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!

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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.

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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.

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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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Written by Dexter Kopas, Wild Stew Field Crew Senior Crew Member.

Gather round! Spring has sprung anew! The sun shines hot, reaching the low 90s Fahrenheit in Tucson, and wildflowers abound. Wait… Isn’t it still February? Yes, it is! Might we have fallen into some sort of time warp? A temporal gulch of sorts? Clearly, something chronologically fascinating has just happened! What’s that? The Wild Arizona crew was working on the Temporal Gulch Trail (#595)? Good heavens, someone must have fallen into the titular wormhole, which causes time to skip around. No wonder Tucson set daily temperature records on the last three days that our crew was working to maintain this beautiful, if temporally treacherous, trail. My my… Well, what did they get up to in the meantime?

Before succumbing to the Temporal Gulch, our crew journeyed just south of Tucson to the Cave Creek Canyon Trail (#149). Located on the far side of the Santa Rita Mountains from the popular Madera Canyon recreation area, this trail was expected to be in rough shape, given the time that had passed since the Forest Service last had it maintained. However, after a scouting trip on day one, we found that the 3.6-mile-long trail was in good condition overall. Fortunately, it appears that there is a strong network of volunteer work being done. So, with the help of a welcome visit by the Coronado National Forest’s Recreation, Heritage, and Lands Staff Officer, Adam Milnor, we decided to spend just two days working on the worst parts. In all, we brushed 2 miles of trail; built 2 steps, 2 armored drains, and 6 drains; cut 5 logs off the trail; and rebenched 300 ft of tread. 

In the 1870’s, gold was found on the eastern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains, leading to a rush of small exploratory mines being dug in the area. This was the origin of the Cave Creek Canyon Trail, whose lower half lies on an old roadbed until you reach the ruins of the Rock Candy Mountain Mine. Many more abandoned mines were encountered while driving to our new worksite at Temporal Gulch, and on after-work bike rides on the wide network of trails and two-track roads that crisscross the parallel drainages off of Mt Wrightson. 

With our primary trail objective in good shape, we moved camp to a cowpie-covered field of mustard flowers beside flowing waters to access the Temporal Gulch Trail. A trip up the bumpy road took us from there to the trail, while the sun beat down harder each day. While Cave Creek featured pinyon-oak-juniper woodland over yellow grasslands, Temporal Gulch was a rocky grotto slot canyon featuring a slow-moving series of interconnected puddles. The trail was well-traveled, but encroaching vegetation and ambiguous stream crossings had pushed hikers far and wide, so there was much to do for defining a single, easily followable route. Detective hats had to be donned several times to determine where the trail used to be. We built steps, retaining walls, and a big drain, but most of our work was the steady flow of brushing cat-claw and building cairns to mark stream crossings.

As usual, many deep thoughts were spoken, laughs were shared, and natural treasures were found (but no gold). The highlight was a petite whiskered screech owl by Davis, who has recently been on quite a bird phase. He captured this amazing image of the little half-foot-tall fellow. All in all, the trip was well worth the chronological anomaly caused by our disturbance of the Temporal Gulch. Perhaps next time we can return here in August, and cause time to skip ahead to winter. 

The post wild stew field crew: Falling Into the Temporal Gulch appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Eric Fiorvante, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

This hitch brings the Wild Stew Field Crew back to Dry Blue Creek, for part two of our stream restoration project. We completed dozens of structures, including log vanes, rock weirs, and rock clusters. The purpose of this part of the project is to stabilize erosion within the stream channel and provide more habitat for native fish.

Log vanes are incredibly important to the goal of this project. By setting a log into the ground at a specific angle and slope, flow is diverted away from cut banks and exposed tree roots. Over time, this will introduce more sinuosity to the stream. Material carried by high water events will add to the structure, increasing its effectiveness. Water flowing under some of the logs can scour the surface underwater, creating a pool that provides habitat and shelter for small fish, and the wood structure attracts a more diverse set of insects near the surface of the water, increasing biodiversity.

We also utilized boulder clusters, groupings of 2 – 3 mid- to large-sized rocks spaced closely together in the stream channel, often dug partially into the bank and extending at most 1/3 to 1/2 out into the creek. Built as system of multiple structures in a zig-zag on opposite sides along straight sections of stream channel, these both provide fish habitat and shelter, and encourage the water flow to “bounce” from side to side, inducing more meandering into the channel.

Zuni bowls and mini rock weirs were utilized to prevent head cuts in the stream from eroding further. Starting at a drop in elevation, the force of water flowing over causes turbulence that erodes and over time extends a deepening channel upstream. These rock structures provide armor to the pourover points in order to prevent this erosion from continuing.

By Sunday morning, we began work on Pace Creek, one of the larger tributaries of the Dry Blue which has perennial water in a portion of it, and continued working in here for the remainder of the hitch. On Monday, several people from the Forest Service came out to look at our work and meet us, though unfortunately there were only a few people to meet them when they showed up, as a cold had been going around, taking people out one or two at a time for a day or two.

In total, despite everyone getting sick, we built 10 log vanes, 3 mini rock weirs, 27 boulder clusters, 7 zuni bowls, and 1 one-rock dam, completing all currently planned in-stream structure building for this project. We’ll be back for more meadow restoration and willow planting in the future, so stay tuned!

The post wild stew field crew: Ice in my Vanes 2: Into the Cold Dry Blue AKA The Clustering AKA The Sickest Hitch appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Joseph Cofresi, Wild Stew Field Crew Leader.

While our other crew was working along the Dry Blue Creek in the Gila National Forest, we were nestled in along the steep slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains in the Mount Wrightson Wilderness of the Coronado National Forest. Our work, focusing on the Four Springs Trail #940 high above Madera Canyon, was aimed at brushing the trail corridor of creeping vegetation, improving the tread in places of need, and removing downed logs. 

Our crew worked our way up the mountain from our camp at the junction of the Bog Springs, Kent Springs, and Four Springs Trails at about 6600 feet in elevation, hiking up and down the trail daily. Our high point of the hitch was 8,200 feet in elevation at the saddle beneath McCleary Peak, while our furthest point reached was Armour Spring, about 2.6 miles from our camp at the junction. Our efforts were focused on sections of the trail that needed the most tender loving care.

As we embarked on our daily mission of climbing the lovely and beautiful Four Springs Trail we were reminded with every mountain vista, every massive madrone, every crooked pine, and every foot in elevation we climbed why we love to do what we do.  While the entire trail is filled with love and beauty, the sections near the saddle were the real deal. It felt like working in a green tunnel of love… lovely poky plants like the graythorn and ceanothus, or shrubby, stubborn oaks such as netleaf oak or silver leaf oak stretching from the hillslopes into the trails from all directions.

The loving tunnel of vegetation consumes you at first, but as it spits you out and around a bend into a rocky outcrop it shoves stunning views of the surrounding mountains transitioning into the open desert. Mother nature’s love may be tough sometimes, but we are well rewarded with a beauty one can truly appreciate from sitting along her mountain slopes.

By the time our week of work was up and we completed our labors of love, we had cut and removed approximately 15 logs, brushed and spot retreaded about 1.5 miles of the Four Springs Trail, and bid it adieu.

The post wild stew field crew: Love is in the Air on the Four Springs Trail appeared first on Wild Arizona.

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

For the second hitch in a row this year, we returned to the Dry Blue Creek in the Gila National Forest. We continued pushing up the canyon, reducing the density of ponderosa pine and juniper in close proximity to riparian cottonwoods and willows to help restore the riparian meadows, preserve the large established cottonwood gallery, and help make the area more resilient to wildfires.

Over our eight day hitch, we primarily worked upstream through several especially dense areas, and also did a sweep of the entire project area so far to clean up any missed or remaining trees that shouldn’t have been left behind. By the end our 5 person crew had cut 2,041 trees with an impressive and very visible transformation of the meadow.

We were lucky to see a bull elk come through while we were working day, and on the last day of the hitch saw over 40 elk walk through the canyon together!

We also had good times after work—we of course had our usual crunchwraps to celebrate Bean Friday, and after work on Sunday most of the crew went to a local restaurant to watch the Super Bowl (Go Hawks). To combat the very chilly evening temperatures, we had a fire most nights.

The post wild stew field crew: Continuing Thinning in Dry Blue Creek appeared first on Wild Arizona.

Written by Davis Mullins, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.

This hitch the crew returned to the fan favorite Dry Blue Creek just east of the Blue River near Alpine for the first time in the new year. Our goal remained the same as the many hitches before: to restore the meadow habitat of the Dry Blue by thinning ponderosa pine and juniper that is encroaching on the canyon bottom meadows and cottonwood/willow riparian habitat; and reduce fuel density to make the area more resilient to wildfire. We arrived with a trailer full of chainsaws (our first C!) and got to work.

Riparian zones are often some of the most important habitats for the health of surrounding habitats, animals, and communities. They can serve as natural flood controls, water purifiers, and food sources for animals and people. The importance of restoring this meadow to its natural state makes the work feel so rewarding, and each tree we send to the ground that much more satisfying. There’s already a notable difference in the creek since my first hitch here in October, even the resident wildlife has noticed and is starting to enjoy the new more open spaces.

As a reward for all our hard work and efforts, the Dry Blue thought it would be fun to grace us with sub-freezing temps every morning and evening. Despite the overwhelming generosity of this amazing gift, unfortunately humans (unless you’re Max) were not built to survive those frigid temps. When there was no more work left for the day we returned to camp and kept warm by making group meals, sitting around the campfire (#2!), and sharing stories of our personal heroes such as Michel Lotito and Mr. Wojak.

All in all we were able to fell 1,810 trees this hitch and complete thinning along 11 acres of canyon bottom. It was a great way to start the first of multiple 2026 hitches in the Dry Blue.

The post wild stew field crew: The five Cs of the Dry Blue — chainsaws, campfires, and chips! appeared first on Wild Arizona.