Water is the most important resource along the 800-mile Arizona National Scenic Trail. Where to find it, how reliable the source may be, and the quality of the water is vital to any long-distance trail adventure on foot, mountain bike or equine. Working with our friends at Atlas Guides, we are proud to introduce the Arizona Trail Water Report.
This website features every known water source within 1/2-mile of the Arizona Trail, and is linked to the popular Guthook Guides smartphone app. You can use the interactive map to research water sources, or search by name or mile number. Each water source includes recent comments from trail users to help you determine its reliability and quality.
Our most sincere gratitude goes out to Atlas Guides for developing this website, and the ATA’s “water source guru” Fred Gaudet who meticulously managed the Arizona Trail Water Source Databook for many years. We appreciate all trail users who comment on water sources using the Guthook app – the information you share will help others.
Click here to visit the Arizona Trail Water Report. It's an amazing tool when planning your next adventure.
Tell Your Representative to Support the Great American Outdoors Act TONIGHT
The House of Representatives will vote on landmark outdoor recreation and conservation legislation that will greatly benefit the outdoor community. This is the last step before it is signed into law, but its passage isn’t guaranteed. Your voice is needed to make sure every Representative supports this critical bill before it goes to vote tomorrow.
The Great American Outdoors Act will repair trails and create more outdoor access across the public lands we treasure as well as close to home within communities that need them most. The act will also address the long overdue maintenance needs that have resulted in trail closures at our National Parks, Forests and other public lands. This could be the most important piece of public lands legislation in a generation.
Will you join the Arizona Trail Association in supporting this historic bill by sending your Representative a message? Both of Arizona’s Senators support this bill, and now we’re counting on you to remind your Representative how important it is to you. Our friends at American Hiking Society have developed an easy-to-use online messaging tool that takes less than one minute to complete.
Please click here to send a message to your Representative tonight.
Over 100 Miles of Arizona Trail Burned
Due to wildfires throughout the state, over 100 miles of the Arizona National Scenic Trail have burned this summer. This has forced closures of the AZT on the Coronado, Tonto and Kaibab National Forests. Until burn severity and direct impacts to the trail can be conducted, large portions of the Arizona Trail will remain closed at least until after monsoon season has passed. Flash floods are a serious threat to public safety and are significantly more dangerous after an area has burned. The ATA is working with land management agencies to seek permission to conduct on-the-ground conditions assessments as soon as possible. We will advocate for federal funding to hire conservation corps to stabilize scorched hillsides, remove hazard trees, and open the AZT as soon as it’s safe to do so. In addition to site-specific closures due to wildfires, the entire Tonto National Forest remains closed to recreation. Extreme fire danger due to dry conditions and hot temperatures following a wet winter that produced an abundance of dry brush and grass led Tonto National Forest officials to close the state’s largest national forest beginning on July 2. The Stage 3 Forest Closure means that all National Forest System lands contained within the Tonto, with few exceptions, are closed to the public. This includes 192.5 miles of the Arizona Trail, from Passage 17 (Alamo Canyon) through 26 (Highline). For more information, please visit the Tonto National Forest website. Otherwise, please avoid all trails and recreational facilities on the Tonto until further notice. In anticipation of the autumn thru-hiking season, we are currently researching the safest and most scenic detours around closed areas. Once those are established and approved, the detours will be posted on the ATA website, on the Guthook smartphone app, and with signs on the ground. For up-to-date closure information, please visit the Current Closures page of our website as well as the alerts on the Guthook smartphone app.
Learn the Art & Science of Trails through the Trail Skills Institute
If you’d like to learn the art and science of trail maintenance, design and construction, please register for one of our upcoming Trail Skills Institute courses. Due to COVID-19 protocols, these popular training's are limited to only 8 participants. All courses will be held in various locations outdoors and will cover Modules 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the ATA’s Trail Skills Institute, which are ideal for trail stewards and anyone interested in maintaining and/or designing and building recreation trails. Upcoming dates include September 19-20; October 17-18; and October 31-November 1.
Module 1 (Trail Assessment) covers:
Seeing the trail and the surrounding landscape
Erosion and deposition
Identifying problems and causes
Documenting trail conditions
Module 2 (Trail Maintenance) covers:
Reopening the trail corridor
Slough, berm and tread
Drainage (dips, knicks, reversal, checks, water bars)
Hardening the trail
Module 4 (Trail Design & Layout) covers:
Why, who, what of trail design
Design factors (use, site conditions, climate and weather)
Construction design criteria (Trail Management Objectives)
Control points (positive and negative)
Trail corridor identification (GIS and visual assessment)
Tight flagging
Construction prescription
Module 5 (Trail Construction) covers:
Corridor clearing
Tread and backslope
Climbing turns and switchbacks
Retaining Structures
Drainage
Rehabilitation and finishing
Cost for the two-day training is only $50 for AZT segment stewards and $75 for everyone else. Scholarships are available, too. Learn more and register here.
Garmin Releases New & Improved Arizona Trail Navigation Product
In cooperation with the Arizona Trail Association’s GIS Director Aaron Seifert, Garmin International has updated their preprogrammed data card for your handheld Garmin GPS device that features the entire Arizona National Scenic Trail. As part of Garmin’s Trailhead Series, this product includes:
Highly-detailed, digital topographic maps, comparable to 1:24,000 scale USGS maps.
Offers a fully routable trail plus basic road coverage for reference.
Displays national, state and local parks, forests and wilderness areas.
Shows detailed hydrographic features, including lake/river shorelines, wetlands and perennial and seasonal streams.
Includes searchable points of interests, such as campgrounds, scenic lookouts, picnic sites and businesses, as well as Arizona Trail Points of Interest.
AZT mountain bike routes around wilderness areas.
Other hiking and biking trails near the AZT are included, but are colored differently than the main Arizona Trail to avoid confusion.
Provides 3-D terrain shading and digital elevation model (DEM) shaded relief on compatible devices so you can estimate terrain difficulty.
Features Bureau of Land Management township, range and section information and USGS quad locations.
Garmin’s “Trailhead Series – Arizona National Scenic Trail” is available for $49.99 as a digital download or SD card online and at local retail outlets that carry Garmin products and other outdoor recreation supplies. Garmin donates 5% of sales to the Arizona Trail Association, so your purchase of this product supports the protection and maintenance of the Arizona National Scenic Trail.