Southeast Arizona
Monday, October 20th, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
I’d been in pain all night long, and was starting the day in pain. Meds hadn’t worked, which rarely but occasionally happens. I was determined to at least try to go hiking, but last Sunday’s hike had been both frustratingly short and difficult, and lunch had sucked. So today I wanted to do something longer and easier, with a more reliable midday meal. That left me only one choice – a trail so boring I’d avoided it while hiking every trail around it multiple times for the past seven years.
I mean, I would never complain about walking through beautiful, pristine Southwest habitat, with dramatic cliffs rising above the trees. But I do like variety and vistas, and this trail is a mostly level stroll through oak woodland that tends to block the views.
We’re still having unseasonably warm weather – apocalyptically so – and where I was going it was forecast to reach 80. Normal temps for this time of year would range from the 50s to the 60s.
Brunch – trout and eggs, with salad and sweet potato fries – was awesome as usual. If you wonder why I make a point of these weekly road trip meals, we lost our good restaurants during COVID – so since 2020, I only eat out while traveling.
I’ve actually done the first mile of this hike three or four times, on the way to the crest of the range. It starts in the canyon bottom and climbs past somebody’s luxury retreat and a series of gullies and ravines to an alluvial bench lined with the oak woodland.
Past the junction, the new trail hadn’t seen heavy use, but I was surprised to find a mountain bike track – the first I remember seeing anywhere in this canyon. It makes sense since this trail is the only one that’s easy enough for bikes.
The alluvial bench narrows as the trail trends westward, until you can glimpse the ravine through which the creek runs, and the gravel road on the other side that serves picnic areas and a campground. I’d been in denial of the fact that I would hear traffic, and kids yelling – more downsides of this hike.
At one point I could see kids down below playing in the creek, and as I turned back to face the trail ahead, a hawk flew past me through the trees, only about eight feet above the ground and a dozen feet from me. A little later I came upon a whitetail doe – the first whitetail I’d seen in a long time.
Approaching the trail junction where I would turn back, the trail got gnarlier, descending into and climbing steeply out of one deep ravine after another – finally, some variety!
Despite being in pain, I’d started the day, and the hike, without meds – hoping the hike would loosen up the joints and get some endorphins flowing. But after three hours of hiking, I was still hurting pretty bad when I returned to the Sidekick, and immediately popped some pills.
Afternoons, with low angle sunlight, are great times to discover new aspects of the landscape. On the way out of the mountains I noticed an area across the highway that would make for promising hiking – if it’s not blocked by private land.
Then, getting ready to pass – for the umpteenth time – the granite spire I’d tried to climb earlier this year, I noticed for the first time a gully up the southwest side that might actually be climbable. Doing 65 on the empty highway, I grabbed my camera and took a sloppy zoom photo of the spire out my side window.
I’ve scoured the internet unsuccessfully for info on this peak, and despite the fact that peakbaggers are competitive and anal about keeping and sharing records of their accomplishments, it appears that nobody has ever claimed an ascent. Examining the photo back home, it does look like that gully might be a route to the top – for somebody with functional knees.
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025: Dragoons, Hikes, Nature, Rocks, Southeast Arizona.
Saturday morning. I was in Tucson, at the quiet, secluded courtyard hotel, in a residential neighborhood next to a huge park, where I’ve been staying on occasional visits for almost 20 years. Friday had been a miserable marathon of urban driving, traffic, looking for and failing to find solutions for my 18-month-long knee injury and my declining mom’s 14-month-long housing, care, and treatment crisis. The day had ended with four hours of tearful empathizing with caregivers and children of declining elders, leaving me an emotional wreck.
I’d left home Thursday afternoon hoping to make a mini-vacation out of this trip, but now that I really needed it, I was scheduled to check out of this peaceful retreat and make the three-hour drive home amid convoys of oblivious tractor-trailer rigs and Texans in giant pickup trucks seething with incipient road rage.
I couldn’t justify another expensive day and night in the city. My health was already suffering from the stress of driving, and my fitness had been set back, missing two workouts and a midweek hike at home. But the next day, Sunday, was the day of my longer weekly hike. What if I split the drive home into two short segments, stopping along the way to explore hiking areas I’d been researching for years? These are areas that are too far from home for a day hike, but nagging because I pass them regularly on longer trips.
My one feeble attempt at vacation life was breakfast at Hotel Congress downtown, a legendary hipster hangout which seems to have been colonized by retired tourists.
The first stop on my return trip was a relatively small mountain range that straddles the interstate highway. The interstate climbs to a pass in the small northern part of the range, where spectacular granite boulders remind me of my beloved Mojave Desert. But the larger southern part of the range has the hiking trails, branching out from what I’d always assumed was some sort of park or monument.
The long, lonely drive south from the interstate, past vacation homes and hobby ranches hidden in desert scrub, changed from paved to gravel when it turned toward the mountains. Spectacular granite cliffs rose straight ahead, so I pulled off the wide gravel road for a photo. Returning to the Sidekick, I noticed a vehicle approaching to pass me.
Driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road, it was a small Japanese sedan. I pulled out and followed it, trying to figure out what the driver was doing so far to the left. Sometimes on a dirt or gravel road where there’s no traffic, you drive on the wrong side to avoid potholes or washboard, but this road was both wide and smoothly graded. The car ahead continued to race away on the wrong side of the road, and when other vehicles approached, it would pull over briefly, then return to the other side.
When we reached a 90-degree bend at the foot of the mountains, the wrong-side driver suddenly pulled over to let me pass, and I saw that it was an old man with long hair and a stringy beard, looking distracted. I continued south into a narrow valley between granite cliffs on my right and low hills lined with oak and juniper to the east. Instead of a park or monument, I passed small rustic homes and ranches, crossing and recrossing a dry creekbed, until the road dead-ended in a small Forest Service campground in the shade of giant boulders and venerable oaks. There, I studied my map and learned that I’d already passed the parking area for a short trail up a boulder-lined slope, so I drove back, parked next to a small city SUV, and set off up the trail.
I had no expectations for today’s hike – I just wanted to get a feel for the area. I was exhausted and depressed after my failed city trip, but the climb, winding steeply through narrow gaps between boulders, reminded me so much of the Mojave, it felt like I’d been temporarily transported far away from my crushing problems.
I could see a saddle on the crest about a thousand feet above, but my map showed the trail ending a couple hundred feet below it. Tracks showed this was a popular trail, and I knew there was a party ahead of me. But after the first quarter mile I spotted a boulder pile to the right of the trail with a promising-looking hollow underneath. And crawling inside, I found pictographs.
As I said, I’d studied this area in advance, and although I hadn’t seen anything about pictographs, I remembered reading something about an “Indian trail”. This must be it! When I rejoined the trail, I discovered steps cut into the rock leading upward – steps that looked suspiciously non-Colonial. It may now be worth mentioning that this “rugged natural fortress” was the headquarters and refuge for Apache chief Cochise.
I found the next alcove with pictographs hidden in a bigger boulder pile above the first one.
Fully sensitized, I scouted farther afield, and immediately found another rockshelter containing a big sheet of plastic, under which someone had left a sleeping bag and sleeping mat. Sand had washed down over it, showing it had been there for a while. Who had left it, and why? The cliffs and boulders should be attracting climbers, but I had a hard time imagining them driving to this remote spot, far from the nearest city, then leaving valuable gear in such an exposed spot right off the trail. It looked more like the stash of a homeless person than that of a yuppie.
I continued, checking every likely rockshelter, and soon found another stash – this time a single backpacking pad laid loosely under an overhang just off the trail. What’s going on here – road-trippers walking a few hundred yards up the trail, spending a night, then abandoning their gear?
Right about then I heard the other party, a couple of guys, talking somewhere high above the trail. I never saw them, but I soon came upon a big ledge across the main drainage, where a thin stream of runoff had filled a small rock pool. The view was spectacular, and still tired, I decided to make this my endpoint and return to the vehicle.
Approaching the stone steps near the first pictograph site, I heard voices, and suddenly came upon a tall, attractive couple in their 20s, dressed and outfitted like they had just stepped out of an upscale suburban fitness center pumping loud techno. I smiled and greeted them, but they both frowned at me – trained not to smile at strangers, dismissive of older people, or just having a lover’s spat? I asked if they’d seen the pictographs, and I had to rephrase the question a couple of times before the bearded young man uttered a curt “Yes”, still frowning.
I wished them a good day, and returning to the parking area I found their immaculate, late-model 4-door Jeep Wrangler lifted on big AT tires. Clear evidence of progress – at their age I’d been dressed in thrift-shop castoffs, driving a 15-year-old, battered and oxidized VW Beetle.
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Rattlesnake, Southeast Arizona.
My itinerary, returning home from Tucson with stops along the way to explore new hiking areas, was resulting in mid-day hikes and missed mid-day meals, which I can ill afford with ongoing muscle atrophy and weight loss. After the Indian Trail hike on Saturday, I’d spent the night in Willcox and was hoping to hike the wild, less-visited west side of the range of canyons on Sunday. And sure enough, I was destined to miss another mid-day meal while doing some hard exercise. A great weight-loss plan if that’s what I needed. Yeah, I always carry snacks, but not enough on this unplanned trip. I didn’t even have enough clean clothes, and would unsuccessfully try to wash and dry a set overnight…
The west side of the range consists of four major west-trending ridges, all designated wilderness, with three primitive forest roads leading up between them to remote, primitive campgrounds and trailheads. Until the massive 2011 wildfire, an intricate network of 4wd roads and backpacking trails penetrated the entire area from exterior basin to crest, but after the fire, flash floods, washouts, and debris flows resulted in all those trails and most of the roads being abandoned.
This is just the kind of hiking scenario I crave! But before now, this area had been just too far from home to explore. The far northern ridge lies within the national monument where I’d done a couple of hikes, and the northernmost forest road leads over the crest of the range to the popular eastern basin – I’d driven that once from west to east.
My map showed a secondary forest road turning south off that crest road, well below the crest, toward a pass and a remote canyon marked with something called “Pine Canyon Camp”. A little more research revealed an elaborate Methodist Church Camp tucked away in this remote canyon, which had been damaged by catastrophic floods after the 2011 fire, and “completely removed” by the Forest Service as recently as 2018. Apparently they even broke up and buried the foundations…
My topo map showed that branch road into Pine Canyon climbing over a pass and ending at the canyon bottom, where trails led up and down canyon. With all that flood damage, I had no idea whether the road over the pass would be usable – let alone the trails in the canyon. If not, I would just continue to the crest, do a hike there, then make the three-hour drive home, stopping at the cafe in late afternoon for my only decent meal of the day.
The main road to the crest is pretty scary, but the minute I turned off onto the side road to the pass I felt like a real pioneer. Not only was it rougher, it was far more spectacular! In tight, narrow turns, it cut between a cliff and a towering rock outcrop, then did a hairpin and climbed precipitously over the pass, between dramatic rock outcrops – one of the most spectacular backcountry roads I’ve driven!
And beyond the pass lay a big, very remote canyon with more spectacular rimrock, and a short, steep descent to the bottom. I’d studied this canyon on the map, and assumed the main access was via a maze of ranch roads in the western basin. But the sign at the bottom said this road dead ends at a locked gate – private ranchland. So this gnarly road over the pass is the only way into and out of this big, spectacular canyon.
I wanted to explore it all, but only had time for a hike. Beyond the sign, the old road north up the canyon was washed out and officially closed, so I parked, loaded up, and set out on foot.
Across the shallow washout was a broad floodplain, where remnants of the old road alternated with debris fields from the floods. Despite our continuing unseasonable warm weather, fall color was spreading through the sycamores, oaks, walnuts, and willows.
Some types of off-road vehicles had recently disobeyed the road closure and rock-crawled over the debris fields, up to a point where a side road – unmarked on any maps – climbed up a small side canyon, and the way up the main canyon was decisively blocked by logs. That side road may just be former access to one of the removed camp buildings, since nothing shows there on satellite view. But I was only interested in the main canyon, where I spotted the tail end of a whitetail buck disappearing into the forest across the floodplain.
Walking up the broad debris field, over and around logs, was easy and pleasant enough, until I reached a small cabin, still standing but partly collapsed by flood debris. On a camp history web page this is called the “Forest Service Storage Building” – hopefully they’re planning to remove it before it washes downstream.
Past the storage building, the canyon narrowed and the debris got gnarlier. Eventually I reached the camp’s water tank and associated equipment, which the Forest Service apparently considered not worth the effort of removing. This is the ultimate legacy of Western Civilization – toxic ruins.
I could still follow traces of the old road up the canyon, but frequent washouts and debris had mostly obliterated it and created an unfolding obstacle course. Initially I embraced the challenge because my knee pain had confined me to easy trails for so long. Eventually I found a trickle of running water.
The map showed that after a mile and a half the canyon split into two upper branches, one coming down from the crest of the range, the other from a saddle in the next major east-west ridge. The latest Forest Service map, from 2016, shows an actual, driveable road not only going up the main canyon, but continuing up the left-hand branch all the way to the crest. So most of this flood damage must’ve occurred since 2016.
I was hiking in the creekbed and could easily tell when I reached the branch point, but there was no sign of a road there. So first, I took the left branch, and there was enough floodplain left that I was able to climb out of the gully and hike through forest for a hundred yards, until I came upon an apocalyptic pile of debris that I had no interest in climbing over.
I sat on a rock and ate a snack, then climbed over a logjam toward the “crotch” between branch canyons. Reaching a gentle slope with parklike forest, I looked back and noticed a shallow gully that was likely the old road to the crest. Amazing, in less than a decade here a road can revert to a natural feature!
A little farther, I came to a broad corridor in the forest, leading toward the next branch canyon, that could only be an old road – an even older road that had been “retired” and left off the 2016 map. I love the habitat in this range, but there was something about the experience of societal abandonment that enhanced my hike, made my spine tingle, and encouraged me to continue past the obstacles in this rewilding canyon.
It helped that the old roadway left intermittent terraces where I could walk faster, making up for the occasional logs, washouts, and debris piles. I spotted another whitetail buck fleeing across the canyon. But I soon came to a sharp dogleg in the canyon that had cut deep banks and left taller piles of debris. That’s where I began encountering minimal cairns – often just a single rock sitting on a boulder – that helped me find a path through the chaos.
Beyond the dogleg, the canyon got narrower and more spectacular, and the debris got bigger and more challenging, but I still found traces of the old road and its terraces. I’d been hoping to reach the saddle, but the sun was going down and I was starting to think about getting home before dark – especially since the time had changed and night was falling an hour earlier.
My route passed back and forth across the creekbed, and eventually I crossed a stretch of slickrock. Not far upstream I reached another daunting debris pile, and decided to turn back. I figured I hadn’t been able to cover much more than two miles in over two hours of hiking, and probably had another mile to go to the saddle.
When I checked the GPS waypoint that night, I discovered that my turnaround point was just inside the federal wilderness boundary. It’s likely been years since anyone had the masochism to hike up there – again, just what I like. HikeArizona has a trip report from a guy who hiked the eastern canyon in October 2019, so that may be the most recent. The official trail guide says some group cleared this trail in 2022, but admits it hasn’t been verified, and the report was clearly mistaken. Maybe some of the cairns dated from that year…
Knowing the way, I was able to move a little faster on the way down – but not by much. Long before I reached the vehicle, I knew I would need to stay overnight at the lodge on the east side, to avoid driving home in the dark through deer-infested mountains.
A long, steep, rough drive – an hour and fifteen – to the crest road and over into the eastern basin, with the sun dropping behind the crest. To a big burrito, only real meal of the day, and a quiet room for the night, where shoulder pain – until now a lower priority than the knee – would keep waking me up.
I found only locals in the cafe when I arrived, but scientists and cyclists poured in shortly after. A scrawny but powerfully muscled cyclist in his 70s was wearing a “We the People” U.S. Constitution jersey, his whole body red white and blue. No way of telling whether he was a right- or left-wing patriot, although populists do lean right.
And after four nights away, the final drive home, to the ongoing trauma of helplessly trying to comfort my beloved, suffering, fading mother.
Wednesday, December 10th, 2025: Catalina, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
I’m in transition between major phases of my life – in shock, depressed, functioning at a minimal level. Needing solitude, peace, and quiet to plumb the depths of my loss, not knowing how or when I’ll emerge and the next phase will begin – expecting only that it will come slowly and gradually.
A physical therapy appointment had been made long ago at a stand-alone facility in Tucson. I was hoping to do a challenging hike before the Tuesday appointment, with some pain afterward so the therapist would see how bad it can get. Expecting crowds on trails near the city, I waited until Monday for the hike.
I’ve visited Tucson regularly since moving to southwestern New Mexico 19 years ago – but knowing the trails would be heavily traveled, I’d never hiked there. The nearest trails start in the foothills of the Santa Catalina range on the northern edge of the city, via about 10 different trailheads established from east to west. Tucson would be nothing without this spectacular, 6,000-foot-tall wall of rock at its north, constantly changing color throughout the day.
I chose a trail that my brief online research suggested would be less popular. A glance at the map showed that it starts in a canyon at just over 3,000 feet, then climbs up the east ridge to a saddle before traversing farther up the ridge into the high country. I paid no further attention to distances, elevations, or neighboring trails, assuming that urban trails would be well signed, and I would just go as far as possible in the available time. My hope was to reach pine habitat – ideally ponderosa – but starting at 3,000 feet there really wasn’t much chance of that.
The high in town was forecast to reach the mid-70s, with clear skies. Trailhead parking, in this affluent neighborhood of contemporary mansions on gated streets, was the most deluxe I’d ever seen, with freshly marked spaces for about 40 vehicles and a brass drinking fountain at the entrance. At 9:45 on Monday morning it was almost 90 percent full, so I assume on weekends most hikers have to look elsewhere.
The city ends abruptly at the back yards of these mansions, which directly abut the National Forest. But it’s not just open space – it’s a federally-designated wilderness area, right next to these rich folks’ homes, where a sign claims that bighorn sheep populations are declining due to home building, and gas-powered leaf blowers and other implements spread stressful noise deep into supposedly wild habitat.
I’d never seen such a sharp, stark border between the natural and the artificial. The dissonance increased as I climbed the canyon and both military and commercial airplanes roared overhead. Our homes, our pets, our transport, our recreation – everything we do is at war with the wildlife in our natural habitats.
My hikes in Arizona near home range between about 4,000 and 10,000 feet. At the low end it’s similar to the Mojave Desert, and at the high end it’s similar to my local mountains, but with subtle differences I appreciate more and more over time.
In this lower Sonoran habitat, farther west, the giant saguaro cacti represented the most dramatic difference, but I also quickly found unfamiliar acacias and riparian plants as the trail meandered between boulders up the lower canyon. The trail is named for a rock formation high on the western ridge, and eventually I spotted it looming thousands of feet above, as I passed a pool of water and a tall, solitary cottonwood, and the trail began climbing out of the canyon bottom. By that point, I’d passed four or five other hikers heading back from their short morning walks – none of them talkative.
Almost everything I do now evokes painful thoughts – rock formations evoke painful thoughts, writing a dispatch about my hike evokes painful thoughts. This was an incredibly spectacular landscape, and I tried to enjoy it, but ultimately couldn’t. I was just going through the motions to stay in shape.
Climbing out of the canyon bottom, the trail fell under the shadow of the rimrock cliffs above, and stayed in that shadow for most of the way up. I’d taken off my sweater below in the sun and was cold now, but from here on, the trail became incredibly steep and rocky – basically a series of mostly natural rock steps alternating with long, steep slabs of tilted bedrock. I passed a talkative guy and we exchanged multiple confirmations about what a beautiful day it was, what a beautiful place, how lucky we were, etc.
But the steep traverse below those gloomy cliffs was brutal and seemed to go on forever, rounding outlying shoulder after shoulder, with me hoping each would be the last.
Finally I got high enough for oaks, and eventually I reached a sunny ledge overlooking a funnel-like interior basin where side canyons converged with the main one. I stopped for a snack, and another guy caught up and passed me.
Continuing on the trail, I saw my first juniper of the day, then a tall pinyon pine above in a north-facing alcove. These, which you’d normally find above 6,000 feet at this latitude, emphasized how low the trailhead had been. I lost all hope of reaching ponderosas.
The trail curved back into a shady, semi-forested cove where I had a good view of the opposite slope, across which I assumed my trail would continue traversing up the canyon. The hiker that passed me had worn a bright blue shirt but I couldn’t see him ahead and wondered where he’d disappeared to. And soon I was at an unexpected trail junction.
The canyon trail continued left, but a branch trail went right to a saddle, only a hundred yards and a few dozen feet higher. I thought I remembered the name of the branch trail from the sign at my trailhead, hours ago. Could this become a loop? I sure hoped so – I’d been dreading that steep, rocky return on my hurt knee.
At the saddle, the trail surface became smooth, packed dirt, and on the open grassy slopes below I could see it making long, gentle switchbacks. I decided to chance it being a loop back to my trailhead. At worst, if it led to a different trailhead, I might have to walk a few miles on city streets to get back to the truck.
I shortly met a young woman who confirmed this would return to my trailhead. She asked me about the trail in the other canyon, and I warned her – I wonder if she continued that way after reaching the saddle?
I met several others on the way down, including a stocky, crusty woman about my age who warned me that this trail also got steep and rocky toward the bottom. At least it was all in the sun. She was easily the oldest woman I’ve ever met doing a hike this difficult, alone.
Dozens of switchbacks later, and more than 1,500 feet lower, I reached the steep and rocky part. At this point I was favoring my hurt knee and lowering myself slowly over each rock step. I’m calling them steps – mostly it was stepping down from embedded rock to embedded rock – but trailbuilders had put a huge amount of work into this urban wilderness trail, building steps in many places where natural slopes were just too steep for human feet.
I assumed I’d already gone at least four miles to reach the saddle, and my overall distance would be about eight miles. I was exhausted and sore when I found myself only a few hundred feet above the foothill mansions. The trail dropped into the level sand of a broad dry wash, and all the bootprints appeared to lead down the wash.
Standing in the wash, I didn’t see a continuation of the trail on the other side, so I just followed the tracks. And of course, like in the Mojave, I was soon clambering over boulders and forcing my way through dense riparian vegetation. But the tracks continued to lead me on.
Eventually the boulders became car-sized, then house-sized, and I had to make detours through patches of riparian jungle and lower myself over dry waterfalls. Then I saw a mansion, a couple dozen feet above me, then a bridge crossing the wash, with another mansion above the opposite bank. What the hell had I got myself into?
The retaining walls below the houses and the bridge were all vertical and twenty feet high, so I crept under the viaduct. There was a crumbling, mesquite-choked bank on the other side that I could just barely climb, so I forced my way up it and found myself in someone’s driveway, on a street lined with contemporary mansions. I was looking pretty shabby, and recalled the cleaning lady who’d knocked on the wrong door in a suburban neighborhood back in Indiana, and was shot and killed by the homeowner. He was released, because they have a law allowing homeowners to use lethal force when feeling threatened. I knew this was a gated neighborhood and wondered how deep I was inside the gate.
As I trudged west up the street, totally exposed in this expensively xeriscaped neighborhood, I was approached by a car that slowed down to check me out. I smiled and waved, and the driver continued past. A few hundred yards further, I spotted the gate in the distance. It was opening, and an elderly couple walked through. They crossed the street in front of me, pointedly avoiding my eyes, as the gate began to close behind them. It was closed long before I reached it, so I darted furtively into someone else’s side yard and dropped over their retaining wall into the public street. Ah, the urban-wildland interface!
It turns out the trail did resume across that track-filled wash – I was just misled by all the bootprints in the sand. Either way, this hike was at the limit of what I can do now with my knee injury, so I’m still facing a lot of rehab work ahead.
Monday, December 29th, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Morse, Southeast Arizona.
Returning from a trip to Arizona offered me another opportunity to hike the west side of the range of canyons, normally too far for a day trip. The east side is world-famous, but the west side is known only to natives, accessed via long, lonely highways across a vast, flat agricultural valley.
The map shows a forest road entering the mountains halfway down the north-south trending range, accessing half a dozen trailheads and a couple of primitive campgrounds. Google Maps claimed it would take me only an hour and ten minutes to reach the end of that road from the town on the Interstate where I was staying – the same driving distance as most of my hikes near home.
The trail at the end of the road starts at 6,600 feet and climbs south up a canyon to a saddle at 8,500 feet. From there, a second trail runs east along a ridge, then climbs to a 9,400 foot peak – the southwesternmost peak on the crest of the range – topped with a fire lookout. I’d tried to reach that peak once, from the east side, but the road to the trailhead was so slow that after seven miles of hiking, I ran out of time, only a half mile short.
Whereas that east-side route was almost 16 miles out and back, this would only be 8. It would still be a challenge – at almost 2,800 vertical feet, it would be the most elevation gain I’d attempted since before my knee injury in May 2024.
Beset by trauma after trauma, I’ve been increasingly worried about my mental health. Today, after a healthy breakfast and a cup of fresh-ground coffee, I stopped for gas before leaving town. I left the pump running and ducked inside for a bottle of water. At checkout, the teenage girl, her eyes wide, asked urgently “Are you okay, sir?” Unaware of any problem, I gave her a puzzled look. “You seem really out of breath!” she cried. Still puzzled and convinced I was breathing normally, I paid, went outside, got in, started up, and drove off. Hearing a bashing sound behind me, I stopped. A glance in the rearview – it was only then I realized I’d forgotten to finish at the pump.
This has literally never happened to me before. I got out, picked up the hose handle and returned it to the pump – but couldn’t find my gas cap, which I’d left, as usual, sitting on the rim of the truck bed. Getting down on my knees to look under the truck is really hard with an injured knee and shoulder, so I got in, started up, and moved the truck another ten feet forward. Still no gas cap anywhere, so I painfully lowered myself to look under the bed and around the rear wheels.
Still no gas cap. I actually spent another five minutes looking – until I finally spotted it, twenty feet ahead of the vehicle, out near the street. I was numb with shock. If I hadn’t been in a tiny, remote rural town, with no passersby to witness my astounding dysfunction, I probably would’ve given up and returned to the motel.
Fortunately, I expected an easy drive ahead. The big north-south valley intrigues me. It’s far from the nearest city. And although the highway that runs down it from the Interstate is paved, it leads only to a small, obscure town on the Mexican border, with no significant tourist attractions along the way. Ranging from about 4,000 feet elevation in the south to nearly 5,000 at the north edge, it’s over a hundred miles long and thirty miles wide. It’s dotted with huge but widely-separated agribusinesses – tomato greenhouses, dairy feedlots, beef cattle ranches – and a surprising number of unincorporated residential settlements. Surprising because they’re generally lost amidst the flat vastness.
Seeing much more of it on this trip, it reminded me of California’s great Central Valley – a rural feudal enclave, but in this case, even more remote from urban seats of power and wealth. The big agribusinesses enrich the few by exploiting the many, who live in dilapidated shacks and trailers. And in between, you’re surprised by the occasional remote, isolated mansion. At the north end there are even a few wineries, patronized mainly by RV-driving retirees, and retirees in trailer parks make up the rest of the demographic.
Nearing the turnoff east toward the mountains, I found myself approaching cool-looking volcanic hills, isolated in the middle of the valley, that had been hidden from the north by the curvature of the earth. Then I passed an official highway sign saying “Earth Fissures Possible Ahead”. What the fuck does that mean?
Around the turnoff stood the mostly ruined remains of unidentifiable commercial buildings – a motel? Auto shop? Restaurant? Strip mall? And on the side road, what appeared to be a country school with a tiny, historic-looking library – but no town.
Finally, the paved road ended, the gravel forest road began, and I entered the foothills. Topped by rimrock, grassy slopes golden in the morning sun, all very welcoming. I came to a sign: “Do Not Enter When Flooded”, and after yesterday’s rain, the road was flooded from edge to edge. It looked to be a foot deep in the middle, and my pickup has low ground clearance, but after that long drive I was not about to give up. I backed up, built up some speed, crossed at the very edge and raised spray higher than my truck.
Entering the forest, the road became rockier and steeper. I passed a couple of pickups, saw a compact Japanese sedan, RVs, and city SUVs parked in the campgrounds, wondering what they’d make of the flooded road. But it was quiet here on the west side, and felt very, very remote.
Parking at the end of the road, in a deep dark canyon, I was alone, and I guessed the temperature was in the 30s when I got out, pulled on my storm shell, thermal cap, and gloves, and shouldered my pack. I hadn’t brought my fleece jacket for these temps, but hoped the hike would keep me warm.
The comprehensive, detailed online guide for this range says the trail was recently cleared of deadfall, and the forest had mostly survived the 2011 wildfire, so I was looking forward to easy walking conditions for a change. But a glance at the topo map hadn’t prepared me for this climb up a steep, narrow canyon in morning shade. Much of the trail surface was pine needles on packed dirt, but it was really dark, and really cold!
I immediately encountered what appeared to be recent horseshit, and beyond the first half mile, the well-built trail had been chewed up badly, when wet and muddy, by mysterious hooved animals. I did find tracks of javelina, deer, and bobcat, but the damaging tracks were much bigger, punching deep holes into the trail, and with few exceptions, unshod. There was lots of recent equine scat, and about halfway up, I found logs which had been cut within the past month or two. But I’d never heard of a trail crew in these mountains using horses or mules, and if they had, why weren’t they wearing shoes? I puzzled over the mystery all the way up and all the way down, and I didn’t find a single human track all day.
Despite the steep climb, I was cold all the way up, and again, about halfway up, the dirt was frozen solid. The temperature in this shade was actually in the 20s – I definitely hadn’t dressed for this!
Finally I could feel myself approaching the saddle, where I expected sunlight, and hopefully warmth.
At the saddle, I found myself overlooking a deep, narrow canyon with steep, densely forested slopes – a rare and refreshing sight in our new wildfire regime. The head of this south-draining canyon curves east and is completely hidden from outside. Just under a mile to my southeast rose the peak, and with the naked eye, I could just barely discern the lookout tower peeking above the forest.
To my relief, the trail stuck to the south side of the ridge so I was mostly in sun, and it was a beautiful forest – until I reached a small burn scar on the north slope of the peak. The trail here hadn’t been cleared recently – I stepped over about a dozen logs on the way – a piece of cake compared to the hundreds blocking many of my wilderness hikes.
Approaching the saddle below the peak, I encountered patches of snow from yesterday’s storm, frozen to a hard crust. In that saddle, with view blocked by forest, I met the end of the crest trail, and from there, found an informal, unmaintained trail to the top.
This felt like the first hike since my knee injury that had an actual, dramatic destination. And the view, to the south toward Mexico, was glorious! Mexican mountain ranges, one behind the other, fading into blue haze, with the rugged southern ridges of this range fanning out in high contrast, far below.
I spent a half hour up there, the sun warming me to my core, and I sure didn’t want to leave!
Likewise, when I reached the saddle above the first canyon, I sure didn’t want to drop back into that frozen shade!
I’d brought the trekking poles, and following my new physical therapist’s guidance, I used them all the way down. But I’m not liking them any better, and I found myself stumbling more often with them, than I usually do without them.
My boots are new, having seen only a couple dozen short hikes during the past year, and they were causing sharp pain in both ankles. And by the time I was halfway down, both my knees were in pain, because the ankle pain was changing my gait. So I finally downed a couple pain pills, which would take effect on the drive out.
On this freezing Sunday night, I was surprised to find four vehicles at the remote trailhead turnaround where I’d parked. They were all from a single party, a small group standing around a huge campfire with flames roaring at least a dozen feet tall. They’d walked down to the bank of the creek, fifty feet below the road. I didn’t see tents – was this just some kind of late forest party?
On the road out, I passed four more groups camping – hard-core in these conditions, in this remote, dark canyon, on a weeknight.
And on the long drive up the big valley at sunset, the pain pills worked their magic. If the past year had been the worst ordeal of my life, this was the most rewarding hike I’d done since my knee injury. Maybe I have a future, after all.
