Southeast Arizona
Monday, January 5th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Silver, Southeast Arizona.
After last Sunday’s breakthrough – hiking to a peak with a spectacular view, after months of frustrating “recovery” hikes – I was hoping for more of the same. But most spectacular hikes on my list either involve too much distance and elevation, or too much bushwhacking. I finally decided to drive over to Arizona yet again, for a peak hike that, when I’m in top condition, would only take a half day. At this stage in my recovery it would advance me a notch, to nearly ten miles out-and-back and over 3,000 accumulated vertical feet.
The day was forecast to be cloudy but with mild temps. However, for the third day in a row – after getting both flu and COVID shots four days ago – I woke up with a migraine and a body that ached from head to feet. Side effects are not supposed to last that long, but it was Sunday and I was not going to miss my hike.
This is the most popular trail in the most popular part of the range, so despite the winter season and gloomy skies, I wasn’t surprised to find three vehicles at the trailhead. A quarter of a mile up I passed a retired-looking couple returning – most people are only in shape for the first mile or so.
I was making good time – clearly recovering my cardio capacity. I’d hoped endorphins would reduce my pain, but by the time I’d gone about 3/4 of a mile I knew I would need pain meds. I’d gotten a late start, and it was also time for a snack. And stopping to dig in my pack, I discovered that I’d failed to bring any food.
This has never happened before! I use a list to pack for a hike. Everything I need is at hand, in its regular place. But I’ve gotten in the bad habit of packing first and checking my list afterwards. And at home this morning, with the splitting headache making me dizzy and confused, I’d just glanced at the food part and assumed it was already packed.
A foundation of my healthy lifestyle is to eat for activity, in a weekly cycle timed with my hikes and workouts. I avoid eating more than I’ll need, but before, during, and after strenuous activity, I always eat and drink what my body needs to recover and build muscle, but no more. There on the mountainside, my whole body hurting, I knew if I turned back to get food at the country store, I wouldn’t be able to complete the hike. I also knew I must be carrying a little fat, somewhere, that my body could turn into energy to finish this damn hike.
So in the title above, “climbing” is an adjective, and “fast” is a noun.
As soon as I resumed hiking in this familiar high desert habitat, I began seeing it in the way I’d been trained long ago – as a natural cupboard, potentially full of provisions. What was here that I could eat? It’s January, one of the worst months for plant food. There would be lots of pinyon pine up above, but the cones would’ve opened months ago, any remaining nuts shriveled and dried. I found one trapped inside a cone but almost cracked a tooth on it, it was so hard.
I immediately thought of cactus fruit. There were lots of prickly pear, but the only remaining fruit were all shriveled up. I’d never heard of anyone eating the yellow fruit of the cane cholla, and there were few here, but I finally came upon one and checked it out. Most of the remaining fruit were unripe, but looking closely at a few yellow ones, it appeared there were no glochids, so I pulled them off and cut them open.
Glochids are tiny, almost invisible hairlike spines that surround the areoles of cacti, where the hard spines emerge. The fruit can be free of spines, but the dozens of tiny glochids will still work their way into your skin and torment you for days, so cactus fruit are normally handled with some kind of tool. My desperation, and the darkness of the day, lulled me into complacency.
After cutting the fruit in half and scraping out the rock-hard seeds, I turned the fruit inside out and scraped at the pulp with my teeth. Even in the greener fruit it was sweet, but there was precious little of it.
I dumped the rest in my shirt pocket and resumed hiking. And now my fingers began burning – glochids after all!
The first 2-1/2 miles climbs 1,200 vertical feet to a shoulder on the north slope, where the trail turns back almost due south into a deep cove. At the top, colorful cliffs and rock formations span both sides of a steep drainage forested with ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs. The trail switchbacks and traverses toward and through the rocks, then out onto the opposite slope. The complicated stretch through those rocks is the most interesting part of the hike.
Emerging onto the opposite slope on a steep stretch of trail, I spotted a leashed dog ahead, and looked for a place to step off and let the owner by. It was a twenty-something couple – they both smiled and thanked me. Past there, it’s a long traverse across a steep slope with dramatic rock formations looming above, eventually entering a patch of fir forest that was particularly dark today.
Approaching the west side of the peak, the trail finally switches back eastward behind huge ramparts of stone, where ten switchbacks of nearly equal length lead you up past the rocks toward the crest. After the long slog on the switchbacks it’s always a surprise to find yourself facing only a short, easy walk to the saddle.
The true peak is a short distance east, but the old fire lookout has the view – if you can handle the precarious, vertiginous concrete steps. The lookout itself burned decades ago – all that’s left now is the concrete foundation.
I’ve been up here in all seasons – there would normally be snow now – and never tire of it.
The only thing I’d brought with any nutritional value was a packet of electrolyte supplement, containing sugar. I’d consumed that hours ago, but didn’t feel hungry. But I did expect my body to start complaining on the way down. As per last week, I dug out the trekking poles to make it easier on my injured knee. And I finally figured out how to use them – which is basically not to push down on them at all, just dangle and tap – until you reach a rocky or steep point where they can help with balance.
Generating less heat on the way down, I pulled my sweater on, and the extra pressure drove the glochids on the fruit in my pocket into my chest, so I transferred them to my pack, and eventually tossed them away. But by then, the damage was done, and I wouldn’t be able to remove them from my chest until I got home.
Much worse, the chronic inflammation in the ball of my left foot had been triggered in the past week – by a new exercise the physical therapist had given me – and this more challenging hike was bringing it out. So I had three thousand feet to descend with two bad legs, slowing me down and forcing me to rely more on the poles, which in turn put more strain on my injured shoulder. I’d had to take more pain pills in the past three days than ever before.
This also highlights another failure of our healthcare system – a hard one to understand, an impossible one to solve. Individualist and competitive social behavior lead to a capitalist economy and the nation-state, imperialism produces reductive science, and the result is healthcare institutions that compete against each other and specialist practitioners that are ignorant outside their fields. So with multiple injuries and health conditions, I’m treated at many different facilities by many different providers, none of whom have access to all my information, and none of whom have time, when they see me, to figure out whether their treatments will have negative consequences.
In the end, the only thing I can always depend on is pain pills – opioids, the “evil” that misguided, Puritanical crusaders keep making it harder and harder for us to get. So I ended my hike a starving wreck, with the pain mercifully shifted into the background for a few hours.
Monday, March 23rd, 2026: Grant, Hikes, P Bar, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
On this last day of the March heat wave, the high in town was forecast to hit 88. I’d abused my body the day before, making some long-delayed repairs to my house, so I was starting this hiking day with pain in my foot, knee, back, and shoulder. I was determined to head for high elevations, where it would be cooler, but with most of my body hurting, it would have to be more of a road trip, combining an easy hike with a lunch destination.
I decided to go all the way to the remote lodge isolated at the southeastern corner of Arizona’s 9,000-foot volcanic plateau, where it would be at least 15 degrees cooler. I started late so I would get there shortly after their noon opening hour, but after 2-1/2 hours of driving to that silent, empty meadow in the sky, I was the only customer, and no one responded to my shouts through the kitchen door.
After waiting ten minutes, I went around back, and finally roused the lady who’d served me during my first visit, seven years ago. She said she was willing to make me lunch, but it would take her ten minutes to get the kitchen turned on.
In the end I waited a total of 45 minutes, but there was no place I would rather be, and the burger was excellent as usual. It was closing time when I left, and I remained the day’s only customer.
Lots of trails start near the lodge, but most of them are either steep descents into the river valley on the east, or networks of level trails for cross-country ski use in winter. I decided to take a trail I’d done a very short hike on once before, because it leads across a forested plateau to a “lake” before dropping off toward the deep eastern valley.
From the trailhead, it climbs 300 vertical feet through spruce-aspen forest in long, gentle switchbacks. The plateau forest saw a patchy burn in the 2011 wildfire and is crisscrossed with deadfall, more of which had fallen across the trail since I’d been here last, but I also found a lot of pine and fir seedlings.
The lake, which I hadn’t reached before, appeared to be a natural basin filled with snowmelt. According to my maps, the trail I was on continues for another mile on the plateau, then descends into a long canyon toward the eastern valley. But just past the lake, I found a sign directing me onto a branch trail claiming to lead to the next big canyon to the south. My maps showed this trail dead-ending in a few hundred yards, so I decided to check it out.
Crossing the basin, the branch trail entered a very dark forest, where it began descending into a narrow canyon, eventually emerging into a “moonscape” burn scar where forest had been killed off on all the surrounding slopes.
I wanted to go easy on my knee, but the canyon I started down was “blind” – it made a curve to the right as it descended, and I wanted to get around that curve to see where it went next.
I ended up with a narrow view out this canyon and over the big eastern valley, to the skyline of the mountains on the other side, 15 miles away. I figured I’d gone at least two miles, and it was getting cloudier and cooler – the perfect time to head back.
The trail I’d ended up on is one of half a dozen routes from the alpine plateau to the river. The longest drops almost 5,000 feet in over 14 miles. It would be cool to park at the bottom, climb to the top, spend the night at the lodge, then descend the next day, maybe by a different route. But from my house, it takes three hours to drive to the bottom of that remote valley – considerably longer than to drive all the way around it to the lodge!
After driving 2-1/2 hours to the alpine plateau and the remote lodge, then spending almost two hours at lunch, plus another three hours of hiking, I wasn’t excited about driving the 2-1/2 hours back home that night. Instead, I stopped at the motel in the county seat north of us, blissed out on pain meds, warmed a can of chili in the microwave, listened to music on my boombox, and finished reading a book.
Monday, March 30th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Ida, Southeast Arizona.
Since my knee injury, two years ago, I’ve tried, over and over again, to treat it and recover from it. Sometimes under a doctor’s orders, sometimes by trial and error.
Currently, suffering from residual pain in my left foot and right knee, I’m back in trial and error mode – trying to find ways to get out in nature while allowing both knee and foot to recover. That means doing less challenging hikes, in the hope that eventually, I’ll be able to increase the challenge yet again.
Last week’s hikes, at 4 and 5 miles and over 800 vertical feet each, were at the limit of what I can do and recover from quickly now. But after years of long, spectacular hikes, it’s hard to find easy ones that can motivate me. There are easy hikes near town, but I’ve done them hundreds of times, and they’re boring at best.
For Sundays, since short hikes won’t get me deep into wilderness, I need other incentives – spectacular drives, restaurant food. Of the five two-lane highways leaving town, only two offer both. Last Sunday I’d driven north and west, today I would drive south and west.
Leaving in mid-morning, I’d reach the cafe at the entrance to the mountains in time for brunch. Another hour climbing on a rocky dirt road would get me to the crest.
The temperature was in the mid-60s, with scattered clouds above, when I left home. Weeks of wind across the playa had filled the sky along the border with dust, and more clouds were moving in from the west. I had trout, scrambled eggs, and salad at the cafe – I know, life is hard – then headed toward the crest.
After only a couple of miles I came up behind an immaculate Jeep Rubicon tricked out with all kinds of racks and jerry cans, oversize off-road tires, ornamental brake lights built into the spare tire, and spacers that gave it a ridiculously wide track. The driver was holding it to 15 mph where I could go twice as fast, so he soon pulled over for me.
Then I hit a bad rocky stretch and realized I should deflate my tires – they were probably overinflated due to recent warm weather. But I didn’t want to have to pass that guy again, so I raced uphill for a few miles, then pulled over. But sure enough, by the time I’d deflated my tires, the Jeep had passed me – still going only 15 mph – so he had to pull over a second time to let me by.
Now I was on the final ascent, and soon the habitat transitioned from pinyon-oak to pine-fir. After passing the Jeep I was surprised to see no one else. At the saddle on the crest I turned onto the dead-end crest road and passed spectacular views until I reached the side road which climbs over the crest and down to the abandoned campground in the shaded, well-watered pine park at 8,200 feet.
This is one of my favorite spots in the Southwest. The forest trails are too rough for trailers, and I’ve never seen anyone camping here.
The sky was mostly cloudy now, the air temperature in the high 60s, but I knew hiking would keep me warm. I’d been wondering about this trail for years. The only trip report I’d read said it was badly overgrown with thorny locust. But despite being hidden far off the beaten path in this remote, lonely spot, it surprised me with a new trail sign and appeared well-maintained.
Under tall pines, the trail descended into the convergence of drainages for the basin, then traversed the right side of this shallow canyon. I kept seeing blue paint blazes on pines far back from the trail, wondering what they were for – hopefully not logging.
I noticed movement up the slope and spotted two whitetail does. Finally the trail began climbing a rocky slope, below talus, and I came upon stands of blooming ceanothus, incredibly pungent, sweet with a touch of tang like cinnamon. Then the trail rounded a shoulder and I was entering another watershed.
I now faced dramatic yellow rock outcrops across this new canyon. The trail entered a burn scar, and I studied stretches of bare dirt but could see no human tracks. Rounding the head of the canyon I began traversing and climbing an even rockier slope below the outcrops, with a more and more spectacular view south under darkening clouds. I was looking over the western wilderness I’d barely penetrated, a few months ago, and was hoping to explore eventually.
Finally I reached the saddle below the peak the trail is named for, and entered my third watershed of this hike – three watershed views in little over a mile! This view, over the northern crest of the range, was the prize.
From the saddle, the trail traversed a very steep slope below the peak, into open pine forest. My plan was to reach a branch trail that leads to a spring on the west side – I expected that to yield 4 miles and less than 700 vertical feet out-and-back.
On that traverse I found clear indications that a trail crew had been here recently – hence the great condition. But big snags had continued to fall across the trail and were difficult to climb over with my bad shoulder, foot, and knee. And I still saw no human tracks – until finally, within a quarter mile of the spring trail, I found small sneaker prints, probably from a woman who had climbed from the lower trailhead and turned back here.
My map showed that the spring trail started where the main trail began a much steeper descent. I found that spot easily, but the spring trail had apparently become overgrown and disappeared.
The climb back to the saddle would be a test of my foot. As usual, I tried to adjust my gait and use my toes to keep pressure off the ball of the foot. It didn’t seem too bad on such a short hike.
That traverse is a beautiful forest hike, and the upper part of it, through burn scar, is dramatically steep and rocky.
By the time I’d returned to that high saddle, I was elated and surprised to feel like this was one of the most spectacular hikes I’d ever done. But I’ve done amazing hikes – in the highlands of Guatemala, California’s Mount Shasta, Utah’s Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion, the Grand Canyon – not to mention my beloved Mojave Desert.
And recently, I’ve been doing short climbs of rocky peaks. Maybe what makes these short hikes so spectacular is that they’re so far off the beaten path, and so seldom visited. This landscape can’t match the magnificence of those famous “postcard destinations”, but these places are all mine, for weeks, months, or years at a time, in between the rare visits of others.
One side effect of that obscurity is no phone service. You lose your cell signal entering the mountains, and after four hours in Arizona, even on the crest of the range, my phone still showed New Mexico time.
The final stretch, out of the middle watershed into the shallow canyon below the pine park, went quickly. I always hate to leave that dark, rolling basin below the cliffs and talus slopes of the crest, with its towering old-growth pines, abandoned dirt tracks, and concrete picnic tables, but I’m not prepared to camp alone in bear habitat…
Apart from a Jeep SUV parked at the crest trailhead, I still hadn’t seen another vehicle in the past four hours. But a mile below the crest, I came upon the tricked-out Rubicon for the third time, returning down the road, still trundling along at 15 mph and still pulling aside to let me pass.
And nearing the research station in the bottom of the basin, I passed a Mercedes overlander in the small creekside campground. Those things will set you back $200,000.
The hike had taken longer than expected, it was dinnertime when I reached the cafe, and I got a room to avoid driving home in the dark. I was still surprised at how few visitors I’d seen in the mountains on such a beautiful weekend day.
In the morning, on the long, lonely two-lane north, I thought of my California friends, who also love the solitude of the desert but are stuck living in vast metropolitan areas. For twenty years now, I’ve lived on the edge of a huge wilderness area, and every weekend I get to drive these lonely roads to obscure, seldom-visited places of beauty like that pine park in the sky. I would sure love to share this with my friends.
