An idea popped into Pete Cowgill’s head 60 years ago: Let’s start a hiking club in Southern Arizona.
It seemed like a pretty good idea in this region of mountains, canyons and deserts crisscrossed by enough trails to keep a hiker rambling for a lifetime.
So Cowgill, who was then a reporter at the Arizona Daily Star, suggested in his weekly “Tucson Trails” column that people interested in forming a hiking club meet at Hutch’s Pool in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Eleven hikers showed up at the pool on Dec. 16, 1958. “We figured that if 11 of us showed up, that must be enough to start a club,” said Cowgill, who recently celebrated his 93rd birthday and will be honored at a Dec. 18 event as a founder of the Southern Arizona Hiking Club. (See box for details.)
The club has grown and endured for six decades — attracting thousands of members over the years and guiding them to practically every conceivable hiking destination in Southern Arizona and hiking meccas in other states and countries as well.
“I’ve learned to like just about everything that can be done in the outdoors,” says Pete Cowgill, 93, who retired as the outdoor writer at the Arizona Daily Star in 1990.
PROUD FOUNDER
“I’m happy and proud to be the founder of the club,” said Cowgill, who is articulate, fit and still as active as his age allows. “It’s a good outfit.”
Although he no longer hits the trail for long hikes — such as one of his favorite treks up 9,453-foot Mount Wrightson south of Tucson — he gets regular exercise.
“I still do some walking around, but I’m 93,” he said in a recent interview with his wife, Judy, by his side. “The desire to really exert myself? Well, I’ve done it.”
Cowgill said he maintains his weight at 150 pounds.
“I do some stretches and sit-ups and lift weights,” he said. “I try to eat pretty well. I still try to stay in pretty good shape. I don’t want to be a fat old man.”
The Baboquivari Peak lookout cabin was still in good shape 30 years after it was built by the Indian Service Conservation Corps when hiking club members hiked to it in 1964. The ISCC also built a seven-room rock house at the base of the peak and a five-mile trail to the top.
CAMARADERIE ON THE TRAIL
Cowgill and a few other members of the fledgling club, which has about 750 active members today, took the first “official” club hike near the end of December 1958.
That trek up Wasson Peak in the Tucson Mountains was soon followed by others — to Seven Falls in the Catalinas, Mount Wrightson in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson and Baboquivari Peak southwest of the city.
The club launched a bulletin with information on upcoming hikes, and experienced members began serving as guides — a tradition that continues today.
Cowgill and other club members will tell you that while the actual hiking is important, it’s a heartfelt sense of camaraderie and love for the outdoors that really keeps things humming.
And, especially in the early years, it was the boundless energy and quirky trail humor of Cowgill that energized other club members.
Bob Cardell, who recently completed a term as club president, shared some memories of Cowgill on the trail.
“People who know anything about Pete realize he is a true lover of nature and likes to leave no footprints behind,” Cardell said. “Pack it in, pack it out. Leave it like you find it. Therefore, he naturally hated to see rock cairns (route markers) set up anywhere in the wilderness. So he became known to us hikers as ‘Cowgill the Cairn Kicker.’ Anytime he spotted a rock cairn, he would naturally just kick it over.”
Cardell also recalled: “On an outing in Ventana Canyon with Pete, I remember coming to a small puddle of stale water. The weather was hot and dry. Pete reached into his backpack and pulled out an old rusty tin cup and got himself a long drink out of that puddle of water. He said he had a cast-iron stomach and never got sick from drinking nasty, stale water.”
Fellow hikers recall that, even in his 60s, Cowgill often left others in his dust.
“In the early 1990s, I went on a Cowgill hike down Sycamore Canyon from the Mount Lemmon Highway to the fork below Rose Canyon Lake,” said hiker Larry Bagley. “Pete, adorned in his signature Converse sneakers, was spry that morning. The six of us, all younger than Pete, had to work hard at keeping up with him.”
RETIREMENT MEMORIES
Cowgill retired as outdoor writer for the Arizona Daily Star at the age of 65 in August 1990. He had been writing about the outdoors — and photographing its wonders — for 32 years.
In a final column, he shared some memories and reflections. Among them:
- “The best part of my job was that I got paid to go hunting, fishing, bird watching, hiking, scuba diving, beach combing, snow skiing, water skiing — all the neat things that other folks pay to do. When I went on vacation, I did the same things as when I was working.”
- “I’ve been to scores of neat places in the outdoors. Like middle Sabino Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains, with its towering granitic walls, huge pools and wily brown trout.”
- “I have four pairs of binoculars and a spotting scope. I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for and at all sorts of critters that live in the outdoors.”
- “I’ve learned to like just about everything that can be done in the outdoors. Some things I’m good at and some things I’m not.”
- “What about the future? I don’t know. For 32 years, I’ve lived with deadlines. I’d like to live for a while without them. That means no planning for tomorrow and for next week. Take what comes.”
