Next up on the Discovery Trip list looks like Hydrology. Stay tuned...

From Chad the geologist: "Thanks again for pulling this activity together. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing my knowledge and look forward to continuing our relationship in the future."

A big thanks to Chad and the rest of the Tonto staff for helping put this together. I'm sad that I had to leave early but the intro to Hewitt area geology part was really informative. We are working with the forest on more of these Discovery Runs. Ideally, we could do one of these a month. Watch the calendar for runs coming up in April and May.

Hey Brad. The TRAL hosted events are still on the Event Calendar page of the site. The Forum section about TRAL events is for discussion about them or for any volunteer led events or social events that people want to ask others to. But you should be able to get into any of the major sections of the forum when logged in as a member. Can't do that? If not, we'll have to get Trent to help.

After the two meetings with the Tonto about Sycamore, they have decided to not consider opening it until after the beginning of the year.

The second meeting about Sycamore with the Tonto was yesterday. There was more discussion about the logistical requirements to make sure everyone is out of the area in case of a closure. I told them that I was certain that I could get TRAL volunteers to help with sweeps. They are still very concerned about safety since we haven't had a storm that would flush out the fire debris and show how severe the flooding is going to get. The acting forest supervisor is going to take all of the inputs and come to a decision soon.

Here's the next part of this. The short form of the discussion with the Tonto about a conditional reopening of Sycamore is about a plan that would open the gates back up and then when there is a significant chance of rain (what's significant still to be defined), the gates would be closed until the threat of flooding has passed. The public would be notified a few days in advance including by large signs at the entrances warning that they need to be out of the area before the closure date. The forest would want to do a sweep of the main areas before the closure to make sure everyone gets out and they'd staff that search with as many of their employees as they can. They have asked if TRAL volunteers would be willing to help with a sweep effort. It would mean that we'd have to organize an event with a couple of days notice to patrol around the lower Sycamore area and Sugarloaf areas primarily. Our only duty would be to notify anyone we find in the areas that the gates will be closed in a few days. So, would you be willing to participate in these sweeps when they are needed?

Any thoughts on how to do that and maintain the social distancing thing?