Written by Eric Fiorvante, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
This hitch, the Wild Stew Field Crew headed back to the Payson area of the Tonto National Forest to wrap up Phase 2 of the Highline Trail Restoration Initiative. We began working from the section of the old Highline trail near Ellison Creek, heading east towards Roberts Mesa, where we left off back in March. We continued our work of building series of one rock dam/media luna structures to slow down water in the eroded parts of the trail. Over time, these structures will cause sediment to build up in these areas, stabilizing erosion, filling in trenched out former trail, and allowing vegetation to take root.
Our work on this section of the trail comprised 341 rock structures in total, including media lunas, one rock dams, and one large zuni bowl, all using material from the surrounding forest. We reached a cumulative 1.15 miles of trail on this section, concluding this phase of the Highline project.
Following our completion of the last section of the old Highline trail, the remainder of our time was spent examining our work from previous hitches. We looked for media lunas which had collected enough sediment to necessitate adding more layers, as well as repairing/replacing structures that had failed. We built and repaired 72 media lunas across about half a mile of that section. We saw great progress being made, as many structures were already beginning to backfill the trenches created by the old trail. This is a great sign that over the coming monsoon seasons, these scars in the forest will continue to heal.
