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.
