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.
