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.

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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.

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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.

Written by Eric Fiorvante, Wild Stew Field Crew Member, with contributions from Jonathan Patt, Field Operations Director.

This hitch, the Wild Stew Field Crew continued work along the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail in the Gila National Forest, picking up where we left off last hitch and working from just north of Forest Road 89 to Sapillo Campground. This area was heavily affected by the 2025 Trout Fire, leaving behind widespread burn damage and a high concentration of hazard trees, eroding slopes, and drainage issues on the trail. A major focus of this hitch was mitigating those risks—identifying, felling, and clearing fire-weakened trees that threatened the trail corridor, and stabilizing slopes and tread as part of preventive maintenance.

Despite the burn severity, conditions during the hitch were favorable, with mild temperatures, partial cloud cover, and relatively calm winds—ideal for work on exposed, burned slopes! In addition to cutting 827 dead, hazard trees along the trail corridor, the crew made substantial progress on tread improvements. We completed 1.4 miles of trail work, installing 89 drainage features to better manage water flow and reduce erosion. In areas where the backslope was actively failing, we widened the tread and reinforced the trail using log crib walls placed just below the critical edge. Six crib wall structures were installed to stabilize these sections and improve long-term durability.

As for the Trout Fire: despite the name, we were unable to confirm any direct involvement from trout. Foster conducted a brief investigation at Lake Roberts after work, but after only turning up a lone bluegill, we’re considering the matter resolved for now.

We also had the opportunity to interact with several hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians along the trail, many of whom expressed appreciation for the work being done. It’s always rewarding to see the immediate impact of these efforts in such a well-loved and widely traveled corridor.

This hitch marked the final week (at least for now) for two of our crew members, Dexter and Ryan. Their contributions to the crew have been significant, and they will be missed out in the field. We wish them the best on their summer adventures.

The post wild stew field crew: After the Fire — CDT Recovery Continues in the Gila appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Last week, our crew of four hiked to Fossil Springs for the lovely swimming — and while there, we also removed some invasive Himalayan Blackberries. We hiked in from the Flume Trailhead and made it to camp by Wednesday evening. With the help of Eve from Friends of the Verde River, we flagged out the priority areas of Blackberries and we were treating them by Thursday morning.

In total we cleared 0.11 acres of Blackberry, cutting and applying herbicide to 17,282 stems in total. We spent three days working in the highest upstream patch of Blackberry (site 1) removing 0.08 acres and dabbing 9,993 stems with herbicide. We then spent three days working near the main public camping area (site 2) removing 0.03 acres and dabbing 7,289 stems with herbicide. Site 2 was more technical due to working around native Box Elders and removing downed trees to access the Blackberry. 

While on hitch we also made a couple of new friends. We found a Rattlesnake at site two and a Frog around our lunch spot! We tried to recruit them to our team but the Rattlesnake wasn’t happy about us being there and Frog was trying to find his true love. We wish them both luck! Everyone’s favorite part of the project was swimming during lunch and after work. The weather was absolutely perfect for cooling off in the water and taking a little break from the heat and hard work. It was also Grace’s last hitch with us. We all wish her the best of luck with her next steps!

The post wild stew field crew: Wild Arizona vs. Himalayan Blackberry in Fossil Springs appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Rebekah Sutherland, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

The Wild Stew Field Crew ventured out again to New Mexico this past week, this time for our first hitch in the Trout Fire burn scar in the Gila National Forest. The Trout Fire burned nearly 50,000 acres north of Silver City in June of 2025, and impacted many trails in the area, including a section of the Continental Divide Trail. Wild Arizona set out this hitch to bring new life to this section of one of our National Scenic Trails.

The four main objectives ahead of us were as follows: clear the corridor by cutting out fallen trees and brushing, remove standing dead hazard trees that will fall across the trail, stabilize eroding sections of trail and improve drainage, and reestablish tread where it had begun to disappear. Springtime winds howled across the landscape, but by adjusting work locations with weather shifts, the crew was able to keep working and accomplished quite a lot. In total, we brushed and maintained 8.5 miles of the CDT (quite the undertaking for an 8 day hitch), felling 366 hazard trees, cutting 12 logs down on the trail and building 21 retaining structures and 5 drains.

This hitch taught the crew many things. Sawyers learned about cutting various types of burned trees. Crew members learned to listen and adapt to weather in a burn scar. Some used new techniques and materials to build retention structures. And, importantly, some of us learned that putting ice cream on a hot dog is actually pretty tasty.

The post wild stew field crew: Earth, Wind, and Fire… a CDT Story appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Davis Mullins, Wild Stew Field Crew Member

Summer has returned! Arizonans and adjacent western Americans were overjoyed this past week at the absolutely lovely temps that we were so graciously gifted by our good friend the heat dome. Summer is the time all true desert dwellers crave and wish for and it was truly a blessing to be able to experience the 100+ degrees as early as March. Even more fortunately we got to return to two old project sites: Queen Creek in Superior and Palo Verde Park off Broadway in Tucson.

We started our hitch in Queen Creek, where we were primarily retreating old Tree of Heaven stands and any other invasive species we saw, including African sumac, Mexican Palo Verde, and Canary Island Date Palms. Our method of treatment this time around was cut stump: following several rounds of previous treatment, we were now cutting the Tree of Heaven as low as we could and giving the stump a spray with an herbicide mix if the tree showed signs of being alive. The slash was then moved out of the floodplain and dispersed where it wouldn’t resprout or act as a ladder fuel for the riparian trees. It shouldn’t be long before these vegetative menaces stop terrorizing our beloved town of Superior.

By Friday we completed our work in the Creek and redirected our efforts to the big city. In Tucson we worked in two different areas: Palo Verde Park and Sunland Vista, both project sites via the Tucson Storm to Shade program. Our main goal was once again the removal of invasive species, though our enemies and methods of dealing with them differed. This project has placed bounties (dead only) on Stinknet, Cheeseweed, London Rocket and Mathiola, just to name a few. We spent the bulk of the last five days of our hitch hand pulling these outlaws. Aside from this, we removed metal cages protecting planted trees, picked up trash, cleared the streets of plants that were blocking clear views of turn areas, and of course supported local businesses by going out for lunch. Not too bad for our first summer hitch.

The post wild stew field crew: Wild AZ Wars II — The Heat Dome Strikes Back appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Ryan Kunish, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

Step one of this hitch began four weeks ago when we initially came out to the Four Springs Trail in the Mount Wrightson Wilderness with a focus on brushing, logout and treading. While we wrapped up a sizeable portion of the available brushing and treading that hitch, we felt the need to build numerous steps, staircases, and walls along this trail in order to control erosion and ease often steep and slippery grades, so this hitch we got the go ahead to come back and focus on those tasks.

We began the hitch with a small but capable crew and set to work building steps. The first step was to flag and prioritize potential work and the next step was to begin constructing a 14 step staircase about 2 miles from camp that we had desperately wanted to build in last time. Our rock quarry was sparse but there was enough present to complete the staircase and add a 12 square foot rip rap wall to the downhill side. We then moved a short distance down trail and built a run of 6 individual rock check steps.

We did some brushing and treading to finish off in the area we had ended at last time out before returning to steps. The quarrying got much more difficult in our next few sections as we were working on a very steep and treacherous hillside—any wrong step could have been dangerous, so we stepped very carefully and methodically to get rocks for a total of 14 check steps and staircases of 7 & 3 steps.

A big priority was to rebuild an existing staircase that has seen more than a few steps in the wrong direction over the years and was on the verge of falling apart completely. Step by step, we ended up replacing it with a sturdy 10-step staircase with 15 square feet of rip rap armoring.

My personal favorite structure of the hitch was a 6-step staircase at a climbing turn that we were initially uncertain if we’d have the rock source for. After that we had worked through most of the steepest areas and moved much more quickly through several retaining walls, individual check steps, and more brushing and treading moving back towards camp.

Ultimately, we were able to complete 5 staircases containing 14, 10, 7, 6, & 3 steps, installed 29 individual rock check steps, built 3 rip rap walls of 20, 15, & 12 square feet and 3 retaining walls of 8, 5, & 4 square feet, in addition to completing 3/4 mile of brushing & 1/3 mile of tread touch ups.

The post wild stew field crew: Every Step We Took, We Built a Step — Return to the Four Springs Trail appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Grace Davenport, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

This week we began work in a new area for our crew: the Black Range in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico, part of the Gila National Forest. Aldo Leopold, a pioneering environmentalist, was instrumental in establishing the Gila Wilderness, the first Wilderness Area in the world, in 1924. In 1980, a 316 sq. mi. portion of the Gila National Forest that had been part of the originally proposed Gila Wilderness was designated the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.

Before venturing into the backcountry, we stopped in Truth or Consequences to pick up a radio from the Black Range District Forest Service Office. Cell phone service drops off in the canyon, and Leopold’s vision of a wilderness area feels more complete in these pockets of service silence and isolation by modern communication standards. We drove in on long, winding and very scenic roads, ending up at the trailhead for the Circle Seven Trail, where we donned our packs and hiked nearly 3 miles to near the end of previous work on this trail, set up camp, and began work the next day.

In 2022, the Black Range experienced the second largest wildfire in New Mexico history to date, the Black Fire. While direct evidence was minimal early on our drive and hike in, significant flood damage in the canyon bottom was quickly evident, and the further up canyon we went, the more we started to see burned and increasingly fallen trees.

We set out working our way up canyon, routefinding, flagging, brushing, crosscutting logs, and spending the bulk of our time digging tread to redefine connections between existing trail, building new creek crossing ramps, building large cairns to help people navigate creek crossings and narrow canyon-bottom portions of trail still at risk of continued flood damage, and generally helping to redefine the trail and make it passable by hikers and pack stock.

The lack of service and renewed silence of a Wilderness area led to much crew innovation, especially in gastronomy. Rebekah made a fateful grocery shopping pre-hitch trip to Costco and brought a dozen buttery croissants into the wilderness. Max brought Gushers, and the world would never be quite the same. The first documented creation and consumption (by persons older than middle-school age) of a “Gushoissant” occurred on March 7^th, 2026 during lunch break, followed by the second creation on March 8^th 2026 around 5:30 PM. Research and development is still ongoing on a cookie that is both chewy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. 

Despite an unrelenting hailstorm one afternoon and spotty storms for several days, we were able to get 1.33 miles of trail brushed and retreaded/rebuilt, built 14 large cairns to help define the route where building tread wasn’t worthwhile at this time, and cut 52 logs off the trail including clearing new deadfall off the previously maintained 3 miles in from the trailhead before where we began our other work.

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