A walk on the wild side Saddle Mountain Wilderness is home to a small population of Apache trout. The fish are small and skittish, and the casting windows range from tight to impossible. Unless you enjoy nettles, snags and fishless days, leave the fly rod in the truck. This is a place to hike. The…
Author: rondungan
A short history of Jerome
Arizona’s mining towns frequently went up in flames Jerome burned. And burned and burned. Three years in a row, the town burned, and merchants rebuilt the tents and shacks that sheltered saloons and cathouses. It was a mining town, where men dug furiously by day and drank away the night. Jerome ran on whiskey, dreams…
Arizona Wildfire
The Bighorn Fire.
Hiking Aravaipa Canyon
Eddie thought we were crazy. He thought that all that wading on a cold day would end in disaster once the sun went down, but we didn’t listen. The canyon was calling. The forecast called for colder and getting colder, clear to partly hypothermic at night. It was December, and someone, I think it…
Grand Canyon bison saga continues
The latest in the story of the rogue Grand Canyon bison herd: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/too-many-bison-culling-hunting-grand-canyon-beefalo
Up in smoke: Will Arizona escape a major wildfire this year?
Spring is here, and the Forest Service has taken charge. People in the high country are nervous. They talk about a year with no winter. How it’s drier than it was when Rodeo-Chediski blew up. Just before Memorial Day weekend, the Forest took the rare step of closing down sections of various tinder-dry sections of…
New monuments keep feds busy
The Trump administration’s monument reductions are likely to fail, conservationists say, but that hasn’t stopped the feds from moving forward with new management plans. The reductions came late last year, when the administration announced it would shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante, created during the Clinton administration, and the newly created Bears Ears National Monument. Conservationists, tribes and…
Getting lost in the Maze
Every now and then you need a do over. Years ago, Tom and I paddled down the Green River in Canyonlands National Park, stashed the canoes and backpacked for a couple of days in the Maze District of the park. I won’t go into details, but things went a little sideways up there. We may…
Grand Canyon Escalade dies another death
A proposal to drop a gondola ride into the east rim of Grand Canyon suffered another blow Saturday. The project, known as Grand Canyon Escalade, had a couple of moving parts: a bill before the Navajo Nation Council and a 2012 resolution passed by the Bodaway-Gap Chapter. The council voted overwhelmingly against the bill…
Little white lies: part II
Far too many people seem to break down reality to a set of numbers … so it’s only natural that they transfer that thinking to fishing – numbers of fish caught, size of fish, nothing but the best gear that money can buy – the usual trappings of a consumer society that doesn’t know when to quit.