2024 Trips
Monday, June 17th, 2024: 2024 Trips, Gila, Hikes, Middle Fork, Mogollon Mountains, Regions, Road Trips, Southwest New Mexico.
The paired wilderness areas north of my hometown, the first established in the U. S., encompass almost 1,200 square miles of mountainous terrain. After I moved here 18 years ago, it was another 12 years before I found the time to begin exploring them on foot.
There’s a challenging dirt road, closed in winter, that runs north between them, but apart from that, this vast block of wilderness creates a roadless barrier between us and the rest of the state. I’ve long been curious about the north end of the wilderness, but until now I’d never ventured up there, because it requires a three-hour drive around the perimeter, most of that on rough dirt roads.
But with travel and joint pain forcing me to give up hiking since early May, I was going stir crazy. It’s been hot here, and I found myself longing for the cool shade of our high-elevation mixed-conifer forests. I could find that near home, but the highest point I can drive to is up on that northern edge of the wilderness – the legendary road, also closed in winter, that traverses the entire northern edge.
I’d driven up there from the west a few times to hike the crest trail, but past the trailhead, the road continues into terrain I’d never seen, terrain that’s got to be among the most remote in the lower 48 states. Although it’s crisscrossed with dirt forest roads and ranch roads, there are no paved roads anywhere near it. It’s a two-hour drive on rough dirt tracks from the nearest paved road or cell phone signal. It’s a three-and-a-half hour drive from the nearest small towns, and a five-hour drive from the nearest city.
The mountains rise to almost 11,000 feet, and the lowest points, the canyon bottoms, are nearly 7,000 feet in elevation. Once I reached the end of the paved road in the tiny ghost town, I entered the cool forest of pines, firs, spruce and aspen, and began climbing over 2,000 vertical feet on a rocky and deeply eroded dirt road that in many places was only wide enough for one vehicle. For the rest of the day, I would approach every blind curve not knowing whether a big truck would come barreling around it toward me, and if we didn’t collide, one or the other of us would have to yield and back up to the nearest wide spot.
The road tops out at 9,000 feet and begins traversing the north slope of the high mountains, winding in and out of deep drainages, with a long view to your left across a 3,000-foot-deep canyon to another big mountain in the north. I needed a break from the dangerous driving so I turned off as soon as I reached the traverse.
These slopes burned patchily but at high intensity in the 2012 mega-wildfire. My turnout remained forested, but a dirt track led upward into the burn scar, to a small cleared plateau which had probably been used to land firefighting choppers, and I hiked up there, about a third of a mile, to get a view north. This scar had filled in with dense New Mexico locust, which was in bloom.
Not a cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see, but a thin haze hung in the canyons and lowlands. Breezy and cool up here, but the day was obviously going to be warm.
That high traverse is only a little over five miles long, but takes about twenty minutes to drive. I soon came upon a Ford Escort – you can’t drive a car up here, but city SUVs will just about handle it. The little SUV was backing toward me, so I waited to see what he was up to. He pulled to the left for some reason and let me past – a retired couple out sightseeing.
I passed the trailhead that was the farthest I’d driven before. From now on, everything felt more and more remote. I encountered a couple of widely-separated trucks, but the traverse has plenty of wide spots for passing. In and out of dark forest, locust-choked burn scars, and black volcanic talus slopes. Finally I reached the end of the traverse and descended onto a long, narrow east-trending ridge, with a steep dropoff at my right to the deep canyon of a major creek. From studying maps, I knew the road would eventually descend to the creek, where there would be a campground.
The landscape ahead of me to the east was rolling terrain, averaging 8,000 feet, burn scars and grassland punctuated in places by higher forested mountains with gentle slopes. It reminded me somewhat of my beloved White Mountains of eastern Arizona, although nowhere near as spectacular. The best thing about this area was its remoteness.
The heights had been dry, like most of our region for the past three months. So it was a relief to see the creek running through dense willows and lush grasses beneath tall pines and firs. However, the road soon turned away and entered the harshest burn scar I’d ever seen in this region. Apparently the soil and its seed bank had been scorched and sterilized, so as far as the eye could see the low slopes were lined with nothing but dry grasses and annuals beneath the snags of burned tree trunks.
After climbing to a plateau at 8,000 feet, the road stretched out due east, almost perfectly straight for seven miles. I passed a little Jeep SUV, and came upon a big truck with a huge fifth-wheel trailer, parked in the road, which was fortunately wide enough to pass. A beautiful young girl wearing hippie garb sat on an ATV in front of the truck, and I waved as I slowed to pass.
A mile farther, nearing the end of the plateau, I came upon a Forest Service truck that stopped next to me. The driver said to be careful because a truck was broken down up ahead. He said the RV I’d passed was part of the same group, waiting for help. It was Sunday and I figured the nearest operating tow service would be four or five hours away.
I passed the disabled truck and descended into a shallow, grassy valley where the road turned south, and spotted a little lake below forested hills at the far end.
This was the reservoir of a creek that been dammed – maybe for ranching originally, but now for recreation. The road had been skirting the northern boundary of the wilderness the whole way, and the reservoir lay at the center of the northern boundary. It was hard to imagine a more remote place, but it looked well-maintained.
It’d taken me four hours to get here, and by chance it was noon. The big parking lot was empty, and I could see only two or three vehicles in the campground that sprawled back in the forested hills above the lake. I drove up to a scattering of unoccupied picnic tables overlooking the lake and found one in the shade where I started on the snacks I’d brought, and made the unusual decision to have a daytime beer.
Sitting there with that idyllic scene laid out before me, featuring ponderosa pine, the west’s iconic tree, I couldn’t help thinking of my dad. He’d love this place, once all the chores were done and he could relax. So many of us – Calvinists, WASPs, northern Europeans – both benefit and suffer from the compulsion to put work before pleasure, and the beer was helping me self-medicate.
Too much of the day remained for me to even consider driving home, and I wanted to try an easy hike. But this area was too exposed for such a cloudless day. I decided to drive back to the creek crossing and check out a trailhead I’d passed on the way here.
I pulled into the small dirt lot at the trailhead alongside a big truck, and a short man jumped out holding an even shorter fishing rod. “You fishin’?” he asked with a smile. I said no but wished him luck.
The trail entered the big trees where a smaller tributary joined the main creek. I saw the fisherman scrambling over rocks and stopping to cast a fly on a long line upstream. I’d never seen such a short rod used for fly casting.
The narrow valley was beautiful, lined with dark volcanic bluffs, the trail winding through shady groves and sunny meadows, the creek always near, murmuring over rocks. Birds and butterflies were everywhere – swallowtails, woodpeckers, flickers, bluebirds. I made it more than a mile and a half – my knee complaining every time I had to step over a log or boulder – finally emerging into a wide, shady “pine park” where the creek flowed wide and shallow and I watched native trout hatchlings shimmy their way upstream.
On the hike, I’d felt a lot of pent-up energy rising to the surface – my body really missed being put to work. I felt like I could’ve walked all day, but would’ve ended up in serious pain. Still, I was happy, and temporarily at peace, just being there.
As I mentioned before, the traverse along the crest is pretty nerve-wracking, never knowing when or what you’re going to meet coming around those blind turns. But I was plenty calmed down. I did encounter one truck that was coming faster than was safe, but I had enough space to pull over and wait for him to react. I actually ended up passing the sightseeing retirees again toward the end of the traverse.
The descent to the ghost town is the most dangerous part, because it includes really long blind, narrow stretches where backing up safely would be almost impossible. But I made it to the bottom without meeting anyone, only to reach the abandoned cabin – the most remote of all the cabins in the forest above the ghost town – to find a truck pulled over and people standing in the road.
I stopped next to them, and a tall man introduced himself as the new owner of the abandoned cabin. A young girl leaned out the driver’s window of the truck, and another man squatted outside, sharpening a chainsaw. They all seemed really excited. Having a cabin in the forest like that would feel like a dream come true until the next wildfire and the ensuing flash floods tearing down the canyon, destroying your access if not the cabin itself.
From there, it was a short drive to the paved road and the ghost town, the next scary stretch of twisting one-lane descending to the mesa, and finally rejoining the lonely north-south highway. I could more or less take the highway home on autopilot, until when approaching the gate of our biggest ranch, I spotted what looked like a small mammal ahead in the middle of my lane.
I was going 65 but had enough road left to carefully slow down. The thing wasn’t moving, but when I was close enough to focus on it, it looked exactly like a porcupine, facing me with all its quills erect. Porcupines supposedly live around here, but I’d never seen one. This one wasn’t yielding right of way, but another vehicle was coming fast behind me, and I suddenly realized that what looked exactly like a porcupine was actually the top of a narrow-leaf yucca that had rolled onto the highway! So I swerved around it and stepped on the gas.
By the time I returned home, I had driven over 200 miles, ascending and descending nearly 20,000 feet of accumulated elevation. And I’d still only driven about a third of the way around the perimeter of our wilderness!
Monday, August 19th, 2024: 2024 Trips, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
Now that I’ve embarked on a new, hopefully temporary Sunday routine of one-day road trips, I’m starting to get more analytical and organized – another aspect of my lifelong struggle between left and right brains. But the problem with remote destinations in this remote region – even after decades of internet, web, GPS, smart phones, apps, and social media – is that reliable information is often lacking. And when no one answers the phone or nothing shows up on Google Maps, you have to actually drive a couple of hours to find out if something exists or is open. I find that refreshing and hope it’s never completely “fixed” by the techno-utopians.
I’d been suffering through so much heat at home that I wanted to escape to the Arizona alpine plateau, which would be 15 degrees cooler – in the 70s. Driving north past the big ranches west of town, I approached a pair of bikers weaving constantly back and forth in opposition to each other. They pulled over and stopped as I got close. Their bikes were new and futuristic, stark black and white, as were their outfits – they reminded me of the Apple or Elon Musk aesthetic. But a little farther up the road I saw them in my rearview and they passed me, and began weaving their bikes theatrically back and forth in opposition again. And then, a few miles farther, I passed them again, stopped on the shoulder, gesticulating at each other. More weird city people invading our rural refuge.
The route crosses a series of intermediate passes, and approaching the highest, at 8,000 feet, I remembered there was a forest road heading north along a long ridge that overlooked the canyons and basin to the east. For once, I wasn’t on a schedule and decided to check it out.
It was pretty well graded and led through mature ponderosa pine forest dappled with sunlight and shade. I wasn’t planning to go very far, and I hadn’t seen anything interesting yet, when after a little more than a mile I saw sky through the trees to my right, and wondered if that was the rim of the ridge. Shortly after that I came to a dirt track leading off in that direction.
Winding beneath the big trees, it took me to a campsite on the edge of a rock cliff overlooking a broad thousand-foot-deep canyon toward the distant skyline of our 11,000 foot mountains thirty miles away. It was the most spectacular campsite/picnic spot I’d ever found in my home region. It was litter-free and someone had left a little stack of firewood. I even found a young Arizona cypress growing on the rim, a tree I’d never seen in this area.
From there I drove to the Arizona hamlet at 8,000 feet, a two-hour drive from home, where I was hoping to get lunch. But the grill was closed – once again, no definitive info online – so I decided to drive higher onto the volcanic plateau, another half hour of driving across one of my favorite wild, uninhabited landscapes, to an isolated lodge that I knew was open daily.
The drive winds through burn scars and intact spruce-fir forest, climbing over ridges and into and out of side canyons, passing the broad grassy meadows that line much of this plateau. At an elevation of over 9,000 feet, I came upon the lodge suddenly and pulled off. There were two motorcycles parked in front.
I found the restaurant door unlocked and went in. Two retired-looking biker couples stood examining a map on my left, and a sign said to seat yourself, so I took a seat at the counter until one of the men came over and told me the restaurant didn’t open until noon. I went outside to wait at a table, and the bikers rode off.
I needed to pee, and hadn’t seen restrooms in the restaurant, so I entered the main door of the lodge. The reception counter was unoccupied, but a very old man slumped on a sofa opposite, staring at something in his lap – probably a phone. I peered into the office and up the stairs, then turned and asked the man if there was anyone working today. I was standing less than six feet away, but he ignored me.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. Then he slowly looked up with an angry glare. Even more slowly, he took a tiny device out of his ear and shook his head in apparent disgust.
“Did you say something?” he snapped.
“Sorry to bother you,” I replied. “It’s nothing.” He put the device back in and looked back down without another word.
I went back outside and tried the restaurant door. It had been locked.
At my table on the front deck, a constant swarm of hummingbirds surrounded a feeder behind my left shoulder. It’s an incredibly beautiful spot, and the weather was perfect. I watched a thunderhead develop across the highway, behind the spruce forest, far to the east. A four-door Jeep arrived with two more retired couples. After I told them about opening time, they wandered off to examine the property. A half hour later an older couple arrived, and likewise wandered off.
This place is known in both the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. It’s a long, arduous drive, but that’s what bikers seem to crave, and summer in those urban hellholes makes people desperate for relief. And this is paradise compared to the crowds and traffic of closer getaways like Sedona and Flagstaff.
Nearing noon the two couples returned and asked me what I knew about this place – I’d spent the night here once and had dinner. Then the restaurant door was unlocked and our small group filed in.
I had a burger that appeared to be nothing special but tasted unusually good. I overheard the couples telling the waiter they were from Yuma but were spending the summer in Show Low – an interesting life plan. I wondered if they were staying in personal RVs or vacation homes. Yuma houses a legendary prison and is notorious for being the hottest town in the U.S., with an average summer high of 115. I’ve heard it called the armpit of the Southwest. I wondered how anyone would choose Yuma as a retirement destination. But if they did, why would they need to choose a summer home in the same state? Tax reasons?
And then consider the options – towns that would offer a summer refuge. My first choice would be the casual resort village across the plateau at 8,400 feet, but it’s very expensive. Show Low is basically a bustling redneck town, only slightly higher in elevation than my hometown, center of a big ranching district – no way would I consider it a pleasant summer retreat. These folks intrigued me.
We finished at roughly the same time and exchanged a few words at the door. I mentioned I’d overheard they were from Yuma, and said I knew it by reputation, having only passed through. One of the women said “We live there, we’re not from there! We’re from New York state.” Apparently I’d touched a raw nerve, and the mystery deepened.
Driving off, I made it only a few miles down the road when I approached a trailhead and decided to check it out. I’m not hiking, but I really wanted to immerse myself in this beautiful forest with its crystal-clear, high-elevation air.
Unsurprisingly, only a few yards up the trail my legs took over, and I realized my body was desperate to walk. I simply couldn’t avoid exploring farther. A storm had come over and raindrops were falling so I grabbed my shell out of the pickup.
The trail climbed steadily, 300 feet in elevation to the top of the ridge, and unfortunately this patch of forest had been touched by the massive 2011 fire – not at high intensity, but enough to thin it out, creating a maze of deadfall and near-continuous thickets of locust regrowth. One treat was the strawberries – I’d never seen so many, although they were small, and most were not ripe yet.
Light rain fell on and off. I was hoping to get across the ridge with a view into the big river valley to the east, but this turned out to be part of a broad network of ridges and canyons. After three quarters of a mile I turned back – my first, very short, hike in almost a month!
On the way back, I was reviewing my interactions with the folks at the lodge – I’d also had a brief conversation with the other couple. Apart from the occasional angry old man, most interactions with strangers in isolated, lonely places like this are much friendlier than you’d have in crowds or in town. People tend to be excited to meet strangers and discover secrets of their lives. As a result, you briefly get a more optimistic and tolerant view of humanity, which is paradoxical for someone like me who values solitude and is generally considered a cynic. But like all pleasures, it’s fleeting.
Monday, September 9th, 2024: 2024 Trips, Gila, Regions, Road Trips.
With weather cooling off, I could target lower elevations in my “no hiking” weekend road trips: drive somewhere interesting, explore a little, have lunch, drive home. This time it would be a remote, quiet, hardscrabble village at the edge of a Mormon farming community, at the foot of mountains I’d like to hike.
Lunch was red enchiladas, smiling and chatting with the local country folks. On the way back, I hoped to check out access to the east side of a wilderness area I’d explored from the south last winter.
Back then, I’d hiked across open range between two cattle herds and up a steep canyon between sheer cliffs, into a white-out blizzard of sleet at the top. And on the way back I’d been threatened by a bull and two ranch dogs. The storm had prevented me getting deeper into the wilderness, which encompasses most of this northern section of this extremely long and narrow range. But this section is so rocky and beautiful, I wasn’t giving up. After studying maps, I was hoping to find a less risky approach from the east, but I knew I’d be crossing more ranchland and had no idea if the roads would be open.
Also, I was driving my low-clearance 2wd pickup and had no idea how bad the roads would get. It’s a long approach on graded gravel, past an uninhabited backcountry railroad crossing, then more miles on an ungraded dirt and rock road that gets progressively rougher and less traveled, often detouring around washouts. I passed a spread-out herd and lots of what I assumed were feed dispensers, but didn’t see another human or moving vehicle. These flats looked terribly overgrazed.
The map showed two roads leading to the wilderness boundary at the foot of the mountains, one branching off from the other. I continued straight without ever seeing the branch, the road getting rockier, showing only one clear tire track. Eventually I reached a No Trespassing sign. There was no gate, and I see could see the road ahead cresting a rise, so I continued to the rise to see what was beyond.
From the rise I saw a metal roof down in a hollow, and couldn’t tell if it was a shack or a shed, so I turned back. A rural landowner myself, I have great respect for No Trespassing signs, but this sure was a beautiful place with the cliffs rising all around.
Some research back home revealed that this was where Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor grew up. At over 160 square miles, it supports 2,500 mother cows with 3-4 full-time cowboys, none of whom I saw.
On the way back, looking for the branch road turnoff, I stopped to watch a dust devil cross the road ahead. I assume overgrazing encourages their formation.
I found the turnoff in a big cleared area with more feed dispensers. After driving through a deep gully I reached a primitive gate. There was no sign here, so I continued, closing the gate behind me.
This even less-traveled road led back into a beautiful box canyon on the north side of the crest I’d hiked last winter. It dead ended at a stock dam, windmill, and water tank at the foot of the mountains, with a huge bull and a cow lounging a dozen yards apart – an odd couple to find isolated and alone like this.
God, what a beautiful place! I figured once I got my knee working again, I could probably find a way around the bull.
To someone familiar with this country, the vegetation is markedly different over here. This area is 2,000 feet lower than my home, and significantly drier, and on the way back I wondered how different it was before the introduction of cattle. I hope I can figure out a way past the bulls and dogs in the future!
