At Babad Do’ag I don’t see a pile up and at Molino Basin the bathroom doors are open and things look clean – I can see a little trash scattered at Windy Point, but nothing out of the ordinary after a busy weekend and in Bear Canyon things seem fine.
The Bigelow Trailhead is the first place I pull in where the government shutdown really shows – trash is scattered across the parking lot and accumulating under overflowing trash bins – a women hesitates at the bathroom door and turns back to the car exclaiming ‘not fit for a pig’.
Bits of trash at a trailhead really just isn’t all that shocking – there is a reason that I keep a trash picker in the truck – but this amount of trash is unusual and sad. It doesn’t take long to have two trash bags full and leaning against the truck – I’m working on bag three (mostly broken plastic sled pieces) when when a Forest Service Crew pulls up – a sort of trash strike force they quickly empty bins, grab trash and work on the restrooms – in spite of what I suspect must have been an epic (depressing?) day of cleaning up trash they still smile and graciously add my collected garbage to their load.
I wonder if other areas were as bad as the Bigelow Trailhead before the Forest Service crew came thru? Probably… It is sad to see people leave so much trash – and sad that our government can shutdown and leave these places without the care they deserve.
Three Forest Service workers were out cleaning up – barely visible but you they had nearly filled the larger truck and were loading trash into the smaller truck too. January 2019.
Coronado National Forest Fee Proposal – Coronado National Forest: News articles about and the press release for the Fee (Increase) Proposal were from a post here in November – the link leads to the official page for the project and is a good starting spot if you are interested in submitting a comment about the proposal (comments due by May 1, 2018). I think that the list of ‘New Fee Sites’ is worth reading thru and considering – included from the Santa Catalina Mountains are the Bigelow Trailhead, Butterfly Trailhead and Windy Point Vista Day Use Area.
Improvements at Marshall Gulch Picnic Area and Trailhead – Coronado National Forest: If this topic, or the illustration below, seem familiar it is because the first comments on this plan were taken in 2010… The long running process to redesign the Marshall Gulch Trailhead appears to be in the final stages and on 10/27/2017 the Draft Environmental Assessment was published. If this plan goes forward it will not increase the number of parking spaces available but will attempt to restore the convergence of Marshall Gulch and Sabino Creek and make the area easier to navigate on busy days. An interesting note on visitation from the EA:
On average, the site receives over 65,000 cars each summer (May through September), which includes those just driving through and others who stop to use the facilities (Forest Service, unpublished data, 2010). Assuming that there are an average of 2.5 visitors per car, estimated use is 162,500 visitors. This does not include walkin use from Summerhaven and walk-in use during the winter when the gate is closed.
Conceptual Design Document for the proposed Marshall Gulch changes – the current ‘main’ trailhead parking and bathroom are below the area shown in this illustration and are eliminated to restore the area where Marshall Gulch and Sabino Creek meet. January 2018.
The Coronado National Forest is now taking applications to operate the Sabino Canyon Shuttle System. The Sabino Canyon Shuttle Prospectus page has the relevant documents – the documents contain quite a few details about the shuttle system including limits on and requirements for the number of trips the shuttle makes, required operating hours and details about the costs/revenue involved – among the details was this statement about visitation to Sabino Canyon:
Visitation by private vehicle totals approximately 520,000 people annually; it is estimated that the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area receives more than one million visitors per year (Feasibility Study, 2010). Actual visitation to the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area is difficult to quantify, as the public may visit at any time of day and may to arrive on foot, on horseback, or by bicycle, as well as by private vehicle.
Meet the Black Friday resisters – KGUN9: This article made me laugh a little – I assumed it would be about a serious protest but instead was about people getting outside and avoiding the Black Friday deal-shopping crowds! Of course, I highly recommend joining the movement…
Popular Sabino Creek is bone-dry after months with no rain – Arizona Daily Star: Sabino Canyon is on a dry streak as we head into 2018, no surprise given the weather… The USGS makes data from Sabino Canyon available online and there is discharge data available back to late 1987. The graph below show data from 1988 to the end of 2017, this presentation is far from perfect – high spikes are cut off, some very low numbers are essentially hidden and this is just the raw data with no filtering for data quality – but it is still interesting to quickly scan thru:
Endangered Gila Topminnow Returns to Santa Cruz – Arizona Public Media: One explanation offered for the prescence of the Topminnow in the Santa Cruz is that “they may have reached the Santa Cruz from Sabino Canyon via the Rillito River”.
Suntran Sabino Canyon Sun Shuttle – Sun Tran: For the brief period of 12/26 to 1/1 there was shuttle service from Udall Park to Sabino Canyon – even with overflow parking available it can occasionally still be a challenge to find parking in Sabino Canyon and this service is a nice detail.
Contador and Polartec-Kometa tackle Mt. Lemmon – Cyclingnews.com: A short article about the Polartec-Kometa Continental team and Alberto Contador riding up the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Weather! Even by Tucson standards this winter has been quite warm – we did get one winter storm that generated snow on the mountain…
Rescues/Accidents/Incidents including information from SARCI’sSARNews:
12/11/2017 La Milagrosa Trail: Not a rescue but an interesting report because it was a false alert due to an accidental emergency beacon activation – no details were given about how the beacon might have been activated.
12/18/2017 Romero Canyon Trail: Two hikers were unable to find the trail after entering Romero Canyon – they found the trail before help arrived.
12/23/2017 Seven Falls Area: An ankle injury leads to a carry and ‘reindeer’ ride out.
Light, shadows and green – Crystal Spring Trail. May 2017.
Pictures from a Control Road, Crystal Spring Trail and Butterfly Trail hike last month – even then the green plants were overwhelming the narrow track of the Crystal Spring Trail, I can’t wait to go back later in the summer and see what happens once the rain starts!
Fallen wing on the Crystal Spring Trail. May 2017.Looking down into Peck Basin and Edgar Canyon and across the San Pedro to the Galiuros from the Butterfly Trail. May 2017.Mount Bigelow and the Butterfly Wall from the Butterfly Trail. May 2017.
Smoke from the Bigelow Prescribed Burn – taken from Speedway Boulevard in Tucson. December 2016.
The Forest Service was careful to publish information about the Bigelow Prescribed Burn well in advance – but even so it was hard not to be alarmed by the impressive amount of smoke that the fire was producing, easily visible from Tucson it generated plenty of questions and it was hard not to wonder if the controlled burn had somehow gone awry…
A small pine along the Bigelow Trail in the Bigelow Controlled Burn area – many of even the smaller pines still had green needles and appear to have survived the fire. December 2016.
Hiking up the Bigelow Trail from the Bigelow Trailhead the impact of the fire was obvious – black ground, black tree trunks. I wasn’t until I reached the edge of the burn that I could really tell just how impressively effective the fire had been – fairly dense grass and shrubs cover the hill on one side / on the other the ground is remarkably clear.
Grass and shrub covered hillside on the left of the trail, burned – and cleared – ground on the right. December 2016.
We visited Kellogg Mountain just before the controlled burn – I wondered what impact the fire might have on the impressive thicket of New Mexico Locust growing near the top – but near Kellogg the Bigelow Trail was the edge of the fire and Kellogg Mountain was untouched.
Looking up at Kellogg Mountain from the Bigelow Trail – Kellogg was untouched by the Bigelow Controlled Burn. December 2016.
We hike up the Bigelow Trail to the junction with the Butterfly Trail and then wander up to the top of Kellogg Mountain. Tall trees on the eastern slope, missed by the fires that scorched much of the mountain over a decade ago, block our view – from a rocky perch farther down the ridge we can clearly see Bassett Peak and the spot where the moon will rise – just a few minutes of waiting in the cold wind and then…
Almost supermoon – moonrise. November 2016.Moon over the Galiuro Mountains. November 2016.
On the 13th the moonrise was about 10 minutes before the sunset and we thought with some luck we might get the almost-supermoon rising against beautiful sunset color – it didn’t quite work out exactly as planned, the light on the eastern mountains faded faster than expected – but still beautiful, and the clouds around the setting sun were spectacular!
