Bringing Back the Sandy Saddle Trail

A short distance into the Mazatzal Wilderness is an overlooked trail, a shortcut from Barnhardt Trail to Horse Camp Seep, which is near the more famous Deadman Falls along the Mazatzal Divide Trail (also, is part of the more famous Arizona Trail). Before 2025, I made the mistake of hiking on this trail exactly two times. (Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?) The first time I was scrambling up towards Horse Camp Seep on a backpack that ended in disaster, and the overgrown conditions pushed my timeline back by hours. Second time I was slightly more prepared for the bushwhack… and I still managed to embed an agave tip in my foot. In summary, while the trail is interesting, and it has some great redeeming qualities (great campsite near Castersen Seep, big views from Sandy Saddle itself, and a shortcut to the waterfall), the overgrowth and lack of maintenance makes it… unappealing.

When I moved my focus away from the Mazatzal Wilderness and started exploring the Galiuros, I wasn’t too surprised to find overgrown, disused, and confusing trails there as well. After all, my understanding of the forest agencies in Arizona is that they are universally underfunded, with barely enough resources and staff to handle the most popular locations, like the Salt River corridor or Peralta trailhead. A small, remote, and sparsely-visited wilderness, with trailheads locked in by private land, barely warrants attention. As years and trail miles passed by, I kept thinking about how much easier and more accessible these lands could be with just a little bit of love.

Noah was the one who sparked our trail maintenance trip. He had a simple school assignment - write up an essay and presentation about an extracurricular activity. When he asked me for ideas, the thought of adopting a trail, clearing the brush, rebuilding tread, and fixing the signs, immediately came to mind. With half a plan and a few pieces of repurposed gardening gear we headed up Barnhardt Trail for an overnight experiment. How much trail could the two of us clear in two days?

It turned out to be not much. Sandy Saddle Trail is not just a little overgrown. Manzanitas growing in the center of tread, rocky washouts, and plenty of deadfall, make some sections all but impassable. The two of us fought and hacked our way to the campsite next to the seep, and then spent most of the weekend clearing deadfall and cutting back growth. In those two days we barely cleared three hundred feet, which even included some “easier” sections alongside a creek. The lack of progress was demoralizing. On the way out we decided to rock-hop our way back to Barnhardt to save ourselves the blood-letting thrash along Sandy Saddle.

I’m not one to give up that easily, tho. Over the next twelve months I ended up returning a dozen times. Some trips I went solo, some had kids. Some were daytrips, early predawn starts with a full pack of water, while others were multi-day trips, filtering water from the finicky Castersen Seep. There was even one trip that ended prematurely, with an infected knee and an air rescue. Second time that a helicopter has hauled me out of the wilderness… maybe I should get a punch card. Slowly, ever so slowly, the trail is coming back to life, and I’m happy to say that the trail to Castersen Seep is about 90% back now. That last 10% is a constant annoyance, I’ll have to get back to it this fall.

Working a trail, even solo, has turned out to be a decent amount of fun, both personally and as a family project. My kids have really started to enjoy that area, and are eager to revisit and explore the wilderness during our breaks. We’ve even started (minimal) improvements to the campsite, like clearing brush and moving rocks around to avoid those evening stumbles. Now I bring up a little speaker and we listen to audiobooks as we work, especially Sanderson works that I’ve already read and my kids are starting to enjoy. Even the hike out there, a four-mile, two thousand-foot gain has started to gain a weird familiarity.

We’ve also learned a lot about trail maintenance. While I do pull out most of the manzanita roots from what we cut down, especially when they grow in the tread, we try to keep stumps at the edges to help control erosion. Also, while they are a pain, stones in the center of the trail can make for painful rocking, so we try to create a little “trough” for easy strolling. Tossing the cut brush is only used when it’s too much of a pain to drag it in a secluded area, to keep the “dead brush” look down. And the standard, six-foot-wide tread with ten-foot-height? Yeah, that makes sense, and it’s not that hard to keep to.

The most humbling part is our slow progress, though. Add up every trip from the past year and it comes to about three thousand feet of cleared trail - just over half a mile.

Getting the path cleared to Castersen is only part one - a good part, as it makes our backpacking trips much easier. That’s about a quarter of the full length. We still need to clear the section that travels across two tributaries, then the climb up to the saddle, then the slight drop on the other side, the drop that connects with the Mazatzal Divide Trail. At our current rate, it could take us four, or more, years. My original, lofty goal was to knock this out in one-or-two years, and then start working on the Galiuros. If we can get this trail cleared, and create some lifelong memories for my kids, I feel that our small contribution will be enough.