Blue Range
Tuesday, May 27th, 2025: Blue Range, Hikes, Nature, Southeast Arizona, Wildfire.
On the eve of my birthday, driving north to some old favorite country I hadn’t seen in almost two years. Alpine habitat that would be cooler now that our weather at home is finally seasonably hot. An escape from problems at home.
Needing a hike, planning another steep descent – this time into the remote, rugged, lonely country around a small river, a region that keeps drawing me. Passed roadside javelinas in their usual spot, a lone yearling doe on the shoulder, then in the high country of tall ponderosa, dark Doug-fir, grassy meadows and bright aspen, two dozen cow elk grazing in a likewise familiar roadside place. When you inhabit a wild landscape for almost a generation, you’re gifted with wisdom in the form of nature’s patterns.
Finding the trailhead unoccupied and the trailhead log unused since last fall, I set out on a trail invisible under a layer of pine needles. Woodpeckers cried and darted through the trees ahead. In openings in the pines the dirt of the trail showed the bootprints of one recent hiker, bigger than me, wearing fairly new boots. The trail climbed in and out of the burn scar of the 2011 megafire, gaining 400 vertical feet to a saddle where I suddenly crossed to the watershed of the remote river.
The sky had been cloudless during the drive north, but here in the mountains scattered clouds were forming. The other hiker’s tracks stopped at the saddle, so my trail was virgin ahead. Birdsong provided my soundtrack as I traversed down from 8,500 feet on a steep, rocky trail, first flushing a swallowtail butterfly out of the brush, then coming upon bigger and bigger patches of wildflowers and more pollinators. In a drought, the higher elevations always host pockets of fertility.
It was windy over here and I had to cinch my hat down – the dropoff was precipitous. At a patch of bare white bedrock, I saw a little saddle below me and realized I was at the head of the ridge the trail would descend. Descending it through forest that began to host pinyon and alligator juniper, I got my first views of the long, narrow ridge below – named for a horse, it did look like a horse’s back, ending in neck and head.
During the descent, I’d had a higher ridge, in shadow, at my right, but suddenly I reached a point where I could see past it, southwestward, to a towering, distinctive rock formation. And trying to get pictures of it with clouds in the background, I rediscovered clouds, which had been missing from my desperately dry region since last summer.
Clouds are the source of rain – not El Nino or the other global meteorological phenomena favored by scientists and TV weather people. Clouds are sacred beings we ignore at our peril. Here, their shade cooled me after stretches of exposure to sunlight.
And reaching the more level lower part of the ridge, I was continuously exposed, crossing big exposures of the fractured bedrock – volcanic comglomerate – I’d seen recently, east of this broad, rumpled valley. Here I found abundant but old sign of cattle, horses, and elk. And hazardous footing on occasional slopes of loose rock.
The bare rock ridge narrowed to just a few yards at a low saddle. Climbing past it, I noticed smaller birds – ravens? – harrying a hawk ahead. I’d stopped a lot and was worried about reaching my lodging for the night before closing time, so I stopped short of where I’d planned to turn back. Just at the base of the rise that formed the top of the horse’s head. I didn’t mind stopping – this had been a spectacular hike in spectacular weather. It’d taken me two hours and fifteen minutes to go just under three miles, downhill.
I spent even more time in the shade on the way back, and the wind was rising, too. I wasn’t looking forward to the ascent, but it turned out to be fine, taking less time than the descent.
I’d reserved a room within the burn area of a large wildfire that had only been controlled within the past week, so I was anxious to see the damage. They’d stopped it precisely at the highway, and from what I could see it appeared to be a low-intensity surface fire.
Both elk and mule deer were out in the riparian meadows that evening. I wondered what had happened to the bighorn sheep whose habitat is totally within the burn area – presumably they’d sheltered in the river canyon, below its walls of sheer basalt.
