Monday, April 21st, 2025: Black Hills, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
It’s a remote two-lane blacktop through vast, lonely, dry ranchlands punctuated by stark buttes and small mountain ranges. Most who drive it are commuting to or from the giant mine, isolated on another road that branches off north. Preoccupied with concerns of job and family, with little thought to the barren country they routinely race past.
For humans, this dry country is defined by the river that allows farming on its occasionally broad floodplains. But to shortcut a bend in the river, the highway rises onto a plateau, and near the eastern end of this plateau, the road passes below a distinctive peak surrounded by sheer bastions of rimrock. That peak had always beckoned me, but until now it seemed too short a hike to justify the hour-and-a-half drive.
From the highway, the rimrock looks unclimbable, so I researched it online. As I look for more obscure hiking areas, what I’m finding is that my only predecessors in these overlooked places are the “peakbaggers” – the geeky, competitive subculture that cares more about numbers and life lists than nature, beauty, or even athletic challenge. The number that matters to peakbaggers is topographical prominence: the height of a peak relative to the lowest contour line that completely encircles it. The goal of a peakbagger is to climb the most peaks with the most prominence, verify their ascents, and share them with their community for bragging rights.
The vast majority of peaks don’t have trails to the top, so unlike regular hikers, peakbaggers spend most of their time bushwhacking rather than following trails. But since prominence is their goal rather than elevation or distance, peakbaggers typically avoid wilderness areas within sprawling mountain ranges, where tall peaks are connected by tall ridges, drastically reducing their prominence. So a broad distinction between hikers and peakbaggers is that the former use trails to hike or backpack long distances across varied terrain, while the latter drive to the base of an isolated peak, race up it, log a GPS coordinate, and race back down.
My recent experience reinforces this distinction. Hikers are simply not discovering many of the places I’m hiking these days, because they’re not maintained or known as hiking areas. They lack trail networks. The only people who are hiking them are the peakbaggers.
In this case, their GPS tracks had shown me the route around that sheer rimrock.
Despite being right off the paved highway, this is such an overlooked area that the maps don’t even show the high-clearance 4wd track that accesses the route. It climbs up a shallow outlying ridge and dead-ends at a hilltop clearing. A short distance above I could see a fence traversing the slope toward a ravine that divided me from the rimrock peak, and I started by following that fenceline toward the ravine.
Another clear day, with less wind, and mild temps. Lots of cattle sign, but nothing recent. I love this habitat along the state border, combining species and genera familiar from the Mojave, with Sonoran plants like ocotillo and honey mesquite. And the rocks here have a subtle variety and beauty it’s easy to miss while driving past. In fact, the entire landscape becomes more beautiful the more you focus on the subtle contrasts.
The head of the ravine is a small basin on the back side of the mountain, where minor draws converge from the rimrock above. My route would ascend a hump between two of these draws, punctuated by rock formations that mostly hid the peak I was aiming for.
Like most of our volcanic terrain, it was slow walking, picking my way between sharp rocks, cacti, and yucca, but it wasn’t annoyingly slow, and the weather was perfect. At the head of the hump, I emerged onto a small ledge, and beyond that, the real climb began – up and across the steep slope below the rimrock, toward what I assumed would be a gap through which I could reach the actual peak.
I’d been sick the whole night before with what I’d assumed was food poisoning. I’d felt better in the morning but still wasn’t sure I was up to this climb. I was ready to give up at any point, but I took it slow, and as I rounded the slope, it gradually became clear that the rimrock ended in a sort of cove between here and the peak. The peak itself rose out of the end of the ridge formed by the rimrock.
The gap in the rimrock turned out to be a narrow ramp, and at the top I emerged onto a narrow, juniper-dotted mesa, with the peak at its far end.
The peak, only a couple hundred feet above this mesa, is guarded by bare rock walls, but I could now see what appeared to be a climbable gap. The final slope was the steepest I’d faced yet, but it was lined with cool, spherical rock nodules or concretions, and climbing straight up, before I knew it I had reached the gap and was levering myself over the final boulders to the very top.
This was a real 360 degree peak – not like one of those rounded, forested mountaintops that dominate our larger ranges. The top, an irregular platform of blocky boulders, was roughly 25 by 50 feet, with two separate federal benchmarks, and a sheer drop on all sides except the gap I’d climbed through.
From up there, I really fell in love with the subtle patterns on the landscape: landforms, rock outcrops, bedrock transitions, and vegetation. Impossible to convey in a photograph. I wanted to stay for hours just soaking it all in. But I was trying to regain muscle mass, I’d done three full workouts during the week, and if I left now, my lunch would still be 3 hours late.
My knee must be improving, because despite the steepness I made it back down to the mesa quickly and safely. From there it would be a piece of cake. And not a single cow or bull, as far as the eye could see. This was quickly becoming my favorite short hike in our area!
As usual, on the way back I was paying more attention to the details. The lichen here is fantastic, and the ocotillos more than made up for the early-season lack of wildflowers.
Following the ravine and fenceline back to my vehicle, I took a shortcut that led me across a slope of dense, sharp volcanic cobbles – just enough to keep it from being a walk in the park.
I’d planned this trip assuming I would get a hearty lunch at the cafe in the Mormon farming village on the edge of the floodplain – but it was closed for Easter!
And when I finally got home in late afternoon, and warmed up a batch of leftover Mexican food, I discovered it wasn’t food poisoning after all – I had a case of stomach flu, and would start the week sick, unable to eat, so weak I could barely stand. Gotta take the bad with the good…
Sunday, April 13th, 2025: Blue Range, Hikes, Southwest New Mexico.
The vast wilderness area north of my hometown encompasses canyons and mountains that rise to a nearly 11,000 foot crest in the west. That’s where most of my all-day wilderness hikes have taken place, accessed via the highway that leads west out of town and then north past the wall of mountains rising on your right.
But I’ve become more and more curious about the lower mountains that rise to the left of that highway, along our border with Arizona. Most of them lack wilderness protection and are grazed by cattle from bottom to top. But they do host an old network of unmaintained trails, and the area is so far from cities that these trails are seldom used by humans.
There’s one small mountain group, at the center of a broad network of intersecting trails, that I’ve been especially curious about because although it’s easy to find on the map, I’ve never been able to identify it from the highway, and it’s really hard to get to. First you have to ford a river, then you need to drive almost 15 miles uphill on increasingly bad ranch roads. The overall distance from town is less than 80 miles, but I figured it would take at least 2-1/2 hours one-way – more than I can justify for an all-day hike.
But now that I’m doing short hikes, it suddenly seemed doable.
In this severe drought, the river was dry, so that was no problem. The main ranch road climbed to a mesa, where immediately to my right appeared a spectacular canyon with sheer volcanic walls.
A little farther upstream, the road crossed the dry wash above the canyon and climbed to a higher mesa, from which I could see the ranch house in the valley to my left. And I could finally see the mountains I was heading for: a higher conical peak at left and a lower rounded peak at right, connected by a low ridge.
The road was graded all the way to the Arizona border, where I found a crude gate. On the other side the road was just a trail over volcanic rocks. I opened the gate and waited for several cows to usher their new calves out of my way.
The road past the gate turned out to be the rockiest I’ve ever driven. No way would I have been able to drive it before my recent suspension lift. Mile after mile, it just kept getting worse: big, sharp, loose volcanic rocks, with chunks of bedrock sticking up a foot high in places. My maximum ground clearance is now a little over 11 inches, so I had to pick my lines carefully. I couldn’t go more than 5 miles per hour in most stretches, and I often had to slow to walking pace.
The suspension upgrade hasn’t improved the ride quality at all, which is kind of what I expected. The farther I crawled over these rocks the less sense it made to drive rather than walk – but the trailhead was still miles away, and I wanted to at least reach the lower of the two peaks, which would be over a mile from the trailhead.
When I figured I was a half mile from the trailhead, I found a place to pull off the road. That turned out to be fortunate, because beyond here, the track got even worse, climbing at a perilous grade on even bigger loose rocks, and there were no more places to turn around before the end.
I’d been expecting a hot day, but it turned out to be very windy. It was hard walking on those loose, sharp rocks, and the track got continuously steeper, until it topped out on a shoulder of the rounded mountain, with the trailhead just ahead.
Almost as soon as I started up the trail, I had one of the worst allergy attacks I’ve ever had. I’d packed Zyrtec that morning, but foolishly left it in the Sidekick, which was now a half hour back down that hill of loose rock. So for the next couple of hours, I used up the bandannas I carry in my pack, sneezing constantly, so violently I had to stop walking to hold my balance, my nasal membranes burning, a mucus factory working overtime.
At the same time, clouds were moving over and the wind was increasing, so I had to pull on my windbreaker and cinch my hat down tightly.
Along the way, I distracted myself by examining the spectacular views north, and as I crested the first peak, northwest. The top had burned patchily in past fires, but still hosted tall ponderosas, and eventually I got a narrow view of the taller, pointed peak a mile south. That’s where I stopped to turn back, figuring I’d gone at least a couple miles.
On the way back, despite my constant, violent sneezing, I managed to clamber off-trail several times to shoot panoramic photos over the low country between here and the higher mountains to the north. All that wild country was beckoning me, and hopefully I’ll be able to hike it someday.
Past the trailhead, I began picking my way back down that steep slope of loose rock, and immediately realized it was too dangerous to ever drive in my vehicle. Regardless of ground clearance, if I lost traction and slipped, I was bound to damage something underneath on either a loose rock or a sharp outcrop of bedrock. I don’t want to think about how long it would take to get a tow out here – I might have to pay Matt’s Off-Road Recovery to drive over from southwest Utah, and I’m not confident that even Matt could make it up this road.
But after reaching the Sidekick and bouncing back down the road at little more than walking pace, I began to get better and better views east toward our high mountains. I’d taken a Zyrtec and a pain pill – usually very effective at drying my membranes.
I kept wondering what was triggering my allergy. Both oaks and pines can bloom in spring, and both were all around, stirred up by the fierce wind. I’d had a bad attack in town the other day, but nothing like this.
At home, I had to take a second Zyrtec – not usually recommended – and a second pain pill, but despite running my air purifier on high and flushing my sinuses with the neti pot, I had yet another bad attack within a couple hours. Can’t remember anything like this before!
Sunday, April 6th, 2025: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It had snowed yesterday – just flurries in town, but I was looking forward to driving northwest for a view of fresh snow on our high mountains. Out of curiosity, I checked my photos of Aprils past. In 2012 it snowed here on April 14, in 2017 it snowed on April 1, and in 2021 it snowed on April 29. So not that unusual.
When I left the house it was freezing outside and I had to scrape frost off the windshield. I was planning to hike the first mile or so of one of my favorite wilderness trails, and on the drive north I could see snow on the slopes down to 7,000 feet. But most of the crest was obscured by a layer of clouds.
Along the highway, I passed hunting hawks of different species. Turning east off the highway, I followed the paved road up the edge of the broad floodplain of our famous river, then climbed the rough dirt road to the mesa at just over 5,000 feet. Eleven miles north I turned east again on a ranch road which drops into the valley of a big creek – now dry outside the mountains.
The creekside ranch apparently has a new owner, who has posted “Beware of Dog” signs every hundred yards for the two-mile stretch of ranch frontage. Must be quite a dog!
With its long approach on rough back roads, this trail doesn’t get much use – last entry on the trailhead log was more than two months ago, and the only tracks I found were from cattle.
Towering white clouds were forming and growing above as I hiked the rolling terrain, crisscrossed by shallow washes and crowded with Emory oaks and alligator junipers.
After traversing the maze of washes, the trail climbs gradually to a high bench before hitting the first slope of the mountains. My destination was a sheer rock outcrop that forms a natural dam across a steep canyon. It was really farther than I should’ve hiked at this stage of my knee recovery, but it provides a great view over the mesa.
And with the towering white clouds against the deep blue sky, and glimpses of fresh snow on the crest, this was the most glorious day for a hike I’d seen in a long time!
The sky just got better and better on the way back, with cloud shadows drifting across the slopes and occasional rays of sunlight glistening like diamonds on far-off patches of snow.
I grew up in the rural Midwest – a place whose wild, native history was totally erased long ago. Then, I spent most of my adult life in huge metropolitan areas – Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles – participating in a series of cultural and technological revolutions that defined historical eras in our colonial society.
And now, I’m blessed to have found a refuge far from the colonial capitals and urban sprawl, far from the centers of imperial wealth and power, at the edge of this vast mountain wilderness.
Sunday, March 30th, 2025: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Continuing my knee rehab, I’m looking for 2-mile hikes with increasing elevation gain. And this weekend, I realized there’s a nearby 8,000 foot mountain that I’ve always avoided because the hike to the top and back is only two miles. It’s our most iconic mountain because its profile suggests a bear.
Since it’s only a 2-mile hike, I hadn’t really studied the topo map, and it wasn’t until I started climbing that I realized this is by far the steepest hike in my repertoire – an average 22% grade from bottom to top. So not so smart for my knee.
It’s just tall enough to host an island of ponderosa pines at the top, so one of the highlights of the climb was the final transition from pinyon-juniper-oak to ponderosa forest.
And of course there was a decent view, to northeast, northwest, and southwest.
When hiking downhill with patellar tendinitis, it seems the important thing is your gait. You need to use your whole foot, landing on the heel and rolling forward to grip with your toes. So I tried that on the entire 1,054 foot descent. It was still hard on my knee, but hopefully not as hard as if I’d descended mindlessly.
Sunday, March 23rd, 2025: Hikes, Nature, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico, Wildfire.
After a week’s hiatus, here’s a short Dispatch from a short hike (still rehabbing knee).
Pics are dull under a cloudy sky, but after the hike I added up all the wildfire scars seen today and realized it’s actually kinda interesting.
The hike begins at 7,200 feet elevation, at the eastern foot of a long east-west ridge, in the narrow, pine-forested canyon of a seasonal creek. It traverses through pleasant, open ponderosa forest thinned by a 2020 fire that started at the west end of the ridge and mainly burned on the crest and the north slope – but surprisingly sneaked around to burn at low intensity at the southeast end.
The trail climbs the east end of the ridge toward an isolated outcrop of striking, bulbous white rock, where you next enter a gentle, exposed slope lined with ferns, locust, and scrub oak that is the small scar of a much older high-intensity wildfire that killed all the pines in this spot. That wildfire opened up dramatic views to east and south.
Climbing to the north side of a rocky peak, the trail briefly re-enters intact forest, which is where I turned back today, at a little over 8,100 feet elevation. But through the trees, I could see west toward the high-intensity burn scar of the 2020 fire. Temps were in the 60s today, but I found patches of snow in shaded spots from 7,000 feet upwards.
Turning back and emerging from the forest, I could see south across the canyon toward the apocalyptic moonscape left by a 2014 fire, and west to the Black Range, devastated by high-intensity mega-wildfires in 2013 and 2022. I’ve hiked all these burn scars extensively.
