Written by Sage Bradford, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
This week, our crew began work on a new project on the Tonto National Forest! Wild Arizona is working to help elevate the Hackberry Trail from a social trail to an official system trail. This trail is a long-established and well-traveled user-developed trail winding through the beautiful Superstition Mountains, gifting trail users with gorgeous craggy rock formations and waving saguaros along their way. However, since Hackberry has not been an official Forest Service trail and was just formed by people walking and riding where they wanted to go across the landscape, the hike is precarious in places, traveling steeply up and down fall lines and at points, more of a trench than a trail. Often, the trail braids into multiple parallel paths, making it unclear where exactly to go next. Our crew worked hard for eight days to start addressing these issues.
The primary focus of the week was de-berming and outsloping, adding drainage structures, and building series of check steps to stabilize trenched sections, slowing down water flow and retaining soil. Time was also spent closing and re-naturalizing braided sections. Additionally, we built media luna structures in some old closed sections of trail to slow the flow of water and prevent rapid erosion onto the current trail below. By the end of our hitch, we had installed 35 new drains, 46 steps, 23 media lunas, and 2 cairns. A total of 0.3 miles of trail was worked on. The crew will be returning to Hackberry for future hitches to continue work.
It was exciting to work on the Hackberry Trail over MLK weekend. Being a long weekend, Friday through Monday brought a significant increase in trail users. As groups of horses and hikers passed by, we were able to receive live feedback on our work. This was particularly helpful for our check steps. Because of the high levels of equestrian use on this trail, the crew had to put extra thought into building steps that were adequately spaced for horses and strong enough to sustain their weight.
At the end of work each day, the crew returned to Lost Dutchman State Park, where we were kindly allowed to stay at a group site. There, the crew peacefully passed the evenings with dinners, card games, runs, stretching, and bike rides. We witnessed stunning sunsets over the Superstitions and discussed some of the legends of the range. No lost gold was found, but each night the sun would bathe the world in golden light. Such marvelous views and good company certainly made me feel rich.
