Written by Kile Stumbo, Assistant Crew Leader.
Our small crew, consisting of Nico, Ollie, and Kile, returned to Bear Wallow Trail #63 about a year after Wild Arizona first started working on this trail. Despite being a fraction of the size of our ten person “supercrew” a few months earlier, we performed admirably. Though we may be few, we are mighty! We brushed and sawed along Bear Wallow for several days, accompanied only by butterflies and birdsong until Jonathan joined us on Sunday.
We focused mostly on clearing locust, wild raspberry, and oak out of the trail corridor, interspersed with some occasional log cutting.
During a few morning safety meetings, a broad-tailed hummingbird zoomed up close to confirm that Ollie is not a giant flower, no doubt attracted by their colorful clothing and wonderful personality. Hot afternoons and abundant poison ivy harried us for the next few days, and unfortunately left a few of us with some inflamed and itchy reminders of our time on the trail. I do NOT recommend bringing home poison ivy rashes as trail souvenirs.
On Tuesday afternoon we cut our biggest log of the hitch. Jonathan and Kile spent a few hours sawing through the particularly stubborn log, which required all of our available wedges, much of our energy, and a lot of sunscreen. Sometimes you have to get creative with saw lubrication when you realize the WD-40 is locked up in a trailer four and a half miles away…
After we cleared the log from the trail, we did a few counts of the tree’s rings and estimated that it lived and watched over this area of the forest for 155 – 160 years, how incredible! We all continued brushing while enjoying a drop in temperature as a storm blew in and graced us with a few hours of rain and hail, a welcome respite from the previous hot afternoons.
Once we reached our turn-around time, we cached our tools and headed back to camp to pack up and hike out. On the way out, Ollie and a large bull elk surprised each other on the trail and the typically majestic animal promptly high-tailed it up a nearby brushy hillside. We like to imagine it was admiring our handiwork and saying thank you.
Altogether, we brushed 1.9 miles and cut or removed 40 trees from the trail. Now we rest, recover, and prepare to return.
