Experience a day in the life of a Tucson-area wilderness ranger

For the Manning Camp wilderness ranger, that’s the only way to get to work.

At 7,920 feet, Manning Camp includes a wooden structure and corrals on a pine-covered flank of Mica Mountain in the Rincon Mountains east of Tucson. It’s the National Park Service backcountry office for summer fieldwork: plant surveys, prescribed fire, trail maintenance and other activities.

“It’s basically a cabin host job,” Prochovnick explained. In April, she got the facilities ready for a Saguaro National Park leadership team meeting. Everyone hiked up, but the Park Service’s pack string of mules brought food and supplies.

“I checked the water system and filled the water trough for the mules,” Prochovnick said.

Maintenance is a key part of the job at Manning, a 118-year-old building built as a private residence in 1905 and supporting federal management agency crews since the 1920s.

“We usually open the cabin in March and keep it open until November,” Prochovnick said. Due to heavier snow this year, the opening was late March. Her seasonal appointment runs March through November, with eight 10-hour work days and six days off. Days 1 and 7 include the hike up or down to Manning; Day 8 is an office day. This is her second year on the job.

“I love how diverse the job is,” she said. “You get up there and you have seven options of what you want to do today. But you have be self-directed.”

Prochovnick arrived at Manning on May 15 to find that one of two refrigerators powered by propane had gone out, leaving a whole fridge full of rotten food.

“I have plenty of food,” Prochovnik said, “but I was disappointed about the (formerly frozen) chickens.”

She also interacts with visitors and checks permits. Manning Camp has an adjacent campground for hikers — with reservations required on the government recreation.gov site (see tucne.ws/1ng7). But it’s a small part of the job.

Despite a prime location in cool ponderosa pine, “we don’t get that many visitors,” she said. It’s a long hike up the mountain, and “no matter how early you start, it’s pretty hot in the summer.”

The Park Service takes a fairly direct route to Manning through the moth-balled Madrona Ranger Station on the east side of the Rincons. This requires crossing private land closed to the public, but the Park Service has access. (The X-9 Ranch owner closed the area in 1967, and the closure remained after the land was sold and subdivided for private homes.)

With five camping areas (Juniper Basin, Grass Shack, Happy Valley, Spud Rock Spring and Manning) and a large trail system, the Saguaro Wilderness Area offers many loop trips for backpackers but almost all routes start around 3,000 feet, so the first 5 miles are hot in the summer.

Trailhead distances to Manning: from Douglas Spring (end of Speedway) — 12 miles; Loma Alta — 13.7; Italian Springs —12; Tanque Verde ridge (Javelina Picnic Area) – 16. The shortest hike from the far side of the mountain (1.5-hour drive from Tucson) is Turkey Creek Trail, about 9 miles. The Arizona Trail joins Manning Camp Trail; from the park boundary, it’s 13.5 miles to Manning.

“By far the biggest use of Rincon high country is the Arizona Trail thru-hikers usually in late March and April and then again in October-November,” Prochovnick said. “I see probably 20 a day during the season.”

Most don’t camp at Manning because the reserved six-site campground does not work well for thru-hikers. It allows six people per site. Since most thru-hikers plan and hike alone, this means six single hikers might reserve the whole campground. The Park Service is looking at an adjacent site that might be set up for single-hiker sites with permits still obtained through recreation.gov.

Recently, the Manning area was decked out with tents: for five biological technicians, a Saguaro Trail Crew member and three packers who came with two “pack strings” (mules for hauling supplies). Sid Kahla, a rancher from Sierra Vista, has packed for the Park Service since 2009. He rode one of his horses and led his four mules; the other seven mules belong to the park and were wrangled by two Park Service employee packers. Field crews buy their own food and supplies brought up by the mules. Manning has a few big on-site tents, but most field people have their own.

The pack train also brought propane fuel and mule feed. The big May project was moving a camp for the Saguaro Trail Crew. The winter crew was based at Grass Shack, working on the Manning Camp Trail. The summer trail crew will have a “spike camp” on Heartbreak Ridge between Manning Camp and Happy Valley Saddle. Tents, food, water, tools and fuel will be packed in. The pack string will spend a night at Manning, a day packing supplies to the spike camp and then another night at Manning, requiring a lot of pellets for the mules.

The evolution of Manning Camp

Manning Camp was built as a private summer home. Levi Manning, who came to Tucson from the South in 1884, worked as a reporter and later was Tucson mayor. In 1904, he homesteaded 160 acres in the Rincons; he built the Manning Cabin and a 12-mile wagon road in 1905. The cabin included a fireplace, kitchen, bedrooms and a piano.

The land became Coronado National Forest in 1907, and the cabin fell into disrepair until 1922, when the Forest Service reconditioned it to house fire and trail crews. In 1935, most of the Rincons were transferred to the Park Service as Saguaro National Monument, now Saguaro National Park. In 1975, the cabin was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1976, much of Saguaro Park was designated wilderness.

The camp water supply is a spring developed by the Manning family and excavated by the Park Service into a large pond. Below that, a tinaja (water pocket) drops into a large pool. A nearby pumphouse powered by a small solar panel filters the water, which is pumped to a large tank on the hill. It’s then gravity flow for water to the cabin.

The “cabin” is actually two structures connected with a covered walkway. The central part decayed many decades ago and was removed. One structure contains a propane stove, refrigerators, a large table and supply closets. The other is a toolshed. The breezeway was filled with stock bridles, saddles, harnesses and feed; some backpacks and tools were hung on hooks.

The propane stove was not working too well, so Prochovnick suggested cooking outside either on a large open stove or a big campfire. (She got the stove fixed later in the week). She showed the technicians new to Manning what worked and what did not work in the kitchen. She displayed a whiteboard where she said she’d post names of people assigned to three chores: wash dishes, wipe down all surfaces and sweep. “This year we are winning the battle with mice.”

“Some bats moved in last year,” she said. “I had to go down to the park and get a high frequency rodent repellant to encourage them to move out. They would screech at me when I worked on the tools.”

Trail crew member Kristian Sliwa was helping Prochovnick for the week. He had an overlap between the park winter trail crew and the summer crew coming on the next week. Prochovnick planned to clean out organic matter from the water source, clear logs from trails around Mica Mountain, deep clean the cabin and sort, clean and inventory tools. “Some jobs, like moving a log, are better with two people,” Prochovnick said.

The park fire crew recently camped at Manning while preparing for a prescribed fire. Since they can use chainsaws, Prochovnick enlisted them to buck up firewood for the cabin. Since the area is wilderness, trail crew members use non-mechanized tools: crosscut, smaller saws and hatchets.

Tristan Blue will start in June as the second wilderness ranger. Prochovnick and Blue will alternate at Manning Camp but overlap one day. “Last year we had no overlap and both of us (rangers) were new,” Prochovnick said. “It took awhile to figure out what needed to be done.”

A San Francisco native, Prochovnick got an art degree but fell for wilderness work during a summer trail crew stint in Kings Canyon Wilderness with the California Conservation Corps. She has worked as a wilderness ranger or trail crew member on national forests and parks in Montana, Wyoming and California. “I worked on the Saguaro Trail Crew off and on since 2012.”