Forest Service accomplish together only happens due to the skilled people that make it happen. These people deserve to be paid for their hard work. When funding and staff are cut, the state of our public lands is put in jeopardy. So please donate if you can to help support the conservation of public lands, and contact your political representatives to tell them why public lands are important to you, and why we need to fund the agencies that manage and protect them.

The post wild stew field crew: When Eagles Soar Where Tread Is Trod appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Sage Bradford, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

This week, our crew is back in Gila National Forest. This marked our 3rd hitch of the spring doing emergency response work to the Trout Fire, a wildfire that broke out in June of 2025 due to lightning and which burned 47,294 acres just north of Silver City, New Mexico. While our previous Trout Fire hitches prioritized restoring the popular Continental Divide Trail post-fire, this week we worked on the connecting access trail to the CDT, Allie Canyon Trail #100.

Allie Canyon is a lovely 9 mile trail descending 2,000 feet from the Continental Divide Trail down to NM Highway 35. The crew spent 8 days working hard to improve the trail. One of the main work priorities was low-stumping previously felled standing dead trees. By the end of the week, the crew had low-stumped 786 trees. This made the trail safer and more aesthetically pleasing. Additionally, 29 trees were cleared off the trail. Moreover, 177 suspended logs along the trail corridor were bucked and lowered to help provide access to stumps or improve erosion control on burned slopes.

The crew also built 84 cairns to help the trail be more easily navigable. Cairns proved especially helpful at the numerous water crossings. Additionally, the crew built/maintained 50 drains and 1 check step to assist water in getting off the tread and slowing erosion. By the end of the week, the crew had traveled 3.2 miles down the trail doing spot treading and cairn building. We pushed even farther, a total of 3.85 miles, doing low stumping and logouts.

On Friday, the crew celebrated a traditional Bean Friday, feasting on a group dinner of crunch wraps (ingredients supplied courtesy of Jonathan). The weather was pleasant for the entirety of hitch. Spring is in full bloom in the Gila. Between swings of the pick, filling the chainsaw with more gas, and sips of water, I marveled at all the natural wonders the Gila had to offer. I was surprised and excited to see a small bit of water flowing in Allie Canyon. Each night, I witnessed a gorgeous sunset over the distant mountains. My favorite flora and fauna sightings from the week include Fendler’s Globemallow, Pinyon Evening Primrose, Putnam’s Cicadas, and Mountain Bee Assassins.

As always, it’s a delight to work in such a beautiful “office” and do such rewarding work.

The post wild stew field crew: Gila Summer Treads On appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Rebekah Sutherland, Assistant Crew Lead.

This past hitch, the Wild Stew Field Crew packed up their bags, and headed into the beautiful backcountry of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. At the direction of our partners at the Gila National Forest and the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, the crew set out with a goal to improve tread and remove large deadfall from across the Black Canyon Trail, a section of trail that doubles as a portion of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. Weighed down by 3 crosscut saws, axes, loppers, tread tools, 8 days of food, and more, crew members hiked in on the steep and exposed Rattlesnake Trail, stopping to cut high logs along the way with the hope of making this access trail passable to stock animals. This will give the forest and its partners the option to use pack strings to support work on multiple higher elevation trails in the future. After a hot day of hiking up hill, our campsite at Reeds Meadow was a sight for sore eyes. Beautiful green grass, tall (living) pine trees, and tasty spring water made this spot the perfect home for the week.

Along the Rattlesnake Trail, the crew cut 18 logs, but that was just the start of our crosscutting this hitch. For much of the rest of our hitch, sawdust flew and 95 logs were cut out of the priority section of the Black Canyon Trail, opening up 2.5 miles of trail for easier travel. At the bottom of that 2.5 mile section sat the Black Canyon Box, a section of high cliff walls and narrow canyon where the trail is forced out of the canyon bottom to traverse the steep hillside above. In this section, the trail was greatly narrowed by erosion, and needed some extra attention, so crew members retreaded that portion of trail, totaling 0.39 miles. With these two work priorities done (logouts and retread), the crew was also able to tackle 1.12 miles of brushing, 0.74 miles of spot treading, 6 drain constructions, and 8 cairn builds along the Black Canyon Trail. 

Overall, this hitch felt like a dream at times. Waking up in a lush meadow each morning, working along a canyon creek with dramatic rock formations above us, and falling into the rhythm of the crosscut, we didn’t know work could feel so peaceful. That is, until we were awoken from our dreams (literally) by howling winds. The last couple days of sustained 35+ mph wind kept us on high alert during the day, and awake at night, as our tents tried their best (and often failed) to stay up. We powered on, and made it through with the help of cookies brought by our Field Operations Director, Jonathan, and by entertaining ourselves by talking through the plot points of all the Fast and Furious movies. The human memory can recall amazing things when deprived of connection to the outside world for days at a time.

On our last day waking up in Reeds Meadow, we had a few hours to do a bit of work on a section of the trail near camp, a small connector that had begun to disappear. We logged out 7 trees, brushed the length of it, built a couple cairns, and treaded the first 210 feet, with the hopes of setting up a future crew for success to finish the work. As we hiked back out the way we came on the Rattlesnake Trail, we noticed several new trees down across the trail, a result of the high winds the area was experiencing. This felt like a good reminder that the work we do is needed and important, and that consistency and teamwork amongst crews and organizations is what will keep these incredible areas accessible for years to come. We look forward to coming back to the Black Canyon Trail someday and seeing how our work and the work of crews to come will help bring new people to this beautiful place.

The post wild stew field crew: Dreaming on the Black Canyon Trail appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Max Skolnick-Schur, Wild Stew Field Crew Leader.

The crew headed up the Circle Seven Trail again in the east side of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness to continue pushing the trail closer to the junction with the Continental Divide Trail/Black Range Crest Trail. While most of the crew start work, we also found and flagged the trail ahead all the way to the top. Most of our work involved cutting open the post-fire vegetation overgrowth, as well as redefining creek crossings, and improving tread in places as needed.

Through the many patches of oak, locust and mountain mahogany, we cut open more of the trail that had been lost to time. This trail is important as it provides an additional eastern access route on the CDT for people to get on and off the trail as well as make it easier for crews and pack stock to get in further to continue maintenance work on the CDT and other adjacent trails.

Besides a little rain and hail, nothing was slowing us down and we made good progress on the trail, ultimately retreading and brushing 1.2 miles of trail, as well as building cairns at all creek crossings and other poorly defined areas, and we cut 9 logs off the trail.

The post wild stew field crew — Return to Circle Seven appeared first on Wild Arizona.