Written by Foster Mellott, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
We returned to the beautiful Gila National Forest last week, with the goal of continuing to cut out all of the logs on the Whitewater Trail. Instead of hiking in via the Crest and needing to hike a mile uphill from the worksite to our camp each day like we did last hitch, we decided to come in via the Redstone Trail and work up from below. The hike in was a bit more challenging than we expected, however: the trail was steep, slick and by the last quarter mile, we all managed to lose the trail. Luckily our guest crew lead, Nico, was able to find us and get us to camp.
For the first half of this hitch, we worked on the Redstone Trail, brushing vegetation and using crosscut saws to cut over 100 logs off the Redstone trail! It took more time than we had planned to spend on Redstone, but doing this work now will help us get in much faster in upcoming hitches.
Chloe swapped with Nico as crew lead on Sunday and by the next day we were finally able to start working on the Whitewater Trail, which in the sections we worked was more brushy than covered in logs. In total across both trails, we cut through 145 logs this entire hitch and brushed extensively on the lower portion of the Redstone Trail. We’ll be back next week to keep pushing up Whitewater and get up to the dense sections of deadfall there as well!
After we hiked out of the backcountry, we had a well deserved victory meal at Jerry’s Restaurant. I got the chicken fried steak, it was incredible. This was Chloe’s last hitch with us, and we’ll all miss her, but we wish her the best in her next steps!
