All ten of us woke up at 4:30 am on Feb. 8. We had an early flight and arrived in Tucson around noon. We met Tyler there and picked up our fantastic white rental minivans. First on the agenda, thanks to Tyler's love of food, was Tamales! from the Tucson Tamale Co. They had lots of tamales to choose from- meat, vegetables, cheese, spicy, mild, Indian spiced, even an Idaho tamale with potatoes! They were very tasty and good compensation for a horrifically early morning in the airport. The rest of the afternoon was spent finding work pants for people and then driving out to the training site for SCA member training. Training was at a YMCA camp outside of Tucson near a town called Oracle. It was pretty out there, but a nice place since we had cabins and bunk beds... pretty much the typical summer camp kind of place, complete with all too typical camp food. (typical commentary on dinner was, "ah yes, steamed broccoli again." and "wait, they said this was enchiladas??" while staring that the greasy mess on cheese and meat on the plate.) But not to be too harsh, it was all pretty tasty.
I won't go into to much detail on training, which lasted until the 15th. It was a good time- got to meet lots of other sca people in native plant crews, PCT trail crews, and others. Working everywhere from Southern CA, to Saguaro National Park, to Missouri, to South Carolina. Everyday was pretty similar: wake up around 6:30, breakfast and terrible coffee, morning circle and a game, then sessions on stuff like risk management, field operation standards, group dynamics, etc. The last few days of training they offered a Leave No Trace trainer course for people who didn't need to take the wilderness first aid course. It was a good course- although I already knew most of the ideas associated with LNT. We had some good conversations and also got to go hiking on the Arizona Trail.
Member training ended on the 15th. That's when my crew began our drive south to the refuges where we would be do the data collection part of training. We camped that night at Chiricahua National Monument, which is a fascinating place. My car got there in time to hike around the rock formations and take pictures before dinner and an intro to "how trimbles and data collection can ruin your life." But I'll get into that later.
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| Chiricahua National Monument |
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| That's Toji |
The next morning we woke, yet again, too early to bother talking about. We drove to San Bernardino NWR to start our real work of mapping trails and marking their features and deficiencies. That day was a tangle of learning which buttons to push on Trimble, and which buttons NOT to push. Asking too many questions and getting too few answers. And baking in the southern AZ sun and heat. We did set our eyes on the Mexico border-- we were literally a stone's throw away, as a kid in my crew demonstrated. Somehow we managed to get some clear data taken on the refuge, and then the group split up-- one (mine) heading to Leslie Canyon NWR to take ONE feature point, and the other to find some internet to fix Trimble issues. My group had plenty of driving on dirt roads before we arrived to the very important kiosk. Then we had another four hours in the car before we'd be at our next destination. We stopped in the town of Bisbee for some of the best Mexican food I've ever had. Then drove and drove until we arrived at Buenos Aires NWR around midnight.
Our morning at Buenos Aires began grossly early once again. We had to attend a safety meeting with border patrol people so we would be aware of the dangers of the border lands. The message was mostly to watch out for large bags of marijuana hidden in the weeds and don't confront anyone attempting to cross the border. Once we were briefed we headed out into the danger to map an interpretive trail that hardly left eyesight of the visitor center.
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| Here we are, at work. The intrepid inventoriers |
Once the trails at Buenos Aires were safely stored away on the Trimbles, we returned to camp and cooked a quick dinner before making the drive to Tucson, where we stayed in a hotel in preparation for most of the group’s 7 am departure the next morning. I was not too sad to leave the border—from what border patrol and the refuge employees told us it just seemed that wherever we went, whatever we did, we were being watched. Creepy.
Now we are at Friday, Feb. 18. Six members flew back to Boise that morning, while the remaining four of us began to get set up for our hitch. We called ourselves Team Beta, and came to realize our purpose was to be thrown under the bus, and see how well we escaped. From the start it seemed NOTHING was going to go right. The Trimbles were failing, the GIS/GPS system on the computer was failing. I actually don’t understand half of what went wrong. I was there to provide trails knowledge, along with another guy. The other two were the GIS brains. So while they spent their weekend pulling out their hair in a Tucson coffee shop, staring at Trimble and computer, us trails people went climbing at the gym, ate burgers, did laundry, and tried to offer moral support to the computer guys. Luckily they got things smoothed out enough to get us through a hitch successfully.
OKAY. Now, we are to Monday. This was officially the first day of our hitch. We did food shopping and packed ourselves into the trucks to make the drive west. We camped on some BLM land near Quartzsite, AZ. On Tuesday Michael and I drove to Kofa NWR to inventory the aptly named Palm Canyon trail. It was a gorgeous little hike back up into a shady, narrow canyon. At the end there was a bit of an observation point from which you could see the California Fan palms. The trail was about a mile long, round trip and took us perhaps two hours to finish. Hiking is s-l-o-w with Trimble. Every time there is a “feature,” some kind of structure or improvement on the trail, we must mark it with a point and take down info and snap a photo. Also whenever there is a “deficiency,” some kind of erosion or drainage issue, we mark that and make suggestions for improvement. At the same time we are mapping the trail, and entering data on that as well. It takes a surprisingly long time to go through this process. Luckily we only had one trail that day, so there was a little time to explore the refuge before heading into town to meet the other two and head to a new camp near our next refuges.
Our next refuges were Lake Havasu NWR and Bill Willliams (or “the Bill Will”) NWR. The refuges are in Arizona, but the refuge headquarters and the maintenance yard where they put us up were in California. There is a time change right there, and we had no end of confusion figuring out what time it was where and when exactly we were meeting whom in what state and in what state’s time zone. hilariously confusing. We spent the next few days hiking short trails along the Colorado River. The refuge let us stay in the little office building inside their maintenance yard. Not the softest floor ever, but there was heat and a bathroom. We finished our trails on Thursday and met with the refuge manager to debrief on Friday morning. Then, thankfully and at long last, we were free to spend our time however we pleased. For us, we chose hiking. Trimbles were deposited into their case and latched in—no more talk about GIS, no more clicking away on annoying, unresponsive screens. Free!
For the break, Michael split off to hang out with his dad and brother. Me, Toji, and Nick decided to head to Arizona Hot Springs—a place Toji had been plenty before and highly recommended. We drove to the trailhead, a bit outside Bullhead City and hiked the three miles down through canyons and washes to the Colorado. We had to hike right through the pools at the end in order to make it to the camping area. That first step in the hot water was so good. We stayed for one night and had a great time. It was so incredibly nice to relax in hot water and not think about logistics of work. And there were lots of cool people there, so we had a bit of relief as well from hanging out with the same people day after day.
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| Near the hot springs, and a view of the Colorado River |
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| Nick and Toji, setting up camp at the hot springs |
We hiked out of the hot springs the next day… we really wanted to stay another night but it was starting to rain, and a giant wash isn’t where you should hang out when it rains. We ended up going to Flagstaff and exploring that city. We stayed in a hotel and woke up to about 8 inches of new snow! Our plan was to see a little but of the Grand Canyon but all roads into the park were closed. So we went on a short, very snowy hike and then wandered the streets of Flagstaff for a while. Well, I less wandered and more sat in a sunny café window with coffee and my book.
We drove to Tucson that night and then flew out the next morning.
Phew! Have I exhausted you?
So to recap, with a visual now: We landed in Tucson, trained just outside. Then drove south to San Bernardino and Leslie Canyon. Then west to Buenos Aires and back to Tucson. Team Beta gets into their trucks and drives north through Phoenix and then west to visit Kofa and Cibola. Then north to Havasu and Bill Will. North again to Bullhead City and Arizona Hot Springs, then east to Flagstaff. And back south through Phoenix and into Tucson once again. Then north to Boise! I know Arizona pretty well now.
It's been nice to be home and sleep on a bed. Well, an air mattress bed. And working in the office has been a good change of pace. We got our assignments for next hitch, which begins March 14th. I will be staying in Boise! The three traveling teams will be visiting refuges in New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. I'm not to sad to be staying back in Boise. It will give me a chance to explore the city and just sit still for a while. Toji is staying too, as well as a still unknown new girl. We lost one crew member while I was gone.
Well, I hope it wasn't too difficult to make it through this massive post. Perhaps I will write with more details at a later date.
Enjoy the weekend!
