Grant
Monday, March 23rd, 2026: Grant, Hikes, P Bar, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
On this last day of the March heat wave, the high in town was forecast to hit 88. I’d abused my body the day before, making some long-delayed repairs to my house, so I was starting this hiking day with pain in my foot, knee, back, and shoulder. I was determined to head for high elevations, where it would be cooler, but with most of my body hurting, it would have to be more of a road trip, combining an easy hike with a lunch destination.
I decided to go all the way to the remote lodge isolated at the southeastern corner of Arizona’s 9,000-foot volcanic plateau, where it would be at least 15 degrees cooler. I started late so I would get there shortly after their noon opening hour, but after 2-1/2 hours of driving to that silent, empty meadow in the sky, I was the only customer, and no one responded to my shouts through the kitchen door.
After waiting ten minutes, I went around back, and finally roused the lady who’d served me during my first visit, seven years ago. She said she was willing to make me lunch, but it would take her ten minutes to get the kitchen turned on.
In the end I waited a total of 45 minutes, but there was no place I would rather be, and the burger was excellent as usual. It was closing time when I left, and I remained the day’s only customer.
Lots of trails start near the lodge, but most of them are either steep descents into the river valley on the east, or networks of level trails for cross-country ski use in winter. I decided to take a trail I’d done a very short hike on once before, because it leads across a forested plateau to a “lake” before dropping off toward the deep eastern valley.
From the trailhead, it climbs 300 vertical feet through spruce-aspen forest in long, gentle switchbacks. The plateau forest saw a patchy burn in the 2011 wildfire and is crisscrossed with deadfall, more of which had fallen across the trail since I’d been here last, but I also found a lot of pine and fir seedlings.
The lake, which I hadn’t reached before, appeared to be a natural basin filled with snowmelt. According to my maps, the trail I was on continues for another mile on the plateau, then descends into a long canyon toward the eastern valley. But just past the lake, I found a sign directing me onto a branch trail claiming to lead to the next big canyon to the south. My maps showed this trail dead-ending in a few hundred yards, so I decided to check it out.
Crossing the basin, the branch trail entered a very dark forest, where it began descending into a narrow canyon, eventually emerging into a “moonscape” burn scar where forest had been killed off on all the surrounding slopes.
I wanted to go easy on my knee, but the canyon I started down was “blind” – it made a curve to the right as it descended, and I wanted to get around that curve to see where it went next.
I ended up with a narrow view out this canyon and over the big eastern valley, to the skyline of the mountains on the other side, 15 miles away. I figured I’d gone at least two miles, and it was getting cloudier and cooler – the perfect time to head back.
The trail I’d ended up on is one of half a dozen routes from the alpine plateau to the river. The longest drops almost 5,000 feet in over 14 miles. It would be cool to park at the bottom, climb to the top, spend the night at the lodge, then descend the next day, maybe by a different route. But from my house, it takes three hours to drive to the bottom of that remote valley – considerably longer than to drive all the way around it to the lodge!
After driving 2-1/2 hours to the alpine plateau and the remote lodge, then spending almost two hours at lunch, plus another three hours of hiking, I wasn’t excited about driving the 2-1/2 hours back home that night. Instead, I stopped at the motel in the county seat north of us, blissed out on pain meds, warmed a can of chili in the microwave, listened to music on my boombox, and finished reading a book.
