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.
Scouting on the Whitetail Canyon Trail. Photos by Rebekah Sutherland.
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.
