Mogollon Mountains
Monday, July 31st, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Nabours, Southwest New Mexico.
For the past week, our forecast had predicted the afternoon high to dip below 90, beginning this weekend. So I was looking forward to more hiking options – I wouldn’t be limited to the now-mostly-impassable trails above 9,000 feet.
But the ranges over in Arizona would still be too hot, and as I studied my list, I realized the remaining local trails were either too exposed or spent most of their time at elevations where temps could still exceed 90. I was about to give up when, a half hour before departure time, I remembered the trail I’d tried to reach a few months ago, only to be turned back by a road flooded with snowmelt. Snowmelt! Those were the days.
I’d forgotten to add this trail to my list. It climbs out of a narrow canyon to a ridge that it follows to the 9,000 foot crest, where after five and a half miles it connects with a two-and-a-half mile southbound trail to the 9,800 foot peak I pass on one of my old favorite hikes. Of course, it crosses the burn scar of our 2012 mega-wildfire, but the first three miles had been cleared last fall, and the rest was scheduled to be cleared this fall. So maybe there were enough clues left for me to be able to puzzle out. If I could reach that southern peak – unlikely in this heat – it would be a 16 mile round-trip with 5,700 feet of elevation gain.
Deciding at the last minute, I got a late start. And amazingly, although it was Sunday, a road crew was busy at the halfway point on the highway north, delaying me another fifteen minutes. I had plenty of time to recall how this has long had one of the best road surfaces in our region. But the creek crossing, a raging flood a few months ago, was now bone dry. The trailhead logbook had been removed, but a rocky section of the road requires high clearance so I figured this trail sees few visitors.
Choosing this trail had involved some denial and wishful thinking. The trailhead lies at 5,100 feet, almost a thousand feet lower than my home, so today’s high was likely to reach 95 there. And most of the climb up the long ridge would be exposed, through scrub and open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland. It’s a continuous climb from the trailhead, and at an average 14 percent grade, it would be the steepest trail I know of anywhere. I’ve done steeper bushwhacks, but trails are generally routed with gentler grades. I was surprised, but also pleased – this is the kind of trail I like, and the steeper the ascent, the more rewarding the descent.
The trail begins by climbing two hundred vertical feet out of the narrow canyon to the top of the ridge, which is near the lower edge of a dissected alluvial bench. This bench forms a broad, gently sloping skirt below the western wall of the range. Parallel streams dissect it, either into flat-topped mesas or long, narrow ridges like this one.
The sky was clear, the air was still, I was totally exposed and sweating like a pig as I labored upwards, wondering when I would either get too hot and turn back, or reach the shade of a ponderosa forest above 7,000 feet. The ridgeline consists of a series of little peaks or humps, each of which the trail climbed over at between 20 and 30 percent grades. And from these, the 9,000 foot peaks and ridges above beckoned.
Reading the trail, I soon confirmed no one else had been up this trail besides cattle, probably not since the trail work last September. The cattle sign was really old, but the trail was in great shape, and while suffering in the heat, I looked forward to an easy descent later.
Eventually I left the totally exposed scrub zone behind and began passing between pinyon pines and junipers where I could step off occasionally into some momentary shade. Radiant heat was my nemesis – it felt like the low 90s on the exposed trail, and the mid-70s when I stepped into the shade. Finally I surmounted the steepest grade yet, traversing a prominent hill, and came to a saddle with a big cairn.
Past the saddle was another steep hill, and traversing the north slope of that I encountered my first ponderosa pines. But then the cleared trail ended at a shallow slope covered with bunchgrass and strewn with charred deadfall.
After some scouting, I found some pink ribbons that had been hidden by charred snags falling after last year’s trail work, and eventually picked up a faint trail on the high side of the clearing. The trail crew had continued up the ridge, cutting some brush but leaving the deadfall, and soon I came to oak thickets where the old tread had been completely obliterated by the erosion of post-fire sheet flows.
Miraculously, I was still able to find an occasional pink ribbon that beckoned me forward. Most of these ribbons were in the midst of thickets, so you couldn’t see them until you pushed your way in. Some of them led to impenetrable blowdown that I had to back out and circumvent.
Finally I reached the last ribbon. Beyond it was what looked like the ghost of the old trail, but it was completely blocked by low shrubs and deadfall for as far as I could see.
I turned back, descending a hundred yards or so through the maze of scrub oak. It was still early, storm clouds were forming over the crest and providing occasional shade, along with breezes, that cooled me off. I still had plenty of energy and wanted to keep going, but the slopes above were getting steeper and rockier, and without a route, I would soon be lost and blocked by a rock wall or boulder pile.
I kept checking the topo maps I’d brought, but the landscape I could see from this thicket seemed nothing like the topography shown on the maps. I began to suspect the trail workers had deviated from the original route.
There was an opening in the maze that led south over the ridge. I explored that for a couple hundred yards, but was no wiser for it. I turned back and hiked back up to the last ribbon. I’d pushed through thickets before, so I chastised myself and began forcing my way up the trace that I thought might be the old trail. After climbing over a bunch of deadfall, I reached a point where the “trail” became a deeply eroded drainage, ending in a wall of shrubs that was just too dense for me.
So I gave up and, with difficulty, found my way back down through the maze. But I wasn’t happy, and when I reached the point at the lower edge of the oak thicket where the trail crew had stopped clearing brush, I stopped again and started feeling guilty about not trying harder.
So for a second time, I turned back, re-climbing the two hundred vertical feet and fighting my way back through that quarter mile of maze. Along the way, I picked up bits of pink ribbon I found lying on the ground, so I could add my own ribbons past the last ones tied by the trail crew, to guide my return.
I’d seen quite a few birds, but nothing unusual. Flocks of ravens were circling, vultures rocked on thermals, and finally I saw a big raptor hunting among the peaks far above. When a hawk appeared to give the bigger bird scale, I realized it had to be an eagle. It hunted up there for quite a while but was too far for a picture.
This time, I climbed a deeply eroded slope crisscrossed by deadfall, above the thicket that blocked the gully where I’d stopped before. I climbed to the base of the steep slope above. I saw two peaks above me, where my map showed a level ridge. They looked to be at least a thousand feet higher, and I assumed one was the named peak on the map. The slope ahead of me looked impassable, and I had no idea where the old route went, or if I was even close to it. This was as far as I would get.
On the way down, I untied my ribbons so as not to mislead anyone. I became convinced the trail crew had deviated and was hacking a new route up this ridge, one which was likely doomed. I’d captured some GPS waypoints with my messaging device and at home, would compare them with the trail shown on the maps to see how far off they’d gone. I planned to notify USFS as well as the equestrian trail crew.
But in the meantime, the clouds were dispersing and a fierce heat was radiating off the trail onto my face. I figured the ground, which was gravel and hard-packed dirt, had stored and accumulated heat throughout this record heat wave. It was like walking across the crust of an active lava flow, so I descended the steep, treacherous surface as fast as was safe. My only consolation was the broad vista ahead, from the valley 3,000 feet below me to the series of blue mountain ranges on the far side, ending on the horizon at the barely visible Mogollon Rim.
Finally I reached a point where I could turn around and get a view of the crest I’d been climbing toward. Now I saw that the landmark peak and most of the crest had been hidden from me when I was in that oak maze. And when I got home and checked my GPS waypoints, I learned I’d covered much less ground than expected – 7 miles in 6-1/2 hours. I’d been on the right trail until that last pink ribbon – from there, the trail turns 90 degrees left and begins winding its way up toward the hidden peak, far north of where I’d gone. I’d gotten stuck below slopes that hid the upper landscape, so there was no way I could’ve found a route on my own, let alone reconnecting with the old trail.
In the canyon bottom, even though I’d parked it facing west with the reflective sunshade over the windshield, my vehicle was like a pizza oven. I opened all the doors and left the AC on high for a while, but even so the sweat was pouring off me as I drove out to the highway.
It was after 5 on a Sunday, but the road crew was still at work, resurfacing a highway that didn’t need it. The national bureaucracy and infrastructure most of us believe we need is actually a juggernaut of habitat destruction and waste. But people cling to the evil they know, imagining the only alternative is chaos and suffering.
Monday, August 21st, 2023: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
My twice-weekly hiking routine had been disrupted since April, and the Southwest heat wave had mostly prevented me from hiking for a month and a half – the last serious hike was during a brief cool-off a month ago.
An old friend had taken her life last week, and no hike was going to overcome the melancholy, but the forecast showed the heat wave fading during the next couple of weeks. I re-checked the online trip reports for my old favorite crest hike on the west side, that had been blocked by a massive blowdown in March, and found one from a lady who’d hiked through there at the end of May, mentioning only a few trees down. So with no expectations, I decided to give it a try. It’s a challenging hike and I knew I’d lost a lot of conditioning, and depending on the weather, solar heating might be intense on the exposed crest. But the day was forecast to be windy – that might help.
As I approached the trailhead, I was glad to see a cloud bank over the mountains – wondering how long it would last?
Unsurprisingly, there were few entries in the trailhead log during the past two hot months, and the farthest anyone had gone was the spring at 4-1/2 miles. But one hiker thanked the Forest Service for trail work, which was encouraging.
And a few yards up the trail there was a new wooden sign, to replace the metal “Warning: Trail Not Maintained” sign that’s been there since the 2012 wildfire. This permanent-looking sign announced the trail is unmaintained past Camp Creek Saddle. That suggested two possibilities: first, that the eight miles to the saddle might actually be cleared now, and second, that the remaining twelve miles to the crest trail have been permanently abandoned.
I was excited about the first possibility. Despite being in poor shape, if the trail was clear I was determined to make it to the saddle, a 16-mile round trip with over 5,000′ of elevation gain. I would do it if even if it meant coming back in the dark.
The second possibility was depressing, since this is the last potentially maintainable link in the vast network that used to enable backpackers to traverse the crest of the range.
Unsurprisingly, again, the creek was dry when I reached the canyon bottom, but vegetation was lush in the old burn scar due to our wet winter. And even without running water, I encountered a painted redstart as soon as I left the burn scar and entered the riparian canopy.
Then, two miles into the hike where the blowdown had started, I found that the dozens of big logs across the trail had indeed been cut, probably in May after I called the ranger station to report it.
The work had been done by the equestrians, and I was grateful, but it still bothered me that they were using this to promote their own agenda, going so far as to brand one of the cut logs with their acronym.
Normally, at this time of year, there would be thunderstorms with rain and hail and lots of wildflowers and fungi. In this drought I found only a few flowers and no fresh fungi. Buy the wildlife seemed to be thriving – in rapid succession I came upon an Arizona/Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake, a whitetail deer buck, a Downy Woodpecker, and a rattlesnake.
Panting with effort as the grade got steeper, I made it to the bottom of the switchbacks and found that the big tree across the trail there had indeed been cut. But that’s where the equestrians’ trail maintenance had ended.
Quite a bit of new blowdown slowed me down on the switchbacks, and the wind increased as I trudged upward, exceeding 40 mph in more exposed sites. But clouds still drifted across the sun, and both the wind and the shade really helped. I even felt a chill when under a particularly dark cloud, but as soon as the sun returned it felt like the mid-80s again. The spring at 9,100 feet was still flowing, and I wondered if I would run out of water trying to reach the distant saddle. Nice to know fresh water was available here.
Finally I rounded the corner of the last long switchback and the crest was in sight. I hadn’t seen human tracks anywhere on this trail, and I figured I might be the only person to make it up here since last fall.
I crossed the 9,500′ saddle on the shoulder of the peak and headed down the trail on the back side, through the burn scar dense with regrowth of aspen and locust. The wind was coming from the south, and when I reached the first small stand of intact forest a big limb snapped off and fell a couple yards to my right. I stopped, then figured I’d be safer in the midst of the forest, so I kept going. But then another limb snapped off and fell a few yards to my left. I was pretty sure the wind here was exceeding 50 mph, so I was paying a lot of attention to the canopy.
As usual, the trail down the back side, leading to a long ridge and eventually Camp Creek Saddle, was an obstacle course of thorny locust and blowdown. Virtually no trail work has been done here for at least five years. The burn was patchy, and small stands of alpine mixed-conifer forest alternate with jungles of regrowth. I’d fought my way to the distant saddle almost exactly two years ago, but I knew I wasn’t up for that today. I was just trying to make it to a tiny saddle, the first low point in the ridge, where there was a stand of forest on the south side where I could stop and rest.
But about halfway down I came upon a pile of really fresh bear scat, and started making a lot more noise. Then I saw the first hawk, circling around the little peak above my destination saddle, and heard it screech. Soon it was joined by another, and they poised together in the face of the wind and were joined by a third. The wind was fierce but they kept trying to hold a formation together, right over my head. They stuck around for ten or fifteen minutes before drifting away together.
I had a nice rest in the shade of the forest, while staying vigilant on the wind in the canopy. I was deep enough I felt somewhat protected. I also noticed a pine that wasn’t ponderosa – you have to be really focused to tell the difference, and it’s common to just assume the only conifers in this habitat are ponderosa and doug fir.
Finally I made my back up through the jungle, to the shoulder of the high peak where I climbed to the little rocky overlook. I knew the wind would be at its worst here, but I always love the view, over the heart of the range on the east and the open country to the west.
When I finally reached the long switchbacks down from the crest and got some relief from the wind, I was lucky to encounter a solitary swallowtail butterfly. And I stopped to examine a small pine that had blown down across the trail recently enough that some needles were green. I figured it was the same species as the trees I’d seen on the crest – probably a Southwestern White Pine, which must be fairly common here if you know to look for them.
Steller’s jays had been harrassing me all day, but partway down the trail in the canyon bottom I sensed something rising in the corner of my eye, and noticed a shadowy form settling on a low branch, only 30-40 feet away. It was an owl! A small one, only about 12-14 inches head to tail, but when I got home and looked it up, I found it was almost certainly a rare Mexican Spotted Owl, probably a young one. It just sat there and watched me, obviously curious, until I finally had to go.
Shortly after that, I heard a screech overhead, and the hawks returned, swooping low through the canopy this time. I’ve seen young migrating eagles behaving like this, traveling in flocks and showing off their acrobatic skills. What a day for wildlife! I began to wonder if the heat wave and corresponding absence of humans has allowed wildlife to flourish more in these habitats. Despite the displacement of indigenous peoples, wilderness designation is valuable if only to keep us civilized people under control – we just can’t be trusted not to destroy nature.
Monday, September 25th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
It’d been almost exactly a year since a catastrophic flash flood washed out the road to one of my favorite nearby trails. At least I remembered it as one of my faves. The main road up the mesa leads to two trails, and I’d checked this one several times during the past year. As of April 30, the road was still impassable, and since July, the weather had been too hot to even consider this lower-elevation trail.
This Sunday was forecast to be clear and warm – in the low 80s in town. I headed out, and lo and behold, when I reached the turnoff, the “Road Not Passable” sign had been removed.
In fact, this far into a drought, the big creek was completely dry at the crossing.
This trail starts at 5,300 feet and winds up a shallow, rolling basin to the foot of a 7,700 foot mountain, where it switchbacks up over a 6,500 foot saddle and enters a big new watershed lined with white rock pinnacles. Back there, it traverses the forested upper slope of the mountain to a narrow ridge that trends northward like a bridge for a little over a mile, with a spectacular view north across a deep canyon to the crest of the range many miles away.
Then the trail drops into the wild, upstream canyon of the big creek that was dry where I crossed it on the way in, in long traverses and switchbacks, descending over 800 feet to where the creek flows perennially. Thus the attraction of this trail is crossing multiple watersheds, gaining spectacular views, getting way back in the wilderness to a place where you feel really remote, isolated, and fully immersed in wild nature.
With the road recently repaired and our heat wave ending, I turned out to be the first non-wild creature to hit this trail in a very long time – probably in the past year. And the drought meant that I was facing a fairly clear trail with very little overgrowth. But what I’d forgotten is that almost all of this trail is lined with rocks – really hard on my problem foot.
And like last week’s hike, although the air temperature was mild, the sun was damn hot, with not a cloud in the sky and not a hint of a breeze on that initial climb.
Past the saddle, I began to get a little cooling breeze. Having resigned myself to a hike where I spent most of my time concentrating on my footing, I made decent time past the saddle and across the seemingly interminable traverse of the mountain’s back side, reaching the next milestone, the small level “park” lined with tall pines – a rare and always welcome source of shade.
From the park there’s a lot of serious up and down as you head north on the narrow ridge. The latter half of this traverses a burn scar which is popular with wildlife. I spooked a whitetail buck there, but after he first ran uphill away from me, I next spotted him running downhill to a vantage point behind me.
Cliffs abound in this landscape, and cliff swallows zipped past so quickly they were almost gone before I’d noticed them. Then I came upon a dove that simply trundled up the trail a short distance ahead of me, reluctant to fly away.
Leaving the ridge, the descent into the remote canyon cooled me off, despite being mostly through burn scar. My foot was hurting already, but this stretch of trail is relatively rock-free, and I had pain pills for the return.
This is a trail which is not shown accurately on any maps I’ve been able to find. My mapping platform omits most of the switchbacks and reports the out-and-back distance at a little over 13 miles and almost 3,000 feet of elevation gain, but with the switchbacks and new routing, I’ve estimated it at 15 miles and almost 3,500 feet.
The creek is hidden beneath a deciduous canopy in a dense corridor of vegetation, so you hear its wonderful sound before you come upon it. I laid down on a gravel bar beside the water and spent fifteen minutes trying to sort out the trees overhead.
The climb back to the ridge would seem daunting if it didn’t unfold in many distinct sections, with increasingly rewarding views. But my foot was getting worse, so I popped a pill, knowing it wouldn’t take effect for another 45 minutes.
Out in the exposed burn scar of the ridge, I suddenly noticed a small hawk trying to catch a tiny bird. The two of them, hunter and prey, spiraled toward me, only a dozen feet above the hillside, until when they were right overhead the hawk noticed me and backed off. I’d accidentally saved the little bird from being eaten.
I also noticed another whitetail – or maybe the same one.
Past the pine park, it’s mostly downhill, and the rocks on the trail get really bad. Constantly focused on where to put the next foot, I became pretty good at it, but I still rolled my already weak ankle a total of three times, and swore to wrap it in the future.
The worst rocks are on the descent from the saddle to the final basin. It was there that I swore never to hike this trail again. It’s just too damn hard on the foot and too dangerous for the ankle. I suppose young people could do this kind of thing without even noticing it, but it always amazes me that a trail would even be built and maintained across such rocky ground.
On the plus side, throughout the final two-mile trudge down the low basin, quail were constantly exploding out of the brush next to me, over and over, every few minutes. It may have been the same coveys, just moving downhill ahead of me. Never seen anything like it.
I was exhausted after the hour-and-a-half drive home, but while unloading the vehicle I suddenly came upon a chicken – a blonde hen – in my back yard. She circled around me, clucking, then approached tentatively.
I hear a rooster from time to time and remembered my neighbor mentioning somebody a block away who has chickens, so I called next door. Meanwhile, the hen fluttered up onto the tall fence between our houses. My neighbor said it might be the people in the next block, so he walked over to check. It was starting to get dark, and the chicken stayed up on the fence.
The guy down the street arrived, along with my neighbor and his wife. “Is it blonde?” he asked, in a strong accent. I beckoned him over and showed him the chicken. “Yes! There she is! I won’t have to tell my wife we lost her!” He reached and grabbed the hen, cradling her in his arms. By that time, another neighbor had showed up in my driveway, carrying her kitten. My neighborhood has turned into a sort of commune.
Monday, October 9th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Ring, Southwest New Mexico.
I’d come up with a theory that the pain in the outside of my foot was due to a combination of weak toes and a long-term shift of weight from the ball of my foot to the outside. Both were habits adopted to protect the ball of my foot from chronic inflammation – along with wearing stiff-soled hiking boots. So for this Sunday’s hike I wanted a fairly easy trail to practice correcting my gait.
All the trails on the fringes of our wilderness are either in bad shape or involve steep climbs, so I decided to drive up to the heart of the mountains and take a ridge trail that runs westward 14 miles, ultimately connecting with the major west-side creek I hiked eastward to a couple weeks ago. Below this east-west ridge lies a narrow canyon in which a creek drains eastward, and the map shows a connector trail from the ridge down to the creek, that I could use to make a loop hike of about 14 miles round-trip.
I knew from a previous partial hike on this trail that the grades are gentle, and the ridge is only 400 feet above the canyon, so it shouldn’t be too hard on my foot. Even better, the trail had been reported cleared last year, and I didn’t remember it being very rocky.
The morning was chilly, but the sky only showed a few distant filaments of cloud and the high was forecast to be in the low 70s. Trails in this area are popular with tourists, and there were couple of horse trailers, a pickup, and a school bus from Colorado parked around the trailhead. I found it fairly easy to concentrate on my gait, and the climb to the ridgetop warmed me up. It’s 3-1/2 miles to the first junction, where I’d turned south on my past visit. This ridge offers long views to the north and east, but nothing particularly spectacular. It’s just nice being on a ridge, having views to both sides, and despite the “mindful walking”, I made good time.
Past the junction I entered unfamiliar ground. Despite being an easy trail, it maintained interest by crossing a series of knife-edge saddles with yawning views, then traversing mostly bare slopes consisting of white conglomerate terraces. Most of the canyons in this area are lined with bluffs of white conglomerate, sometimes containing caves where prehistoric people built modest cliff dwellings.
The habitat alternated between scrub, pinyon-juniper-oak woodland, and open ponderosa pine forest. But the ridgetop trail was mostly exposed, and the air was mostly still. Solar radiation made it feel like the 80s.
I was still moving at a good pace, and based on the time it took me to reach the first junction, I started watching for the connector trail that drops into the canyon on my left. But I kept going, half hour by half hour segment, and never saw any sign of another trail.
From the lower part of the ridge, the view to the northeast had been the main attraction. But now, a series of peaks to the southwest formed my horizon, getting closer and closer across the canyon of the creek below. Whereas most of the ridgetop is burn scar, the canyon and slopes on my left were darkly forested with ponderosa pine.
Trudging onward, focusing relentlessly on my gait, I began to realize I’d somehow missed the connector trail. No problem – I’d just turn back when half my time was gone. But my foot was getting tired and I wanted to stop somewhere where there was a nice shady spot to rest. Those were few and far between on this exposed ridgetop.
Eventually I came to a small clearing with a spreading juniper, took off my boots and relaxed for a while in the shade. I figured I’d gone between 7 and 8 miles.
On the way back, I looked more closely for the connector trail, and never saw the slightest sign of it. In fact, it doesn’t exist on Forest Service maps – it probably ended up on my mapping platform because some dude bushwhacked down there once, capturing his route on GPS.
Cumulus clouds had been building on the northwest horizon, forming a dark mass that gradually loomed over me. Thunder was booming almost continuously up in the clouds, but I couldn’t see any lightning yet. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking this exposed ridge in a storm.
First I felt a few drops, and then it began to fall in earnest, so I pulled on my poncho and speeded up. Both feet were hurting, and I had a cramp in my left hip that was making my whole leg numb.
I walked in rain for a half hour, thunder rolling overhead, as the storm spread to cover the entire visible landscape. When the rain moved off, I could see lightning far in the east, but thunder still boomed overhead. The trail becomes even more exposed at the east end of the ridge, where I began to feel really vulnerable. I couldn’t remember ever hurting this much at the end of a hike. But my theory had worked – there was no more pain on the outside of my foot. And on the final descent to the trailhead, the sun came out and the colors were glorious.
It’s a long, difficult drive home through the mountains, where I faced sporadic rain and switched into 4wd to keep from sliding off a precipice. Town was dry, but within a block of home the heavens opened up and we got a brief but heavy downpour.
Monday, October 16th, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Sapillo, Southwest New Mexico.
The medical scare and trip to Tucson had screwed up this week’s schedule. I probably should’ve skipped my Sunday hike, but it felt like the only thing I could salvage to feel good about the week.
But I got up late, so I would have to find a shorter trail close to town. The one I picked is almost 12 miles out-and-back, starting from a long dirt road and descending over 2,000 feet into the canyon of one of our biggest creeks, just before the mouth where it joins the river. I prefer to start out climbing and finish by descending, but I figured it was “only 2,000 feet” – I’m used to twice that in my Sunday hikes.
The dirt road begins 18 miles north of town, about a 40 minute drive on the highway. I’d never explored it before, and was mildly surprised to find it pretty damn rugged, with a lot of exposed bedrock and steep, winding grades, so that it took me another 40 minutes to go another 7 miles. The long 8,600 foot high ridge that I’ve hiked many times loomed above on my left – this road skirts its steep north slope – and I got a new view of the burn scars from the 2020 wildfire.
Rounding a rocky bend into a side gully, I surprised a small hawk which had just caught a squirrel. Struggling to take off with its heavy prey, it literally dragged the squirrel through the dirt until it reached the dropoff on the other side and could soar across the gully into the lower forest.
I didn’t meet any humans on the road, but there was a pickup with extended ramp, and a detached flatbed trailer, parked at the trailhead. There was also a corral and lots of cowshit, all more than a week old.
The trail starts in ponderosa forest, down a shallow canyon next to a barbed-wire fence. I saw only one human footprint, going down; the other recent visitors had been on horseback, weeks or months ago.
The fence soon veered off, and although the creek was dry, lush vegetation and rocky bluffs made the canyon pretty. I hadn’t studied the map in detail and was surprised when, after a mile and a half, the trail began climbing away on the west slope. And I was really disappointed to meet my nemesis, the dreaded volcanic cobbles. My feet were not looking forward to this.
All I could think of, picking my way carefully over those rocks, was that I was adding to the elevation I’d have to regain on the way back. But as usual, I kept going, and was finally surprised to reach a dirt forest road that didn’t show up on my map. The trail apparently continued on the road.
And the road ran, fairly level, for a mile and a quarter, out a finger of ridge in a stark corridor that had been logged, partly as a firebreak and partly by woodcutters. Near the end, I heard chopping, and encountered a guy swinging an axe, splitting logs that had been cut into short sections by the Feds. “Free wood!” he enthused. His truck was nowhere to be seen so I assumed he was expecting a ride later.
On the positive side, I got occasional glimpses of the big canyons ahead. And finally the road ended at the wilderness boundary, and I faced the descent.
The trail into the big canyon started steep and even rockier than before. I immediately realized I should give up and turn back. But then I saw somebody coming up, in bright colors. It was a young through-hiker, finishing the national trail in reverse.
I’d read somewhere, recently, that the latest fad in the through-hiking subculture is to compete for the most outlandish outfit, but this was the first time I’d seen it in person. Forget the sleek, expensive space-age creations from REI – this kid could’ve just stepped out of a flea-market circus, his broad floppy hat ringed with big rainbow-colored fake flowers, and below that a garish striped shirt and mismatched paisley pants. Imagine tramping alone through thousands of miles of federal wilderness and national forest, camping along remote streams and rivers, just waiting for that moment when you can impress another young hiker – hopefully the opposite sex – with your bizarre costume!
I asked how far he’d come today, and he said about twelve miles – and he’d hated to leave the river, with little or no water between here and town. I realized the mountain biker I’d met cutting logs on the real national trail, earlier this year, had been right. No through hiker uses the official trail anymore, when they can follow the river instead.
We talked awhile, but if I was going to do this I needed to get going. He said “Enjoy the views!” which I did find encouraging. I wondered how much water he was carrying, and how far he would get tonight. We were 17 miles from the highway, on the other side of the high ridge, with another 12 miles from there to town.
The views did get better, but the upper part of the trail was a nightmare of rocks. My masochistic side took over – I’d come this far, I had to get somewhere nice before turning back. Down and down I went into the big canyon, and much of the trail was exposed, on a still day with solar heating.
I knew exactly where I was headed, because I’d hiked to the mouth of this canyon last year, along the opposite slope. That had been a much more spectacular hike because the opposite slope mostly consists of grassy meadows tended prehistorically by Native Americans, yielding views both long and deep, into the narrow, sycamore-lined canyon.
Still, it’s always exciting to hike deep into backcountry and encounter a site you’ve reached before, on an equally long trek through completely different terrain.
This is the driest time I’ve ever experienced in this region, and the creek was much lower, but still running. I was already in a lot of pain from the descent – I tried sitting on a log for a while, but knew I needed to get going. When planning the day, I’d ignored how much longer it would take to ascend than to descend. I would probably end the hike in the dark, starving and barely able to walk.
On the ascent, I discovered that walking too fast on the descent had given me shin splints and a sore knee. But I had to keep going, and I knew the hardest part was waiting near the top. I just shut down my mind and kept trudging, slipping and stubbing and stumbling among the rocks.
I made it up, and the hot sun was getting mercifully low as I paced out that interminable woodcutter road. The outlandish through-hiker’s footprints disappeared – he’d apparently bummed a ride with the woodcutter!
The trail down into the side canyon was even harder than I’d remembered, and the sun was setting by the time I reached the bottom. My entire lower body was on fire, but I knew the climb up this canyon to the trailhead would be easier. Dusk was beginning when I reached the vehicle – and the pickup and trailer were gone, probably belonging to the woodcutter and a partner.
I drove the 40 minutes back out the dirt road in the dusk. About halfway, I suddenly noticed a big bull elk standing on the bank just above the road, like a ghost.
