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.

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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.

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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.

The post wild stew field crew: Like a Phoenix from the Ashes, Rises Up Circle Seven Trail appeared first on Wild Arizona.

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.