Southeast Arizona
Sunday, January 24th, 2021: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
It’s been a while since I posted a hiking Dispatch! Fear not, I’m still hiking. I’ve just been repeating hikes I’ve done so many times already, there was nothing new to report.
I expected this Sunday to be the same story. Boy was I wrong.
Sure, it looked like some weather was coming, for a change. We’ve had a disappointing winter so far – after a freak snowstorm in late October, nothing but blue skies, day in and day out. But when I got up Sunday morning, a little snow was forecast for the afternoon, and a lot more was forecast for Monday.
Just in case, I switched my 2wd pickup truck for the 4wd Sidekick, which I’d set aside months ago because the transmission was getting marginal. I didn’t expect any snow where I was going – farther south and lower elevation – but if there was anything on the highway when I drove back in the evening, the truck wouldn’t be able to handle it.
The horizon was obscured by clouds as I drove southwest, but the rest of the sky was blue. Imagine my surprise when I crested the pass and got my first view of my destination – the entire mountain range engulfed in a snowstorm!
I actually laughed out loud, and couldn’t keep from smiling as I drove across the big basin toward the mouth of the canyon. I was so sick of clear skies, the Southwest badly needs snow, and I was visualizing hiking through a magical landscape, well-prepared for anything in my winter outfit.
The only challenge I anticipated was getting enough mileage and elevation on this hike. The Sidekick would enable me to drive the 4wd road all the way to the trailhead, which meant I would need to add mileage and elevation somehow when I reached the crest trail – chaining together some spur trails, maybe climbing an extra peak. Shouldn’t be a problem.
By the time I entered the mountains and started up the canyon road, the storm seemed to have pulled back. I hoped it wouldn’t fade away.
But when I finally reached the trailhead, parked, and shouldered my pack, sleet was bouncing down through the trees and collecting on the wet ground.
Sleet continued to fall lightly as I climbed the mile-and-a-half to the waterfall overlook, eventually turning to fine, granular snow. There was already old snow in shaded stretches of the trail, with somebody’s footprints. There’d been snow at high elevations when I last came here, in early November, but this must’ve fallen since.
The waterfall was frozen like last time, but with even more accumulation. I assume it stays frozen every winter, all winter long – it always reminds me how ignorant most people are about the Southwest. Nothing but hot sand and saguaro cactus, right?
Past the overlook, there was a lot more snow on the trail, a couple inches of fresh powder, and occasional patches of old snow underneath, still with somebody’s footprints. Mildly annoying – I always like to be first – but it’s been almost three months since I was last here.
I reached the mouth of the hanging canyon that feeds the waterfall and traversed toward the creek bottom. A lot more snow up here. As I approached the first creek crossing, I remembered how the creek had been frozen solid back in November. This narrow canyon bottom is apparently shaded all winter and stays very cold. And whereas the snow on the traverse had only been a couple inches deep, once I hit the canyon bottom, it was up to a foot deep. The frozen creek was completely buried. And I suddenly found myself in a blizzard.
Snow was blowing horizontal, straight in my face. The hood of my shell jacket has a nice overhang. I zipped it all the way up and cinched it down around my face. I walked with my head bent as far forward as I could while still watching my path. But no matter what I did, the snow still blew straight in my face.
The snow was so deep in this stretch that I started to get worried. Assuming I followed my plan, I’d be returning down this canyon four hours from now. After four hours of blizzard, there could be a couple feet of snow in this canyon.
This was not fun anymore. I wasn’t ready to give up, but I needed a break from the blizzard. After a half mile or so in the canyon bottom, the trail would climb back up the slope and traverse to the Forest Service cabin just below the crest. I seemed to recall the cabin had a little landing outside the front door, with a small roof overhang. If I could just reach the cabin, I might be able to shelter there, eat some snacks, drink some water, and regroup.
By the time I reached the cabin, I knew that was as far as I was going to get. This was ridiculous – the blizzard just kept getting worse.
And of course the cabin overhang didn’t protect me at all from snow that was driving at me horizontally. I gave up on my usual lunch and grabbed my emergency protein bar, but it was frozen! I had to break it with my fingers to get pieces small enough to chew.
Not expecting snow, I hadn’t brought my insulated Gore-Tex ski gloves. Until I left the cabin, I’d been wearing wool glove liners and keeping my hands in the pockets of my jacket. After eating the protein bar I pulled my thick wool gloves on over the glove liners, but my fingers had already gotten cold.
I’ve nearly gotten frostbite many times in my life, and I swear it’s made my fingers so vulnerable that once they get cold, it’s almost impossible to get them warm again. I never seem to learn. All the fingers and thumbs were burning inside the double layer of wool, so I speeded up. I remembered how I’d survived the coldest night in recorded history riding an open boxcar over the Cascade crest in Oregon, by walking back and forth the length of the car hundreds of times. I began flexing my fingers and thumbs inside the jacket pockets. I was not looking forward to dropping back into the canyon bottom, but the trail was treacherous and I could only go so fast.
I just kept going and flexing my burning fingers. It took about 45 minutes to reach the mouth of the hanging canyon, flexing and burning the whole time. Not fun. At least the rest of my body was warm – I was wearing long johns and wool socks, and the Gore-Tex in my boots was holding up well.
The mouth of that canyon is an overlook in itself, sitting 3,000′ above the floor of the range, with a very steep drop-off. But everything was obscured by the storm when I got there. I could see clouds just beginning to recede from the opposite slope.
From there, the trail switchbacks down toward the waterfall overlook. And something miraculous happened. Shortly after I started descending, my fingers stopped burning. They suddenly felt fine. Even the air here felt warmer. That hanging canyon – which I’ve always really liked – seems to create its own climate, isolated from the rest of the range. In winter, it’s like a deep freeze.
Now I was pissed. I’d planned a 12-14 mile hike, but this would end up being little more than 7 miles round-trip. By the time I got home, I would’ve spent more time driving than hiking. What a waste.
But as I made my way down, the clouds began to open, revealing layer after layer of landscape. Blue sky and sunlight peeked through in places, spotlighting patches of forest and rock formations miles away. It was like an epic movie unfolding as I descended.
I love the way snow transforms everything in the environment, and of course I had a front row seat here – this snow had just fallen, I was the first to experience it. At least four inches had fallen during the past hour and a half – my ascending footprints had been completely obliterated. Lots of animals had crossed the trail since morning – javalina, deer, bobcat – even a fox chasing a rabbit.
As usual, I’d seen several flocks of dark-eyed juncos along the trail. And returning, near the trailhead, I came upon sections of trail where dozens of juncos had tramped all over the place, creating dense, intricate patterns.
There was only a couple inches of snow at the trailhead, and as I drove down the incredibly rugged 4wd road, I emerged from snow into rain, which continued on and off all the way home. I hope we get more!
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 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.
