Climbing the Soup Bowl

For more than a decade, I’ve been driving past this mountain on my way west from my New Mexico home. When I’m westbound, it’s mostly hidden behind lower hills, and I only glimpse it over my right shoulder. When I’m driving eastward, on my way home, I first spot its distinctive steep-sided, flat-topped elephant shape far in the distance, across the high grasslands, standing off by itself, isolated from the rest of its volcanic range. I’m especially attracted to high plateaus, and I always wondered what it would be like to climb to the top.

During those early years, its steep slopes were draped in dense conifer forest, slashed here and there by the avalanche scars of black volcanic talus. Then, eight years ago, the state’s largest wildfire, started by careless campers, swept across from the main bulk of the range and destroyed virtually all the mountain’s forest. I was sickened, but as more of our southwestern mountains were deforested by wildfire, I got used to hiking in burn scars, and came to view it as a chance to learn about ecological adaptation. So I figured I’d eventually end up hiking this one.

The Spanish called it the Soup Bowl because its top features large bowl-like meadows above 10,000′ elevation. It’s actually the state’s third-highest mountain. Since the fire, the dead high-elevation forests all over this vast range have been filled in by virulent green thickets of ferns, aspens, and Gambel oak.

The local offices of the Forest Service make little attempt to keep their public information up to date, so I was unaware until I reached it that the fire lookout tower on the peak had been damaged and abandoned after the fire. But the trail has been cleared by the incredible effort of sawing through thousands of downed trees.

The first part of the trail, to the first bowl at 10,000′, was tightly hemmed in by aspen: mature stands unaffected by fire, and the young thickets that often replace burned conifer forest. It wasn’t until I’d climbed past the first grassy bowl, “Tool Box Meadow,” that I encountered the white skeleton forests of burned Engelmann spruce, and heard their eerie wailing. There was a constant gale-force wind blowing across the top of the mountain, and it triggered resonant frequencies in the high skeletal branches of the tall spruce snags. At first I thought it was a flock of birds crying off in the distance, then it moved closer and sounded more like a crowd of women wailing hysterically in pain and despair. It was my constant companion for the rest of my visit to the top of the Soup Bowl, and the longer it lasted, the more I wanted to get out of that place.

Although the abandoned lookout tower had been fenced off, other hikers had found a way under the fence, and I followed, intending to climb to the balcony for a better view. But the higher I climbed, the more the steel tower vibrated in the wind, and the harder I had to hold on to keep from getting blown off the steep stairs. That, plus the wailing forest below, really freaked me out, and when I was about two-thirds of the way up, I noticed the top of the stairs were blocked by a locked trap door, gave up and carefully climbed back down.

Adding to the weirdness on the mountain top was an abundance of trash from recent hikers along the trail, all of which I gathered and packed out. I’ve never seen anything like this on a trail in New Mexico, even near town. I get the feeling that in general, Arizonans may be more likely to trash their habitats than New Mexicans.

The mountain catching fire, in 2011.

Driving east across the high grasslands, you first spot the Soup Bowl, just left of center, standing apart from the rest of the range.

A view of the mountain a couple years after the wildfire.

Blanketed with snow in winter.

The mountain at right, behind a double rainbow in monsoon season.

As I left home, I drove north through the smoke of a big wildfire far to the west.

My new vehicle parked at the trailhead, at 9,500′ up on the west slope of the mountain.

Topographical view of the mountain.

View of the peak immediately after the big wildfire in 2011.

The upper trail, which used to be a jeep road to the summit, skirts the edge of a “bowl” at 10,000′.

These open meadows are full of both wild irises and the swallowtail butterflies that drink their nectar.

New cones of the Engelmann spruce light up bright red in the sun.

First glimpse of the lookout tower on the peak, at left, through burned forest.

Another grassy bowl, dotted with wild iris

Huge effort to cut through all these downed trees, just to keep the trail open

Mount Baldy, the summit of the range, about thirty miles away, on the horizon in center

The floor of the lookout was destroyed by the fire, and a tall security fence has been erected around the base to keep people out.

I crawled under the fence and began to climb, but gale-force wind was shaking the whole tower, and about two-thirds of the way up I noticed the trap door at the top of the stairs was closed and locked, so I couldn’t reach the balcony anyway.