HikeArizona.COM

Join us for a weekend of hard work and camaraderie in Arizona's beautiful rim country! We'll be working to construct a new trail alignment for the Arizona Trail between the Pine Trailhead and the Highline National Recreational Trail - replacing some badly eroded tread near the junction with the Donahue Trail.

Camping will be available at the Pine Trailhead, and there will be activities planned on Saturday night to include a hosted cook-out and entertainment! To sign up or to be notified as new information becomes available, email volunteer@aztrail.org.

I'm trying to get the word out as much as possible so I don't miss that magic window before folks start booking up their October weekends (we all know there aren't enough of those in Arizona). Invite your friends and neighbors!

I'm going to be out of email contact August 24-Sept 12th (rafting the GC!). If you're interested in the event, drop me a note and I'll get details back to you just as soon as I return!

This event will help build ~2 miles of new trail east of the Pine TH, replacing the steep, washed out portion of the existing trail with sweeping, gentle (<7% grade) trail up the face of the rim. The attached map shows the work that is being done. As of Sept 14 , much of the brushing is done and the mini dozer is on it's way. The work for the event will be finishing the roughed-in trail. Yellow is the existing trail, red it what we are building. Come on out and be part of it!

Aw, Shawn...we were doing simultaneous postings! Awesome!

Just curious how much mileage this will add? Thanks.

@rcorfman
Just looking at the map, it appears to be about a 1.75 mile stretch of new trail replacing the steeper .75 mile segment. So I would say the realignment to a more gentle slope will add just about 1 mile of extra trail.

@chumley
No rest till the AZT is 1,000 miles ;)

@Sredfield
Well then it seems obvious to skip some of that boring flat stuff up on the rim (28-29-30)!

Fossil Creek across to Cedar Bench and up Sycamore via Parsons?
West Clear Creek or Wet Beaver Creek down and then all kinds of fun in Sedona?
Not sure where the best ascent back up into Flag would be though. Somewhere in the Sycamore Rim area and Williams might work!

@Sredfield

now would be the time to kindly discourage Chumley from getting involved with the ATA.

He's a couple decades late to show.

But now that I think about it, there is precedent to connect the AZT with the Sedona area:
viewtopic.php?t=1006

All that it takes is a visionary, a philanthropist, a few politicians, and a swarm of volunteers. Any takers?

The sawyers started last week and from the sounds of it are well past the second turn from the bottom. The machine started to day and was at the first turn when I left around 1:00PM.
http://hikearizona.com/photoset.php?ID=36961&start=0

40 people showed up to do trail building on Saturday. There were several different groups involved led by the Forest Service. Shawn and Wendy would know the names of the groups other than Arizona Trail Association, Arizona Backpackers Club, VOAZ (their big project is the Highline Trail and I think you'll find this page a very interesting read http://www.voaz.org/sh...), and Pine Strawberry Fuel Reduction, Inc who have been doing a ton of work out of the Pine TH http://psfuelreduction.org/.

The Highline Trail, established in 1870, was used to travel between homesteads and to attend school in Pine. Zane Grey and Babe Haught used the Highline Trail while hunting. The portion of the Highline Trail from Washington Park TH and Pine TH is part of the Arizona Trail.

The forest service gave a presentation that included a little about the trail and a safety talk. My video of some of that: https://youtu.be/dsf_r...

and then we headed up the trail for about 1 1/2 miles with our Section Leaders. The trail buster machine had been thru so our job was mostly berminating and that wasn't easy. You would go to smooth the berm with your tool and ultimately hit a lot of rock so sometimes you would have to remove the rocks you could see first and then try to smooth away the berm. Others would create drainages for efficient water flow and of course there was some picking involved with root removal in the trail. My video of some of that including the hike up and some before and after and during trail work: https://youtu.be/Jpoq4...

For about 1 mile and 1/2 it's a nice wide trail for the most part thanks to the trail busting machine. Shawn's comment was that our part of the trail manicuring was not as hard as he initially thot it might be. I have to tell you, I am once again impressed by how hard the volunteers work. I know I was a bit sore and I didn't have to work the last couple hours since I came down to help Wendy with preparing the evening feast.

Wendy, the Arizona Trail Association Event Organizer, did a great job with the event and of course, her chef duties are most welcome as her cook outs are second to none with freshly barbecued chicken and vegetables for our fajitas to go along with some Arizona Trail Ale (tasted better this time to me than the last Arizona Trail Event). The former Pine Firechief also arranged for a story teller to come in so we sat around the fire and listened to the story of Zane Grey. Here is some video of the evening gathering:
https://youtu.be/KzaCg...

Trail work is really hard but the reward is always worth it in the end. Sunday morning they went at it again. I helped Wendy with the event take down and we put away a lot of the tools into the AZT trailers. Fortunately, there was a road they could drive on, though dicey, to a staging area for a lot of the tools and a covered area where they had stashed water and safety kits.

It rained pretty good on Monday so I'll be anxious to see how the trail building held up.

tibber wrote:40 people showed up to do trail building on Saturday. There were several different groups involved led by the Forest Service. Shawn and Wendy would know the names of the groups other than Arizona Trail Association, Arizona Backpackers Club, VOAZ (their big project is the Highline Trail and I think you'll find this page a very interesting read http://www.voaz.org/sh...), and Pine Strawberry Fuel Reduction, Inc who have been doing a ton of work out of the Pine TH http://psfuelreduction.org/.

The Highline Trail, established in 1870, was used to travel between homesteads and to attend school in Pine. Zane Grey and Babe Haught used the Highline Trail while hunting. The portion of the Highline Trail from Washington Park TH and Pine TH is part of the Arizona Trail.

The forest service gave a presentation that included a little about the trail and a safety talk. My video of some of that: https://youtu.be/dsf_r...

and then we headed up the trail for about 1 1/2 miles with our Section Leaders. The trail buster machine had been thru so our job was mostly berminating and that wasn't easy. You would go to smooth the berm with your tool and ultimately hit a lot of rock so sometimes you would have to remove the rocks you could see first and then try to smooth away the berm. Others would create drainages for efficient water flow and of course there was some picking involved with root removal in the trail. My video of some of that including the hike up and some before and after and during trail work: https://youtu.be/Jpoq4...

For about 1 mile and 1/2 it's a nice wide trail for the most part thanks to the trail busting machine. Shawn's comment was that our part of the trail manicuring was not as hard as he initially thot it might be. I have to tell you, I am once again impressed by how hard the volunteers work. I know I was a bit sore and I didn't have to work the last couple hours since I came down to help Wendy with preparing the evening feast.

Wendy, the Arizona Trail Association Event Organizer, did a great job with the event and of course, her chef duties are most welcome as her cook outs are second to none with freshly barbecued chicken and vegetables for our fajitas to go along with some Arizona Trail Ale (tasted better this time to me than the last Arizona Trail Event). The former Pine Firechief also arranged for a story teller to come in so we sat around the fire and listened to the story of Zane Grey. Here is some video of the evening gathering:
https://youtu.be/KzaCg...

Trail work is really hard but the reward is always worth it in the end. Sunday morning they went at it again. I helped Wendy with the event take down and we put away a lot of the tools into the AZT trailers. Fortunately, there was a road they could drive on, though dicey, to a staging area for a lot of the tools and a covered area where they had stashed water and safety kits.

It rained pretty good on Monday so I'll be anxious to see how the trail building held up.

Thanks for all that you and others do/did to help others experience our great natural environment.

Thanks for your trail work! Unfortunately I can't do that type of work. (Vicious back pain.) Glad others can so the rest of us can hike.