(gentle music) - Hey, I'm Jayarr and on this season of "Trail Mix'd," I'm gonna take you around, under and through Arizona.

Join me in my quest to see the best trails that Arizona has to offer, from the iconic spots, to the hidden gems.

Along the way, we'll be diving deep into what makes Arizona's trails some of the best in the world.

So, come on, let's take a hike.

(rock music) (serene music) Arizona has thousands of miles of trails in wilderness areas for the public to enjoy, from scenic desert landscapes to shady pines and cool riparian areas.

Taking care of that much land is a big job and requires a lot of collaborative work across multiple different agencies and organizations.

Nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy work in regions around the world, including right here in Arizona to combat climate change and the destruction of biodiverse ecosystems through evidence-based science.

Other groups like the Arizona Trail Association work with local volunteers to help maintain Arizona's scenic trail systems.

Then you have the Hotshots, our last line of defense when it comes to stopping an ever-increasing number of devastating wildfires.

(upbeat acoustic music) - [Announcer] "Trail Mix'd" is made possible in part by a gift from Sue and Bill Ahearn.

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Because of you, the Arizona lottery can use its resources to help make our state stronger, from supporting small businesses, to protecting Arizona's most vulnerable people and giving hope to future generations, paving the way for a better tomorrow, for our better tomorrow.

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Thank you.

(adventurous music) (scene swooshing) - [Jayarr] In 2013, the landscape around Yarnell received less rain than average.

On the evening of June 28th, lightning struck a patch of wilderness right outside the small town of Yarnell.

By the next day, the small fire had grown considerably.

Yarnell had to be evacuated and the Granite Mountain Hotshots were brought into work the fire.

On June 30th, a change in the wind direction and speed caused the fire to spread quickly and trapped the Hotshots just outside of Yarnell.

The fire overtook them and 19 of the Hotshots were lost, with the 20th member, Brendan McDonough, their lookout, being the lone survivor.

Being a Hotshot is highly skilled work.

They have to maintain an extremely high level of physical fitness, learn how to wield a variety of tools quickly and under the most stressful conditions, and be able to evaluate complex situations with their knowledge of fire and environmental science.

To honor the firefighters who gave their lives to protect the land and people around Yarnell, the Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park was created and opened three years later in 2016 as Arizona's first Memorial State Park.

Today I met with Colin McCawley, a park ranger here at the Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial.

- So Hotshots are a special elite firefighting force.

There's many different types of ways and crews and ways to fight a fire and crews that fight a fire, but Hotshots, they are a 20-man team of very highly-trained and experienced firefighters who they go in and do a lot of the bigger, heavier, more high-risk assignments and operations on the fire line.

- As a former firefighter, what does it mean to you personally to be working at a site like this?

- I think I have the best job in the world and I work at one of the best places in the world and I am responsible for something that is just way bigger than any of us.

Arizona state parks, I think they're very important because they maintain and take care of the world that we live in.

It's up to the people to do it.

If we don't do this, if we don't take the responsibility for our environment, then it's just gonna deteriorate and we won't have this for future generations.

- We're hiking today to honor the 19 fallen heroes who lost our lives in the Yarnell Hill fire.

(scene swooshing) Join me on the Granite Mountain Hotshot Memorial Trail.

(serene music) (scene swooshing) (serene music continues) Each one of these plaques talks about the families that were left behind, and so you feel that, you think about that when you are picturing the emotions around people losing their lives while they're trying to save lives.

You think about the families that they left behind and the emotions that they were feeling 'cause I can tell that these plaques were written by the families, so just kind of putting that all together, it's a lot.

It's a lot to absorb.

(serene music continues) (serene music continues) (serene music continues) (serene music continues) Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park is one of Arizona's newest state parks, created just a few years after the tragedy.

Now the trail and the memorial are maintained by the Arizona State Park Service, but they aren't the only organization that maintains trails.

(scene swooshing) Down at Roosevelt Lake, there are some hardworking women with the Arizona Trail Association, who are literal trailblazers, working on updating and clearing overgrown sections of the Arizona Trail.

- So today we have a crew of volunteers and staff out working on opening up a previously abandoned segment of the trail.

So this is part of the Arizona National Scenic Trail, which is an 800 mile trail from the Arizona Mexico border to the Arizona Utah border.

So one of the issues with this segment, you could see it's pretty crumbly as you were walking in, so we're just working on, here, we're building a rock wall to reinforce the tread so it doesn't continue to crumble off of the hill.

The plan will be to eventually reopen this piece of the trail once we have it all built back up again.

(engine rumbling) - I think we'll just focus on this wall for today.

- All right, so just getting rocks up there?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- I'm Olivia Woods and I'm the Trail Technician for the Arizona Trail Association.

I do whatever needs to be done on the trail, whether it's like brushing, doing any sort of maintenance, building new trail, or scouting reroutes, anything and everything, really.

My favorite thing is that I just get to be outside doing something that I really enjoy 'cause I actually really do like doing trail work.

It's a lot of fun and it's really satisfying and I don't have to go to the gym, so I like that.

- All right.

Lean it- - I think if you lift from this side now, I might be able to pull out.

Yeah, the Arizona Trail Association, a lot of our volunteers are retired, but we've been trying to get younger people and women into it.

Even a lot of like professional trail crews now, there's a lot of young women that are getting into it, so that's pretty awesome.

(metal banging) - Put the sides on here.

- Just so you guys know, Steve asked for about six to eight of those.

- [Volunteer] Okay, sounds good.

- We have two there already.

- All right.

(engine humming) (serene music continues) - I'm Leslie and I'm a volunteer out here digging dirt on the trail.

And I hiked these trails, so I thought, well, I got the stamina to do this, so I might as well try this once.

Actually, it's hard enough to find the trail.

You can see it's overgrown.

Well, when you turn around, take a look at what we've done.

So that's, now, granted, we got it big enough so that the horses can come through, as well as the crawler.

And then you turn around this way the trail cuts up through there, so which way does it go?

(laughing) Are you gonna go that way, or you gonna go this way?

So there's no defined trail at this point.

And then once you get in here, oh, there it is now see how easy it is to get mixed up?

Like I said, brand new.

All I do is hike so I know what a good trail looks like, and I know what a bad trail looks like.

- Designing and building new trail, it usually takes several different teams of people and several different passes to figure out, you know, if we're building a reroute where it's gonna go.

Is it gonna go around that tree or over to this overlook, or figuring out how all that's gonna look, and then actually figuring out how it's gonna be built from there.

Hopefully you've built it in such a way that is sustainable and doesn't require a lot of heavy maintenance.

So we have a machine called a crawler that is helping us haul large rocks up from down in the wash that's below us.

And then we also have volunteers who are working on hauling smaller rocks up here, and then several volunteers in this ditch here that are working on digging out an area to place those rocks in a way that's gonna be sustainable.

(serene music continues) (volunteers speaking faintly in background) Stewards are volunteers who adopt a segment of the trail and that is their piece of the trail and they're essentially responsible for monitoring it and maintaining it, so they get out on the trail at least twice a year.

Most of them get out more often than that, and then they report back to us and let us know what kind of condition the trail is in, and then from there, we can decide the appropriate resources to get that problem taken care of.

- My name is Maria and I'm a steward for ATA.

In 2020 and through Covid, my husband and I, we hiked the Arizona Trail and we almost finished it and we realized that somebody actually keep up with the trail so we got in touch with the people with the Arizona Trail and then we decided that we wanna be stewards and somebody has to create these trails, so this is a great way to be give back to the trail.

- The trail community, just without being the workers, is a great community, so it's like welcoming.

It's like you've known them because all got the same interest.

You wanna make the trails accessible and safe so that we can use 'em.

- [Jayarr] From experts like Olivia and Chrissy, to newbie volunteers like Leslie, to trail stewards like Maria, these women show us that anyone, regardless of age or gender, can get out and give back to the community.

While workers at the ATA build trails, Colin and other rangers at state parks work tirelessly to keep our wilderness and trail systems clean and accessible.

The Hotshot Trail takes you 2.85 miles up through the Weaver Mountains.

Every 600 feet throughout the trail, there are granite plaques that share stories and photos of each of the Hotshots.

Sean Kauffman was a Granite Mountain Hotshot a couple of years before the tragic fire.

He hiked with us today to give us a picture of what it was like to be a Hotshot and to honor his fallen friends.

- Jayarr.

- Sean.

- What's up?

- What's up, man?

Good to meet you.

- Pleasure.

- Yeah, thanks for showing me the hike and breaking down some of the info about the trail.

- Absolutely.

Lovely weather we got.

- I am a little bit chilly, but we can pretend, sure.

- Hey, welcome to the islands.

Let's get hiking.

- Come on, let's go.

So, what is a Hotshot?

- It's a group of guys and ladies that just enjoy the camaraderie.

They enjoy working really hard.

They enjoy spending time in the woods, helping save houses or the forest or just things, you know, stuff like that.

- So you were part of the Granite Mountain Hotshots?

- Yeah, that's right.

I was looking to get connected with firefighting.

Good way to get started was getting a job on a hand crew.

And then 2006, Granite Mountain, wasn't quite Granite Mountain yet, it was Prescott Fire Crew 7 Type 2 Initial Attack Crew.

Eric Marsh was crew boss and he wanted to dream big and he wanted to have the first Hotshot crew sponsored by a municipality and so it was super neat to get a job on that crew and then for the forest to be our office.

I loved hiking anyway, but you know, when we're gonna be outside, basically sleeping outside from April 1st to October 1st chasing fire, not just in Arizona, you know, in the Southwest and the Northwest, ah, loved it.

It was super neat.

You know, Eric and the guys wanted to name the crew a Hotshot crew and Granite Mountain Hotshots became an idea.

Let's check this out.

So these rocks over here, looks just like the, yeah, I think this is it.

We saw the photo online of the Hotshots hanging out as the fire was burning north and I think this is it right here.

This is the spot that they were hanging out.

They were hanging out last just before heading out to their safety zone down at the bottom over there.

But yeah, that's it right there.

Yeah, about.

(serene music) - [Jayarr] Whether a fire is started by human negligence or a wayward lightning strike, lack of precipitation can contribute mightily to a fire's growth.

As our state continues to experience record-breaking heat and drought, it's important to monitor Arizona's water.

(scene swooshing) Across the state, The Nature Conservancy works to combat climate change and keep a watchful eye on our state's rainfall and riparian areas.

- Today we are out here doing a section for our San Pedro River wet/dry mapping.

We're here on the western downstream end of Aravaipa Creek, and we're gonna be walking the stream's channel to note where we see water in the river and where we don't.

- So the mapping effort really allows us to see trends in how the water is changing from year to year, and allows us to tie it back to certain activities on the river, whether a recharge program is being successful.

- Wet/dry mapping was a project at Nature Conservancy started back in 1999, so this wet/dry mapping project, which began as something about 45 miles or so, we now survey about 250 miles of the San Pedro River and its primary tributaries from the headwaters in Mexico, all the way to its confluence with the Gila.

- So for this wet/dry reach, we're gonna step into the stream and we're gonna mark a point on the GPS unit and then we'll write down the data from the GPS, whatever it tells us, and then we can move on to the next point.

It is 9:30.

- All right.

- And then we're gonna mark it, so this is waypoint 001.

- [Bailey] First one of the day.

- [Daniel] First one of the day, so we got 12S 05 40 427.

- Okay.

- And then 363 9897.

- All right, so we've got our easting and our northing.

- I'm gonna click done.

- Okay.

- That one's marked.

- Water certainly present at start.

- Flowing in from upstream.

- Okay, well.

- Excellent.

Head down to the next spot.

- Okay.

- And we we're pretty close, we got our flag in from last year.

(Bailey speaking faintly) (water splashing) - Water is critical in Arizona.

As we all know, it's a big issue and something that we as people really are drawn to.

It's also critical for our wildlife.

Arizona has incredible biodiversity and something like 97% of all of our wildlife species in the state are found in our riparian areas, so this is the habitat, the cottonwood, willows, those riparian vegetation that support such biodiversity and provide the resources needed for these wildlife to thrive.

- All of this water that is moving in one way or another, subsurface, across the surface, is essential for life everywhere.

It's essential for this plant community that we're standing in, all of these birds that we're hearing, and then also the people that live in Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, everybody needs water.

(word bubble popping) All right.

Right about there - At our end point?

- Yep.

So this is waypoint 005 and UTM 12S 05 28233.

And the northing is 363 3573.

- Great, definitely no water flowing.

- Definitely not.

- All right.

- There's a mouse, but no water.

We like to say that it is our report card for our conservation work on the river.

My desire to do this work has always been about just being in the middle of it, being in the thick of it, and I can't think of a better way or place to do it.

- [Jayarr] Mapping and tracking river data is important for the health of an area over long periods of time, but other dangers like fire can threaten our wilderness, our cities, and even ourselves in an instant.

(scene swooshing) At the top of the Hotshot Trail, you can see the town of Yarnell in the distance and the fatality site below.

Here at the observation deck, there's a tribute wall available for those who would like to leave mementos in honor of the firefighters' sacrifice.

(serene music) Once you're at the observation deck, the journey trail follows the last steps of the Hotshots to where they made their last stand.

- 19 crosses, got the flag on the flag pole.

19 purple ribbons.

Love it, got all the other people have left shirts and patches, mementos, that's awesome.

(serene music continues) (serene music continues) (serene music continues) - [Jayarr] After you found out about the fire, what was the next thing you did?

- I went to my knees and I was praying for a while.

Actually went on shift.

Went on shift at the fire department that next day.

That's how we work best.

When dealing with a lot of stress, we just wanna take of work, we wanna do our job.

Someone had said that the juniper tree that was saved, there was a geocache.

We went out there maybe like three or four days after like the guys had passed, probably about six or seven Hotshots.

We went over to the trailhead.

We lined up like we used to.

"Moving," we called out line commands like we used to.

And when we hiked out to the tree, there it was, it's still alive, and the guys did a good job.

And so we climbed around in the branches and then we found this old .30 caliper ammo can, and then we open up this thing and there's a note on the back page, all the guys signed it, and not just signed it, they also wrote little remarks like, "Glad we saved this tree.

Hope more people can enjoy this shade."

- And that's the picture that's at the base of the trail.

- Yeah, where the guys all stacked up like a pyramid.

They took a group photo at the tree.

Yeah, we wanted that not to be preserved forever.

- It's a special note.

- Yeah.

- That makes sense.

- I couldn't imagine doing this and getting up here without a trail.

I mean, I'm looking at these rocks right here thinking they traversed.

- Oh, there's trails, there's trails, you just gotta look for 'em.

- The game trail.

- Oh, yeah.

- Okay.

- The deer, rabbits, coyotes and whatever else.

Bears make a better path for me, but you just look for that pathway that's there, and still not easy.

(laughing) Still really difficult sometimes, but hey, you know.

- The trail is really well made.

- Oh yeah, this trail is amazing, absolutely.

- [Jayarr] Feels brand new.

- Yeah, the trail is super good.

It's not easy, but it's not difficult.

I don't know, it's like you're giving something, you're paying respect.

Like it's an effort to make it here and then to leave a patch or a token or to say a prayer for these guys, yeah, I think it's really good.

- [Jayarr] Keeping our state beautiful and safe is no easy job.

Organizations like the Nature Conservancy help keep nature healthy long into the future.

The Arizona Trail Association helps our trail stay accessible so we can traverse them easily.

Rangers keep our parks organized and clean, and Hotshots give their time, energy, and sometimes even their lives to keep us and the wilderness safe.

- The reason the trail's here is to just honor and remember these our heroes and the reason why Yarnell is still here.

- What are some of the things that people do at the memorial?

Or how are some ways that people who come here can honor this moment?

- So a lot of ways people do it is they come into our parking lot and they spend time actually reading the plaques and, I'm sorry.

(chuckling) My captain's grandson was Garret Zuppiger and it just, I always think about him and it just screws me up.

Every single day, I have a parking lot full of people who are just heartbroken and I love my job and it's an amazing job, but that, it gets me, you know.

I think a lot of people, once they get up to the fatality site, they realize exactly what the Granite Mountain Hotshots were going through and the environment they were in before they ultimately perished.

I think that one thing that people can do to really remember these people is to just do this hike and to really understand and appreciate what they went through.

- Yeah, this education and spreading this via the tube is just, you know, it just, it's gonna help a lot of people.

- Absolutely.

I always tell my boss, you know, people forget things in time, but we have a job that we can't let people, we can never forget.

- I got something for you.

Oh, man.

- What you got?

- Oh.

- I'm hoping it's a Twinkie.

- Are you hungry?

- Twinkies the whole trail.

Oh my God, is this an MRE?

Yeah, what's up?

- Dude, cool, man.

Wow, these are amazing.

(Sean laughing) So I haven't seen one of these since I was like 18 years old and that was a long time ago.

- [Sean] All right.

- But my grandfather was in the military and he had one that was 20 years old.

- Oh.

- Yeah, so we cracked- - It was probably still good.

- It was, yeah, so I mean, the technology behind these is insane.

- That's a little something else.

- [Jayarr] The 19 Hotshots are heroes, but they were also humans.

They lived and loved, laughed and joked with each other, shared triumphs and tribulations, meals with their families and MREs together on the trail.

The Hotshots give us an example of how we can live.

While most of us will never be called to give our lives, we can each work to contribute to our world in a way that takes care of each other and the land we live on.

I'm grateful to all those who help maintain our deserts, forests, and riparian areas and keep us safe, especially those heroes who have given the ultimate sacrifice.

They set the example and we'll try to follow.

(serene music)