Southern Arizona Hiking Club - The Early Years by Pete Cowgill
A killer snowstorm enveloped Southern Arizona in mid-November 1958. We had more
than six inches of snow in Tucson and the stuff was neck-deep on Mt. Wrightson.
Three young Boy Scouts died on their way down the mountain. A shrine in their
memory was subsequently placed in Josephine Saddle.
I had written in my weekly “Tucson Trails” column in the Arizona Daily Star that
any people interested in forming a hiking club should meet at Hutch’s Pool that
weekend. Eber Glendening and Dave McGowan braved the elements to show up at the
pool and Dick Duffield got to the end of the road in Sabino Canyon where the
trail started. That was it.
A month later, I tried again. This time, eleven hikers showed up at the Pool. We
sat on the sandbar at the lower end of the pool and talked about how much we
liked hiking. We didn’t know each other but we decided that if this many hikers
would show up on a cool day in the middle of winter with snow on the surrounding
peaks, there was hope. We decided to give this fledging, unnamed hiking “club” a
chance to grow and prosper.
Did it ever! Our first “official” hike was on the last Sunday in December, 1958,
to Wasson Peak in the Tucson Mountains. Carl Rinker and I were the guides. We
really didn’t need any guides because most of us had been there before. But we
had fun. We enjoyed the company of new friends and planned to have one hike in
the area each weekend.
We must have been a pretty tough bunch. In our first two months, we made it to
Mt. Wrightson twice and to Baboquivari Peak twice. Other hikes were to Seven
Falls, Linda Vista, Saddle Ridge and Maiden Pools.
At one of our early social meetings, we talked about a lot of names for our
group and finally settled on the Southern Arizona Hiking Club. Lawyer Dick
Duffield was elected our first President and I was what would later become Chief
Guide. Since I was writing a weekly outdoor column for the Star, I was
Trailscriber and publicist.
Marian Sarrels, who owned Cox Mimeo on downtown Meyer Street, was our publisher.
Our social meetings were on North Stone Avenue downtown in the basement of the
Tucson Newspapers Inc. building, next to the rumbling printing presses.
Our hiking horizons expanded to La Milagrosa Canyon, Newman Peak, Atascosa Peak,
Rincon Peak, The Window, and Onyx Cave. The number of guides also expanded: Mac
Campbell, Charlie Thornton, Eber Glendening, Tom Harlan, Phil Healey, Charlie
Mensch, Helen Jones, Don Morris, Bob Ward, Evelyn Wirtz, Sy Zuckerman, and John
McEldowney.
By the end of May 1959, we had 56 paid-up members. We decided to go back to
Hutch’s Pool and have a big blast to celebrate our great fortune in being part
of such a wonderful hiking club. Social Chairwoman Lorna Glendening was in
charge of this fun get-together on May 17, with SAHC providing the hot dogs,
buns and all the other goodies. There was a great natural rock and water slide
just upstream, so we spent a lot of time shooting down the slick rock into the
big pool at the bottom. We even brought our own swimming duds.
It was a grand weekend and a fitting way to celebrate our good fortune and all
of the new friendships we made. We were young and enthusiastic. SAHC had
arrived.
If we wanted to get the next Bulletin out, which was due in September, we had to
pay our annual dues of $1.00. That was one dollar, mailed to Treasurer Annita
Schmutz. Each Bulletin ran about five cents per copy.
Like many Tucsonans in those days, we took a break from the hot summer Tucson
sun and decided to meet again in the fall for a bigger and better hiking season.
A few of us diehards got together for some informal hiking, but SAHC took a
snooze until early fall.
To show how upscale we were, a committee was formed (Duffield, Glendening,
Cowgill) to draw up By-laws and Articles of Incorporation. Dick Duffield was a
member of a pioneer family and an avid hiker. His office was downtown. Eber
Glendening was raised at the Santa Rita Experimental Range Station and graduated
from the University of Arizona. He was a civil engineer. I was born in Minnesota
and, after World War II, graduated from Northwestern University and eventually
came to Tucson. It took a few meetings but the committee got the job done.
We decided to get politically involved in opposing reopening portions of Tucson
Mountain Park to mining.
We also decided to categorize our hikes: “A” for hardy hikers and “B” for
intermediates. Guests would be welcome but no pets and no children under 12.
Charlie Thornton was in charge of putting together a schedule of Saturday hikes.
On December 30, 1959, we had our first wedding of SAHC members: Annita Schmutz,
a botanist, and Tom Harlan, who worked at the UA Tree Ring Lab, tied the knot.
By pooling our resources and ordering in bulk, we got USGS topographic maps at a
30 percent discount. Carroll Sundahl was in charge of creating a master file of
trails.
Charlie Thornton welcomed all hardy SAHC hikers to join him and his group of
equally hardy hikers at the Arizona State School for the Deaf and the Blind on
their annual one-day hike from the South Rim to the North Rim of the Grand
Canyon.
By now our Bulletin, still a mimeograph production, had grown to two – sometimes
three – pages. We started putting sign-in registers on various peaks, either in
circular pipes capped at both ends or in surplus ammo boxes. Eber Glendening
volunteered to lead SAHC members on trail clean-up hikes throughout Southern
Arizona. Marian Sarrels was signing off each Bulletin with a “Happy Trails.”
We decided to refine our hike classification system. “B” hikes were from 8 to 15 miles with from 2,000
to 4,000 feet of elevation. “A” hikes were anything above those limits and “C”
hikes were below those limits.
In December 1960, we moved our social meeting time and place to 7:45 p.m. at the
Central YMCA at 516 N. 5th Ave. We also decided that drivers on our hikes should
be compensated at three cents per mile. We also added this warning: “If you want
to hike by yourself, go hike by yourself; when you hike with a SAHC group, you
do what the guide says…and above all, SMILE.”
Here’s a brief rundown, from early 1960, of some hikes and some SAHC members who
guided them. How many of these guides do you remember? Sandy Selovar led a hike
to Picacho Peak. Tom Harlan led a hike to Cathedral Peak. Marian Sarrels led a
hike to Golden Gate Peak. Dusty Rhodes led a hike to Saddle Ridge. Retired Harry
Dunn led a hike to Hutch’s Pool. Carroll Sundahl, a civilian employee at
Davis-Monthan AFB, led a hike to Mt. Hopkins. Dick Duffield, then SAHC
President, led a hike to Pusch Peak. Nancy Breazeale, whose family had a cabin
at Marshall Gulch, led a hike to the Wilderness of Rocks.
&nb Here’s a leg- and lung-buster we haven’t done in recent years: Eber Glendening led a hike from Sabino
Canyon, over the top of Mt. Lemmon to the Town of Oracle, a jaunt of about 30
miles.
Here are some guides who were later elected to the job of SAHC President: Eber
Glendening, Pete Cowgill, Mac Campbell, an X-Ray technician, and Dave Sanders,
whose family owned a water company.
A total of 83 people showed up for our big fall social meeting in September
1961, at the Central YMCA. Forty-three of those were brand new members.
We finally put a Masthead at the top of our Bulletin in October, 1961: Dick
Duffield, President; Dave Sanders, Treasurer; Carroll Sundahl, Secretary; Marian
Sarrels, Trailscriber; and Pete Cowgill, Head Guide.
Our programs were really terrific. Vaughn Short gave a slide show of a 9-day
trip he and noted river and wilderness guide Ken Sleight made into the Escalante
River region in Southern Utah. George Olin, naturalist at Saguaro National
Monument, gave a program on the flora and fauna of the southwest. Gilbert Ray,
head of the Pima County Parks and Recreation Department, talked about the
effects of the proposed takeover of the north half of Tucson Mountain Park by
the National Park Service to prevent further prospecting and development in the
county park.
Author Weldon Heald showed and narrated a 1½-hour color film, made in 1941, of
the first running of the entire Colorado River.
Our annual dues were increased to $1.25 per person. We sold SAHC patches for 60
cents. By the middle of March 1962, we had 145 paid-up members. Joe Hoxie, a
carpentry contractor, led a hike up Mt. Wrightson. Again, we went back to
Hutch’s Pool for our annual spring picnic.
In the fall of 1962, I started what became the “Who Went Where” section in The
Bulletin. We were getting a lot more guides: Jack Magee to Pontatoc Ridge, Roger
Dean to Milagrosa Ridge, Ted Marley to Mt. Hopkins, and Jim Kennedy to Atascosa
Peak.
We had 42 members and guests on a hike led by Lorna Glendening to Wasson Peak in
March 1963. And more guides: Lois Laufenberg, Jack Clemenson, Bill Faust, John
Bradner, Jane Templeton, and Russ Weber.
In September 1963, we finally elected Eber Glendening for his first of several terms as SAHC
President. And we raised the dues to $1.50. This was also the year when we
gained two of our most active guides and members: Gilbert Jimenez, who worked
for Pima County, and Stuart (Doc) Queen, a UA sociology professor, along with
Abe Aragon, Iona Hansen, John McComb, Chuck Rider, Randy Sholes.
Trailscriber Harry Dunn started compiling the early history of SAHC. We
scheduled a couple to trips to Mexico. One was to San Jose Peak, an 8,000-footer
south of Naco, and a four-day tour of the Pinacate volcanic region west of
Sonoyta.
We published a series of articles in The Bulletin on the various wilderness
areas in Arizona. The first, by Eber Glendening, was for the Galiuro Mountains.
Other articles were also published on the Grand Canyon, Navajo Reservation, Blue
Range, Chiricahua Mountains, and Mogollon Mountains.
We finally acquired an official address: P.O. Box 12122. Don’t try it today as
we have a different one now…Box 32257.
In March 1964, Eber Glendening put together a weeklong trip to the two big
volcanoes in Mexico: Iztaccíhuatl at 17,158 feet and Popocatépetl at 17,802
feet. We made it to the top of both. Chuck Rider, a civil engineer, and Jane
Templeton went on their honeymoon on this trip.
In June 1964, the following officers were elected: Mac Campbell, President; John
McComb, a Sierra Club representative, Vice President; Jane Rider, Secretary;
Harry Dunn, Treasurer. Randy Sholes, a Southern Pacific foreman and a rousing
poet, was Trailscriber. The appointed Executive Committee (I still don’t know
what we did for this exalted title) was Eber Glendening, Charlie Thornton and
Pete Cowgill.
JJoanna McComb and Dan Jones completed a technical climb up the northeast
buttress of Baboquivari Peak. SAHC members floated down the Gila River from
Coolidge Dam through the Narrows to Dripping Springs Wash and Winkleman. We also
floated down the Salt and Colorado rivers. SAHC finally organized a backpack
trip to Mount Baldy in the White Mountains. We printed a number of songbooks so
weary backpackers could sing themselves to sleep around the campfire. SAHC now
had 203 members. In September 1964, we raised the annual dues to $2.50.
Mac Campbell was elected president in the fall of 1964. To officially start our new hiking year, we
put 65 hikers on top of Old Baldy. The McCombs, Glendenings and other SAHC
members toted nine gallons of water to the top for hot coffee, tea and cold
lemonade plus other snacks to munch on.
Eber led the first of more than 30 annual backpacking trips to Rainbow Bridge
and other spectacular sites in the Navajo Indian Reservation. We also backpacked
into Kielberg Canyon on the west side of the Galiuro Mountains and shared a warm
campfire for a few minutes with old gimpy-legged, one-eyed John Power of Power
Cabin Shootout fame (1918).
SAHC made a couple hikes to the top of Wasson Peak, one a moonlighter, in late
December 1964, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of our first official hike.
So ended the first five years of SAHC. I have just barely touched the tip of the
iceberg in this short history of SAHC.
I’ve mentioned dozens of guides and hikers. To most of you, these are just names
on a sheet of paper. To be honest, some of the faces are a bit blurred to me.
They all deserve credit, however. Many, many others whose names I didn’t mention
also gave a lot to SAHC. We all had a great time hiking in the outdoors and
starting the groundwork that made SAHC what it is today.
