Each year, for the past 12 years, Summit Hut has brought the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour to Tucson. The tour is an evening filled with some of the world’s best films on mountain sports and mountain culture. It is equal parts adrenaline pumping and inspirational.

For the past three years, we have donated a portion of the proceeds to wonderfully deserving non-profit organizations. Last year, due in large part to the film festival being a sell-out crowd, we were able to donate $2,000 to Friends of Saguaro National Park and $2,000 to Friends of Sabino Canyon.

This year, we decided to let the community in on the fun of helping us give away some money! Back in December, we announced an open request for applications for our First Annual Banff Grant Program. For our first year, we got a wonderful response from some amazing organizations. We got back 18 applications from a huge range of groups from Tucson Clean and Beautiful, to the Arizona Trail Association. Each of the groups that applied does great things for our community and we are in awe of their work.

We then gave three of our staff members the incredibly challenging task of selecting our five finalists. They considered every angle, the impact the organizations have on our region, the work they have done in the past, the work they plan to do in the future and what they would specifically use the grant dollars for. After careful consideration, the team selected five incredibly deserving organizations:

Sonoran Desert Weedwackers: Our mission is to protect wildlands around Tucson from the encroachment of invasive plants that threaten to destroy the Sonoran Desert. The Weedwackers work in Tucson Mountain Park mapping and digging out buffelgrass and fountain grass three times a month.

Tucson Wildlife Center: The Tucson Wildlife Center is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and release of injured and orphaned wildlife throughout Southern Arizona. They are responsible for the rescue of 700 animals per year!

Inner City Outings: Sierra Club Inner City Outings is a community outreach program that provides opportunities for urban youth and adults to explore, enjoy and protect the natural world.

Southern Arizona Rescue Association: A non-profit, all-volunteer search and rescue organization serving southern Arizona and Pima County since 1958. SARA members are volunteers from all walks of life, donating their time, skills and enthusiasm to provide a vital service to the public.

Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park: The Friends will partner with the community, and provide resources, to advocate for and ensure the continued preservation of Kartchner caverns through research, education and public awareness.

To select our two grant winners, we have put it up to a customer vote. That’s right, we’re letting you decide who gets a portion of this year’s Banff ticket sales. Through next Monday, we have voting tables set up at each of our Tucson locations. All you have to do is come in and drop a poker chip into the jar of the organization you think is most deserving.

Banff Voting Display

After two weeks, we have had over 600 people vote and here are the standings:

Tucson Wildlife Center: 230

Inner City Outings: 145

Southern Arizona Rescue Association: 121

Sonoran Desert Weedwackers: 91

Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park: 74

There’s still plenty of time to mount a campaign for your favorite group! Get the word out to come in and vote and get the word out to buy tickets to the Banff Film Festival at the Fox Theatre on March 25^th. We’ll be announcing the winners at intermission on the night of the festival so don’t miss it!

Its census time again. Saguaro National Park is looking for volunteer help to conduct the third Saguaro Census since 1990. The Park conducts a saguaro cactus census every ten years, which curiously coincides with the U.S. national population census.

This past November, four Summit Hut staff volunteered for census work with the Park as part of our 100 Days of Service program, where Summit Hut donates staff time and labor to local environmental and outdoor causes.

We had a great time counting and measuring cactus, and contributing to the knowledge and understanding of the Park’s saguaro population. Plus we learned a whole lot about the health of our saguaro forests and the local ecology along the way.

The Park could use your help too. Its fun! Six census outings are planned for January, beginning January 8^th.

Read more about the Saguaro Census here.

To make a volunteer reservation and get more information, contact Don Swann or Kim Diamond at 520.733.5178, or email Don_Swann@nps.gov

Grand Canyon National Park is proposing a change to the procedure for reserving backcountry permits for overnight wilderness camping in the Canyon.

Under the current system users who are able to show up in person at the Backcountry Information Center on the South Rim when permits first become available get first shot at reservations, ahead of those who mail or fax their requests to the office. Reservations are made available on the first day of the month, four months before a user’s proposed trip start month.

For example, October is one of the two most popular months for wilderness outings in the Canyon, and permit reservations first become available four months earlier on June 1st. A couple of years ago I drove to the South Rim on a June 1st to get an October trip reservation, and was very surprised to find myself in line with well over a hundred people jockeying for the opportunity to get the permit they desired. There were plenty of locals in line but I talked to others who had come from as far away as Seattle! Permit requests that were arriving in the office on that June 1st via fax and mail were ignored by the reservation staff until all of the people present in person had an opportunity to place their requests.

The Park Service thinks this is unfair (I do too, even though I currently have the “local advantage”), and is proposing a change that will put all users on a more equal footing for getting the permit they desire. The Park wants to eliminate in-person requests during the first month of the four month early reservation period. So, in the first of the four months prior to a trip start, virtually all users would have to apply via fax or mail, and all such applications would be processed in the order received by the reservation office. In months two, three and four, walk-up users would again have an opportunity to be “first in line” on days they might show up in person at the office.

Commercial users and locals probably won’t like the proposed change, but I think its a good way to go. The Park is considering implementing this system or something like it as early as February, 2010.

Grand Canyon National Park describes these changes on this web page. Information about the current reservation system is available on the Park’s Backcountry Permit web page. You can also read  more about this in an Arizona Daily Sun article.  

Since 2003, public access to High Creek, one of the nicest trail heads in the Galiuro Mountains northeast of Tucson, has been blocked by private land owners. The Forest Service is seeking public comment on a proposed plan to restore public access to the High Creek area.

Public access to High Creek will provide a central gateway to key portions of Galiuro Wilderness including Holdout Spring, Basset Peak, Kennedy Peak, the headwaters of Rattlesnake Canyon, and the Powers Garden area. Beneficiaries include hikers, backpackers, naturalists, campers, equestrians and hunters. Furthermore, opening High Creek will reduce recreational pressure on two other trail heads on the east side of the Galiuros: Ash Creek and Deer Creek.

Your support for the public access plan to High Creek is needed! Please write or email your support for the proposal as soon as possible; the deadline for submitting comments is October 28.  Include name, full address, a subject name of “High Creek EA”, and your specific comments with supporting reasons you believe the Forest Service should consider in reaching a decision. Note that this information becomes a matter of public record. Find more information on your Opportunity to Comment, here.

Owners of Garmin GPS units will be interested to know about two web sites offering free map and trail software created by “community mappers”.

GPS File Depot is a rich resource worth checking out. Dozens of free topo maps and some street maps are available for download; with maps for Arizona, California, New Mexico, to name just a very few. I downloaded the Arizona Topo Map onto my PC and used Garmin MapSource® software to install the map onto the micro-SD card in my eTrex Vista® HCx. The 24k topo map software came up and displayed as expected. It will be interesting to put it to use in the field.

In addition to the map downloads at GPS File Depot, you will also find several interesting tutorials, including a series describing how to create your own Garmin compatible maps.

MapSource® screen shot of Arizona Topo Map

Also worth a visit is the web page for Southwest Trails, a fascinating project devoted to creating transparent trail overlays for Garmin GPS units. Quoting from the web site: “In short, Southwest Trails is a transparent map overlay that you can put on your map-enabled Garmin GPS receiver. This allows you to see, and follow, trails using whatever maps you normally would on your GPS...be it topo maps, City Navigator, or any other sort of map that you have on your GPS.”

Both sites hint at a tantalizing future in which users and enthusiasts not only create GPS-ready topo maps, but also fill them in with up-to-date trail detail that is otherwise very difficult to come by. Looks like this future has already arrived!

One of the quiet success stories in the history of the Arizona Trail is the way that three distinct groups of outdoor enthusiasts came together and pooled their efforts to make the Trail the wonderful reality it is today. Those three main groups are hikers and backpackers, trail bikers and equestrians. Dave Hicks, Executive Director of the Arizona Trail Association, has told me that without this energetic collaboration, the Arizona Trail may never have come into existence.

During my walk of the Trail I came into contact with trail users from all these groups, and enjoyed hearing their perspectives on what the Trail meant to them. I ran into a man attempting an equestrian thru-trip and was very impressed when I learned how challenging it is to handle the problem of re-supply on long horse trips. Apparently, horses require a lot of water, food, and surprising to me, rest. I was told that a fit human thru-hiker generally requires far fewer rest days to complete the trip than horses do. Figuring out how to accommodate these needs, especially at remote and hard to reach trailheads can be a logistical nightmare. Another significant challenge for horses is navigating those sections of the Trail where deadfall from large forest fires can be stacked like giant pick-up-sticks, greatly impeding progress.

This fall there are plans afoot at Prescott College to traverse the Arizona Trail using horses and mules. Read about it here. This will be an interesting expedition to follow.