Tucson Weekly: Trail Blazers (May 14

Have We Got A Job For You!
By Kevin Franklin
SOMETHING ABOUT THIS seems very wrong. I stand poised over the cactus with a shovel in hand. With a quick downward jab, I hack off a large section of green flesh and spines. Then another. And another.
Before long, half of the formerly large prickly pear lies in chunks on the ground in front of me. I scoop up pieces and hurl them off into the desert. It's all in a day's work in maintaining trails in Saguaro National Park.
Review I'm here with Alex Conley, Saguaro National Park group-volunteer coordinator, and a group of students from St. Gregory Middle School. Our task today is clearing the overgrowth from the Rincon Creek Trail, which runs up the west flank of the Rincon Mountains. The trail is the fastest way for firefighting crews to ascend the Rincon Peak area.
Aside from the occasional hiker, the trail sees little use other than from firefighters and park staff. For that reason, the vegetation has begun to grow over the trail. In anticipation of a big fire season this year with all the grass from El Niño rains, Conley is coordinating volunteers to clear the way.
Having a good trail is particularly important here because very often only one or two firefighters will be leading an entire train of pack animals up the trail. If one of them gets tangled in a cactus or tree limb, it can snarl up the entire pack train.
Intellectually, I can see valid reasons for hacking this cactus to pieces. Destroying it help firefighters move into an area to protect entire hillsides of cacti. Nevertheless, it just doesn't seem right to spear one with a shovel.
On the other hand, Conley makes an effort to route the trail around the true jewels of the desert, like barrel cactus and saguaro. One less prickly pear isn't going to matter, I suppose.
My fellow volunteers appear to have no such qualms. The middle schoolers ahead of me are gleefully cutting and hacking their way along. At least until they get bored with it and need some less-than-gentle prodding.
"We count a lot on volunteer groups," Conley says. "The way we budget, we don't have a lot of money for this kind of thing. For trail maintenance we have to get grant money. For a water bar project (that can take a week or more of work), that might make sense. But for a two-day project like brush clearing, it isn't worth someone's time to write an entire grant proposal."
That's where the volunteers come in. Conley is always looking for motivated folks to come out and lend a hand in protecting what is really their park.
"I work with every kind of group, from 10-year-olds, to high-school groups, to juvenile delinquents to corporations," Conley says. "I have 18 managers from Lucent Technology coming out next week. They want a break from a conference and want to work in the park."
There's rarely a shortage of things for them to do, Conley says. The work we're doing on Rincon Creek should last for a few years, but the heavily trafficked areas on the northwest corner of the park require regular maintenance.
Everything from erosion to litter causes trouble for the trail system. In the heavy-use areas, social trails are a big problem. Social trails materialize when people go off the official path. Once a trail is blazed, other people tend to follow it until a whole new trail comes into existence. Eventually, a latticework of dead-end or redundant trails would carpet the park if rangers like Conley didn't repair the landscape.
"I never realized how much goes into maintaining a trail," says Tracy Gallo, the science teacher in charge of the volunteer students. "I always thought they just built a trail and that was it."
Education is one of the major side benefits of the volunteer program, Conley says.
"With the volunteer program," he says, "it's not just the work we get done. It also helps us educate the public. After coming out and working on a project like this someone might say, 'Yeah, maybe I'd like to bushwhack, but maybe I shouldn't do it in a high-traffic area.' "

Getting Involved

Volunteer work starts to taper off in the summer because of the heat. Even so, Saguaro National Park is preparing for next year's efforts by compiling a list of organizations and people interested in volunteering. Any interested parties should contact Alex Conley at Saguaro National Park, 3693 S. Old Spanish Trail, Tucson, AZ 85730. Call (520) 733-5153 for information.

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