Hikes
Monday, February 1st, 2021: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Silver, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
Cold Toes
During the past week, since my aborted hike into a blizzard, we’d had up to a foot of snow in town, at 6,000′, and much more in the mountains. Warming temperatures had melted off about 4 inches, and I’d done a midweek hike up a north slope, a slog in foot-deep snow, to about 7,200′. On the weekend, I needed a long hike with a lot of elevation gain to maintain my fitness, so without too much optimism I headed back to the Chiricahuas, simply because the base elevation is lower there and I might get farther before encountering deep snow.
I picked a trail that I normally avoid because it’s relatively boring. It starts at about 5,300′ and traverses an exposed southeast slope for much of its length, so I was hoping that would be mostly snow-free. I knew it crossed to the northwest side for the middle two miles, and that slope was steep and shaded by mature forest, so I expected the deepest snow there. I would just give it a try and see what I found.
On the way up, I occupied myself with tracking. It’s not a popular trail, but it’s an easily accessible trail in a popular mountain range, so I wasn’t surprised to find tracks preceding me: a large pair of serious hiking boots, a medium pair of cheap Merrells, and a smaller pair of city boots. A quarter mile in, the trail passes a private home, and there, a big dog joined me for a few hundred yards, then turned back. People from the private home had picked up and followed the trail on horseback, earlier this morning.
About a mile in, crossing a meadow, the trail hits a junction. The horse tracks continued straight on the level Basin Trail, while my branch turned left toward the foot of a ridge.
Leaving the meadow, the trail starts switchbacking up the ridge to eventually reach the long southeast-facing traverse. Here, it alternated between bare stretches and patches with a couple inches of snow, where I could more easily read the tracks. The cheap boots and the city boots had disappeared, but now there were big animal tracks accompanying the big boots. At first I assumed they were dog tracks, but they’d clearly been missing at the trailhead. Had the dog from the private home joined this hiker?
Then I found tracks that were distinctly different and really looked like a mountain lion. These tracks were heading down the trail in the opposite direction. In a few places, I even found the two different tracks close together. One set was narrow and had clear claw marks, whereas the other set was wide and lacked claw marks. Still, all the tracks were somewhat confusing.
Eventually, the animal tracks disappeared from the trail, and the boot tracks continued alone, deepening the mystery. About 3 miles in, I reached the high saddle where the trail crosses to the northwest side of the ridge. Here, the big boot tracks turned back, and I had fresh snow ahead of me, about 6 inches deep. But as the trail moved in and out of patches of shady forest and became steeper, I had to break trail through deeper and deeper drifts.
Finally, almost a mile further, as I was hopefully approaching the next saddle, my boots plunged 14″ into a drift, and I suddenly realized that my Smartwool socks were wicking snowmelt inside my boots, all the way down to my toes, which were starting to get really cold. I always carry an extra pair of wool socks, but I knew they would soon get wet, too. I’d really need gaiters if I was serious about hiking deep snow.
It seemed that this would be the end of today’s hike. Bummer, but at least I’d gotten a little farther than I had last week, in the blizzard.
Germ Warfare
On the way down, after I crossed the saddle and finally reached a stretch of bare trail, I stopped to change socks. This made me feel much better, and I suddenly thought, why not do another hike? Since this hike had been aborted, I had at least a couple more hours before I had to drive home.
There weren’t too many options nearby – really only the peak hike that started near the visitor center, just down the road. It climbed and traversed a north slope, but at fairly low elevation, before turning into a shaded canyon that would surely have deep snow. I figured I could get at least four more miles and nearly 1,500′ elevation gain, in addition to the 8 miles and 2,100′ I’d already hiked today.
So I returned to the Sidekick and drove down the road. There were already three vehicles parked at the other trailhead, and a half mile up the trail I saw people up ahead – a tall, obese young couple dressed identically in form-fitting sweat suits. They preceded me for a few hundred yards, then stopped, turned around, and spotted me below them.
There were juniper trees between us, and when I emerged from behind one and found them stopped just above me, I saw they’d both “masked up.” I found this strange – it was the first time I’d ever encountered anyone wearing a mask on a hiking trail. Our local trails are seldom used, it’s rare to ever meet someone, and when we do, we just maintain social distancing, figuring that any virus that might get out is quickly dispersed in the open air and can’t be concentrated enough to be contagious. But these were likely city folks, used to much more crowded trails.
We greeted each other and I passed them at a safe distance. As I did, I walked into a dense cloud of artificial fragrance. My god, it was rank. How could two people cope with so much fragrance? I was at least ten feet from the woman – were they both wearing it?
I puzzled over this most of the way up the trail, and then suddenly realized that they’d probably been carrying some kind of disinfectant spray, like Lysol, that they’d sprayed all around when they saw me approaching. This was another first! I mean, better safe than sorry – but it seemed pretty extreme. I guess we country folks are way out of touch with trends in the city these days.
I found tracks preceding me on this trail, too, but they also stopped after a mile and a half, and I was again breaking trail in snow. I made it around the corner of the ridge into the canyon below the peak, where I ran out of time and turned back just as the snow was getting deep enough to wet my socks.
I was really proud of myself for solving my problem, hitting two trails in the same day, and going farther than anyone else on both trails. Maybe this will be the solution as long as our local peak trails are blocked by snow.
Sunday, February 14th, 2021: Bear, Hikes, Pinalenos, Southeast Arizona.
The forecast called for up to 4 inches of snow, beginning in early morning, so I was looking forward to today’s hike. But 4 inches in town, at 6,000′, could translate to a foot in the mountains. So I’d decided to try one of my favorite hikes, over in Arizona, which starts over a thousand feet lower and climbs to a little below 9,000′. I didn’t know if I’d make it to the top, but I’d try.
However, I wasn’t thinking about the long drive over there. When I got up in the morning there was an inch of snow in town. By the time I was ready to go, it was snowing again. The Sidekick has the best all-terrain tires you can get, and I shifted it into 4 wheel drive. As I drove south out of town, rising toward the Continental Divide, more and more snow was coating the highway.
I’d never tried the Sidekick on a snowy road before. My 2wd truck would’ve just slid off into a ditch immediately, so I was quite apprehensive. There was nobody else on the road.
The Sidekick did fine, and I figured the snow would end where the highway drops out of the mountains into the basin, below 5,500′. But it didn’t – it turned into a blizzard there. Snow was piling up in Lordsburg, below 4,500′. Crazy!
If Lordsburg had inches of snow, I wasn’t even sure I could get to the trailhead over in the Pinalenos. Maybe I should skip that climb, head south to the Chiricahuas instead, and do a low-elevation loop. I wouldn’t get much of a workout, but it’d be better than nothing.
But I finally emerged from the snow, crossing the playa on I-10, and saw blue sky ahead. I decided to keep going. And it turned out that the storm hadn’t dumped as much in Arizona as it was dumping in New Mexico.
The forecast had called for more snow throughout the day, so I dressed warm before heading up the trail. It’s really hard to change socks or pull on long johns when you’re already standing in snow.
It was windy, and clouds kept breaking up the sunlight, so I kept going from warm to cold while climbing. I couldn’t see much snow on the slope ahead, but I could see frost on the pines and firs up on the ridge. It can get really cold up there.
I hit snow on the trail at about the halfway point.
Fortunately the morning wind didn’t follow me onto the ridge top. The snow depth varied from 3 inches to a foot in steep, shady spots. It was beautiful fresh powder, and there was a little more coming down, despite the blue skies overhead. I was moving pretty well, but I didn’t have much time left by the time I got up there. I had to stop and turn back a half mile from the end, in order to get home at a reasonable hour. I was okay with that because the snow was getting deeper!
Snow on the upper trail made the descent much easier – I just sort of skipped down until I ran out of snow.
I really had to fight a crosswind to stay on the Interstate. It was dark by the time I reached Lordsburg. All the snow had melted, but there was a gale-force wind with brutal wind chill when I got out to pump gas.
The highway home was also snow-free until it rose into the low Burro mountains. There, I immediately hit ice and the vehicle started to fishtail. I was able to pull over and switch into 4wd, but still had only marginal grip. I switched on the emergency flasher and proceeded at about 35 mph. Within a few minutes a car came up behind me and tailgated me dangerously close for another 5 minutes until finally passing. It was a cheap little Japanese car, and it immediately speeded out of sight in the icy snow.
I expected to find it in a ditch ahead, but somehow the driver made it. And I found that I could actually drive faster now I was in 4wd. Still, it took me about twice as long as usual to get through the mountains. A long, exciting day!
Monday, February 22nd, 2021: Chiricahuas, Hikes, South Fork, Southeast Arizona.
Last time I returned from the Chiricahuas, near sunset, I was driving up through the low pass through the Peloncillos when I glanced left at a small hollow in the granite cliffs and saw a stone man. The light was just right to highlight this small pinnacle with a spherical top. So this morning, on my way back, I stopped to photograph it. Unfortunately the light was wrong, but now I saw it had a companion on the left.
Our mountains had received a lot of snow last week, and I’d already fought my way through 14″ of powder to 7,400′ on my shorter midweek hike. So for today’s long day hike, I was looking for a trail that stayed well below 8,000′ and avoided north slopes. During earlier researches I’d seen that I could chain together three trails in the Chiricahuas to get plenty of distance at lower elevation, but I hadn’t tried that yet because it didn’t offer enough elevation gain to suit me. Today might be the right time.
It starts in the most famous part of the range: South Fork Canyon, which is ground zero for birders. This canyon suffered major erosion and debris flows after the 2011 Horseshoe 2 fire, so the bottom was full of logs, piles of pale rock, and erratic boulders carried down from above.
But much of the riparian forest is intact. I was strolling rapidly through the shade along a winding trail lined with leaf litter when I heard a rustling in the vegetation above the trail at my right. I stopped and turned and saw a sight so amazing that I was pretty much paralyzed.
A smallish hawk with a high-contrast banded tail – probably a Cooper’s – launched laboriously off the slope, only about 6′ above ground, carrying a full-grown reddish squirrel – probably the Mexican fox squirrel endemic to this range – dangling by its shoulders from the hawk’s claws, so that the hawk and its prey were both facing the same direction. The squirrel wasn’t struggling so it was probably either dead already or in shock.
The hawk continued slowly, carrying its prize past me at a distance of only about 8′, and steadily off into the distance between the trunks of the riparian forest. The weight of that hawk is virtually the same as the weight of a squirrel. That would be like me carrying someone my own weight, while flapping my wings.
I stared off into the distance for a minute or two, then continued following the newly re-routed trail upstream for two miles. Then I turned left onto a branch trail that climbed the steep eastern ridge out of the canyon. At a saddle where the trail crosses the crest is an outcrop of amazing bright red rock, probably volcanic tuff or conglomerate like most of the rock in this region.
Past the red rock saddle the trail enters a new landscape, hidden from below, surrounding a sort of hanging canyon. The 2011 fire made short, narrow runs into this canyon from the east, so the current vegetation is a mosaic. The whole area feels close, intimate, and shady.
After crossing the canyon, the trail switchbacks up to a higher saddle which represents a divide between the interior and exterior of the range. I’d seen footprints ahead of me on the trail going into this canyon, but I left them behind as I climbed, and as usual I was the first to complete this trail this season.
When I reached the high saddle at the divide, my cell phone made the incoming message sound. “Welcome!” said the text from Verizon. “You are now in Mexico. The following rates apply…”
I was a few miles southeast of where I’d previously hiked in this range, and from that saddle, my view was south, and what I saw really was the mountains of Mexico. My phone was now connected to a tower somewhere over the border.
The guy who monopolizes trail information for this range had reported this trail in “good” condition. But the next trail I planned to take, southwest from this saddle, was reported to be in “bad” condition. I’d already had to climb around a couple of badly eroded sections on the climb out of the canyon, so I was curious about what I would find ahead on the next trail.
The first challenge was finding the trail. Searching through the scrub in the saddle, I eventually came upon two old wooden signposts, with a dry-rotted, illegible trail sign at their feet. Ahead was a narrow gap between two shrubs that might be the trail.
In the event, this trail turned out to be really easy to follow. It lacked the big washouts of the earlier trail. Its only drawback was that it now seemed to be used only by game; most of it was narrow and banked, rather than flat, crossing loose gravel on steep slopes, which was made it hard on my vulnerable foot.
Traversing around the outside of a ridge, it eventually climbed to a still higher saddle which gave me a broad view of Horseshoe Canyon, a major canyon on the south side of the range, and Sentinal Peak, the southernmost peak in the range. And I saw more of Mexico.
I kept traversing past the saddle until I felt my time was up and I had to turn back. I figured I’d gone at least 7 miles already.
It was a long slog back. On the way up, I’d felt like this trail was in better shape than most, but with my sensitive foot, they all feel worse going down. According to the years-old GPS data of the trail guy, I hiked less than 14 miles round trip. But I was walking fast during the entire hike, and even discounting short breaks, it took me an hour longer than a 16-mile hike with similar elevation that I did last summer. So go figure.
Monday, March 1st, 2021: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Last night, I’d tried to come up with a plan for today’s hike and failed. The snow on all our regional mountains was melting fast, but I knew from my midweek hike that it was still deep on north slopes. There were few trails within a 2-hour drive that had southern exposure, and I’d done two of them, with the corresponding 4-hour round-trip drives, in the past two weeks. I didn’t want to make another long drive.
I got up this morning with little hope or motivation, and considered taking a break from my Sunday hikes. It’d been over three months since I’d taken a break and it wouldn’t hurt my conditioning
Then during breakfast, scanning the list of hikes I’ve compiled, I suddenly realized that the Little Dry Creek trail climbs south-facing slopes. I hadn’t thought of it at first because it’s not one of my favorites hikes, and anyway, I’d already done it three weeks ago. I don’t like to duplicate hikes that frequently…but what the hell. It would get me out into nature.
After an hour’s drive, I arrived at the extremely remote trailhead, parked, shouldered my pack, and started laboriously picking my way up the difficult early stretch lined with big loose rocks. After a half mile or so it climbs above the canyon bottom and you get a view of the peaks ahead. And I suddenly had a brainstorm.
Last fall, after finally getting close to the 10,000′ crest, I’d tracked down a recent online trip log for this trail. My destination here has always been the 10,663′ summit of Sacaton, one of the iconic peaks of this range. But the trail is just too long and blocked with too much deadfall from the 2012 wildfire.
The online trip log was from a young Arizona woman, a “peakbagger”, who left the trail after the first mile and bushwhacked up the right-hand ridge. That ridge eventually connects to the Sacaton massif, so she took it all the way, traversing all the intermediate peaks. I couldn’t recall her exact route, but I knew it connected with an old mine road not far from this canyon bottom. She took the mine road a short distance then bushwhacked up to the main ridge. What the hell, I thought. I’ll try to replicate her route, and see how far I can get.
The whole peakbagger thing is a turn-off for me – mountains are sacred, and the idea of “bagging” them to add to your life list is another sad byproduct of our hypercompetitive European culture. But before reading the young woman’s account and scanning her photos, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to bushwhack in these mountains with their loose, crumbly volcanic rock, especially through burn scars blocked by mazes of deadfall and choked with thickets that I believed to be virtually impassable. I admired her toughness, but I figured if she could do it, I probably could too.
Heading deeper into the canyon, with progressive vantage points out, I saw the right-hand ridge started low, only a few hundred feet above the creek, and there seemed to be a gap, a side drainage, before it connected to the high ridge. A mile up the trail, I found where the side drainage joined the creek. It was dry and narrow, but I turned off and started climbing. This must be where she left the trail…and if I followed this side canyon to its head, maybe I’d connect with the old mine road.
As I’d expected, bushwhacking was incredibly hard. The right-hand slope was in shade and covered with snow, so I climbed the sunny, snow-bare left slope. But it was steep and alternated between loose rock and dense shrubs: oak, manzanita, mountain mahogany, and occasionally thorny catclaw. I had to cut my own switchbacks, slipping and sliding the whole way, scratching my hands and clothes.
Eventually I climbed high enough to see the head of the canyon. Its sides were completely choked with chaparral, as was the continuation of the ridge above. But now that I could see the destination, I had to keep going.
High above the head of the canyon, rounding a rocky corner, I suddenly came upon a cleared patch and an apparently bottomless hole – a mine pit. I remembered there was an old mine farther up the main canyon. I must be near the road. I thought I could see another cleared spot a few hundred yards ahead.
Heading that way, I ended up on an old trail, which took me to the mine road. I kept following it around the foot of the high ridge, and eventually came to a junction. The main road from below continued higher, through pine forest, and I could see it climbing around a small peak ahead. It was trending away from the main ridge, but I figured it would circle back and probably get me higher and farther along.
Traversing below the little peak I came upon a big gash in the mountainside, with a pile of rock obscuring a mine entrance. I set my pack down and climbed over the rock pile. There was a heavy steel door, partly open. I squeezed past it and walked into the mine, but it quickly became too dark, so I went back out and put on my headlamp.
I love being underground! And the colors of rock in this mine, while subtle, were really pretty. It had several junctions and branches, and whoever worked it had left some valuable equipment back there. Some of the lumber looked very recent.
The first branch led to a chamber, partly blocked by an air compressor, where there was a steel platform over a vertical shaft with cables leading down out of sight. It was so deep my headlamp wouldn’t penetrate it. Beyond this chamber, a rockfall blocked the tunnel, but I could see it led farther into the mountain.
Back in the light of day, I continued up the road, around the little conical peak. Eventually I came to a broad saddle where I could see east into another big canyon system directly below Sacaton. And forming a gate across this canyon were the two most spectacular rock formations I’d ever seen in this area. They both had arches like the sandstone canyons of southeast Utah. Could there really be sandstone in these volcanic mountains, or was it an anomalous volcanic formation?
The ridge leading to Sacaton was my destination, and the rock formations didn’t lead there, but I figured I’d head in that direction and see how close I could get before climbing higher. First I had to traverse another steep slope of loose rock and dense chaparral. After a few hundred yards fighting my way through that, I came to a deep canyon, forested on this side, with patches of deep snow. To get a better view of the rock formations I’d have to cross this canyon. I could see a large clearing, like a saddle, on the opposite side. I descended a few hundred feet in snow to a stream running across bare rock, then fought my up through the shrubs on the opposite slope, finally reaching the clearing. Now I could see that a much deeper and wider side canyon separated me from the rock formations. But from the clearing I was in, a ridge led upward toward the main ridge and the foot of the 10,000′ peak that began the Sacaton massif. From below, I couldn’t tell if this was a good route, but I’d give it a shot.
Here the real work began. Climbing this ridge was some of the hardest bushwhacking I’ve ever done. I began to doubt that the young woman had really completed this hike in one day. Yeah, there were a few small patches of bare ground, and a few sporadic stretches of bunchgrass between thickets, but most of the way I had to stop and scout gaps in the vegetation, zigzagging constantly back and forth, finding dead ends, turning back and trying other routes. It was incredibly slow, but I kept trying.
This outlying ridge climbed in steps of a few hundred feet at a time. Each time I crested a step I stopped and tried to scout ahead. Eventually I reached a forested stretch below the top. Here it was much easier, and I found a game trail. I continued for a quarter mile or so, and reached a little peak before the saddle just below the high peak.
I stood there in about 10″ of snow and checked my watch. It’d taken me four hours to get this far, and I figured I was only about a third of the way. The peak above required another 1,500′ climb that would take me at least another hour, and past that were three or four miles and probably another 2,000′ of up and down climbing, most of it on loose rock through dense scrub. How could that girl have done this all in a day? It seemed a near-mythical feat.
But on the way down, I discovered something. I got so tired of rerouting around masses of shrubs that I decided to just force my way straight through them. It was murder on my expensive REI and Patagonia outerwear, but it turned out to be doable, and a little faster than zigzagging through the maze. The shrubs had interlacing branches, and I still had to zigzag between the cores of individual shrubs, but the outer branches in the gaps between them gave way to brute force.
Unfortunately, because the descent of the ridge went a little faster than the ascent, I overshot the clearing where I’d climbed out of the side canyon. By over a hundred yards, but I didn’t know that yet.
When bushwhacking like this, I always stop every few hundred yards, look back, and memorize landmarks so I can retrace my route. I’d memorized the shape of the snow slope I’d descended across this side canyon, but now that I’d overshot, it didn’t have that shape. I couldn’t tell if it was the same one – I didn’t know if I’d gone too far, or not far enough. And I was in the midst of a seemingly endless thicket.
I fought my way down into the side canyon. I figured I’d climb the stream bed to the nearest snow patch, and if I couldn’t find my footprints, I’d turn and go downstream until I found the right place.
The upstream patch was the right one. My footprints were right there. I followed them up out of the canyon, onto the slope that traversed back to the mine road. I took the road to the trail that led to the bottomless pit, and then began bushwhacking back down the side of the shallow canyon that led to Little Dry Creek. Downclimbing here was much harder than ascending. I stumbled, slipped, and slid constantly in the loose dirt and rocks, thrown off balance as invisible branches and roots grabbed my ankles, in between fighting through thorny thickets. It got steeper and harder toward the bottom, to the point where it was downright scary. But, obviously, I made it.
It’d taken me 3-1/2 hours to reach the high ridge, and 3-1/4 hours to get back down. When I got home and checked the Arizona peakbagger’s data online, I discovered she’d taken an almost completely different route. Instead of the logical path up the side canyon, she’d cut off the main trail earlier and climbed straight up the right slope to the peak of that low ridge. There, she’d hit the mine road, and used it much farther than I had, which enabled her to go much faster during that stretch.
Then, just past the mine entrance, she’d again climbed straight up the little conical peak, and from there, continued following the ridgeline all the way to Sacaton. She said the bushwhacking wasn’t bad, but I could see it was. Apparently peakbaggers are just habituated to forcing their way through thickets. Their goal is to bag as many peaks as possible in their lifetime, and most peaks don’t have trails.
I could also see that the end point of my hike was actually the halfway point for her hike. By reaching Sacaton, she’d logged over 16 miles round-trip. So my total distance was about 8 miles, and after subtracting the time I’d spent exploring the mine, it took me almost 7 hours – more than twice as long as it would take me on clear ground. She’d also saved time on the way back by leaving the high ridge and dropping from the head of Little Dry Creek back into the main canyon, where she reconnected with the trail so she wouldn’t have to bushwhack back.
I was proud of how hard I’d worked, but it’s not the kind of hike I’d choose to do again. I’m in great shape, but hiking in steep loose rock is the hardest thing possible on my vulnerable foot. I could go faster on a healthy foot, but would I even want to?
Monday, March 22nd, 2021: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
I’d taken last Sunday off, to break the pattern and give my troubled foot a rest. On my last Sunday hike I’d encountered a two-foot-deep snowfield at 9,500′ in our local mountains, but since then we’d had two weeks of warm weather. I figured that farther south, in the lower-elevation Chiricahuas, I could return to my favorite trail and climb to one of the peaks of the range. That trail goes through the “cold canyon” where snow accumulates deeper than anywhere else, and lingers longer. It’d been three months since I’d done that hike – in the winter, snow prevents me from doing the longer hikes with higher elevation, and I worry about losing conditioning.
But as soon as I crossed the pass south of town and got a view of the distant range, I could see there was still a lot of snow on the north slopes above 8,000′. I decided to change plans and hike to the “bleak saddle” instead. It’d be a long, hard hike, but with southeast exposure it should be snow-free, and if my energy lasted to the saddle, I might be able to continue up the nearby peak I hadn’t been able to reach last fall.
The forecast called for overcast skies and mild temperatures. From a distance, it looked like low clouds over the range were trying to drop some rain. But by the time I got to the trailhead, the sky had cleared, with only wisps of cloud.
I climbed the steep trail steadily, shedding outerwear, until midway along the 3-mile traverse, it was so warm I had to unbutton my shirt. It was probably in the 60s, and intermittantly gusty. Small black flying insects kept flushing out of my way, but the wind whipped them away so I couldn’t tell what they were.
Approaching the saddle I was feeling pretty sore and exhausted, and nearing the compression zone of strong wind that streams through saddles. I had to stop and squeeze into my sweater, and decided to put on my shell as well. The sky was now almost completely overcast, and the wind was so fierce and cold I had to pull up the hood immediately.
Despite being worn out, when I reached the trail junction on the bleak saddle, I decided to try the trail to the peak. It looked like the peak was close, a quarter mile and a few hundred feet above. I might not make it, but it would be more interesting than this bare, windy saddle.
There was actually no trail on the bare lower slope, only sporadic cairns and fallen logs placed as directional markers. The wind was so strong I was almost blown down at times. But after a few hundred yards, I found a distinct trail that had recently been cleared.
Then suddenly the cleared part ended. I could see the trail continuing ahead, but a thicket of aspen had been growing on it for at least five years, to a height of 8 or 10 feet.
Later, back home, I discovered the Chiricahua Trails website lists this trail as in “terrible” condition – the worst condition possible. But now that I’ve had plenty of experience bushwhacking and climbing over blowdown, I just kept going, pushing through the thickets, re-finding the trail on the other side.
As so often happens, the peak I’d seen from below turned out not to be the actual peak. Dozens of switchbacks, blocked by thickets or deadfall, led to a ridge that continued east for another half mile. Whereas the surrounding slopes had burned in the 2012 wildfire, a pocket of beautiful alpine forest had survived on this ridge. Otherwise I might’ve given up and turned back, especially when I reached an extensive blowdown blocking the trail 3/4 of the way along the ridge.
Past that, I finally saw the actual peak, a little hump at the far end of the ridge, where I flushed a white-tail buck that briefly stood, silhouetted, before dropping out of sight down the slope.
I expected the forest would block views from the peak, but it turned out I had good views due east and south. Making it all the way here, despite the way I’d felt at the saddle, seemed to recharge my energy. I started paying more attention to the beautiful forest.
This range crests a thousand feet lower than our mountains at home. It has only six peaks above 9,500′, five of them named – I’ve now climbed three of them. But it’s a Sky Island, and those peaks host tiny pockets, like this, of alpine spruce-fir forest like you find much farther north. With a warming climate, how much longer will they last?
According to the GPS data on Chiricahua Trails, this would be a 12-mile round-trip hike, with barely 4,000′ of accumulated elevation gain. But it took me nearly 8 hours – longer than any 14 to 16 mile hike I’ve done. That’s partly explained by the difficulties I had on the peak trail. But I still wonder about the accuracy of these GPS distances, especially older data like this.
On the way down I finally got a better look at the flying insects – they were small black butterflies with banded wings. Millions of them had recently metamorphosed in this range, despite the cool weather of early spring. They were having a hard time in the wind.
I was 1-1/4 hours late returning to the vehicle, but the time change gives me an extra hour of daylight. From the near-freezing wind chill of the high traverse, it got steadily warmer as I circled back and dropped into the dense oak forest of the trailhead canyon, where it felt like the mid-70s. Happily, despite the long day and the two-hour drive home, I got back just before dark.
