Little Dry
First Steps in the First Wilderness Part 3: May
Monday, May 6th, 2019: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Third time a charm? Or perhaps a rude awakening.
With the warm, dry days of May upon us, I was looking for a canyon hike this time. A chance to spend most of the day in the shade of riparian forest alongside a babbling brook. Like the previous hikes into our first wilderness area, this would end in a climb to the crest, but only if I felt like it after walking up the canyon bottom a few miles. And I didn’t expect to feel like it, because the last big hike, a thirteen-miler, had taken a lot out of me. I was beginning to suspect that I’d reached the limit of what my aging body was capable of, so this hike was intended to be more modest.
I was starting late, after 11am, but there was only one vehicle ahead of me at the trailhead, and a half mile up the trail, I ran into its owner, an older woman with a small dog, on her way out already.
What little information was available in advance suggested that at least the lower part of this canyon was somewhat developed, with a cabin and some sort of mine. And the first thing I noticed was the abundance of invasive species, from the countless dandelions that blanketed the trail to the noxious tree-of-heaven sprouting on the banks of the creek. All brought in by the horses and cattle of the pioneers.
But this canyon had a lot more water too – probably four times as much as the previous canyon, rushing down from snowfields on one of the highest peaks in the range.
And wildlife! I found myself wading through clouds of butterflies the whole way. Massive dumps of black bear scat fresh this morning, so I made sure to project plenty of noise to announce my presence.
The terrain a little more rugged, with huge boulders, cliffs, and pinnacles looming everywhere. A mile or so in, I came to the abandoned cabin, and a little later, the mine, and after that it was all wilderness.
The endorphins kicked in and I was feeling good enough to climb out of the canyon to the saddle on the crest, which had been the absolute farthest I’d planned to hike. It was a long, steep, virtually straight slog through mostly burned forest in a side canyon.
About a third of the way up, I suddenly heard barking from higher up the canyon ahead of me. Just three or four sharp barks, lower-pitched – nothing like a hunting hound or a coyote would make.
Normally, you hear a bark, you expect either hikers or hunters, but I knew I was the only human in this whole watershed. There’d been no footprints or hoofprints in the canyon bottom. Could it be wolves? I didn’t really even know whether wolves could bark.
I stood stock still and waited. After a few minutes, another bark, much closer, coming from the slope opposite me, where the view was blocked by trees. And another bark, already farther down the slope. Whatever it was, it was moving fast, covering twenty or thirty yards between barks, over steep, rocky terrain.
I kept waiting, but whatever it was, it was long gone.
A little farther, I came upon the bleached, scattered bones of a cow, strewn along the trail for a few hundred yards.
The view at the top of the saddle was blocked by post-fire saplings. Still feeling good, I continued on up the trail, without a map, not knowing where it went from here, but excited about gaining some more elevation. The end of the next ridge was blocked by a huge rock outcrop, but the trail dipped and went around it, so I kept going, traversing into a new side canyon, hoping to eventually top out on a new crest with a new view.
I came upon a section of trail very popular with elk, littered with piles of scat. But I knew I was pushing my body and would pay for it on the way back, so I finally stopped, in the midst of a stark burn scar with a spectacular view, and had a brief snack before turning back.
This trail didn’t deliver as much elevation gain as the previous wilderness hike, but it sure provided better footing! Despite being “unmaintained,” and blocked by countless deadfalls, the footing was mostly smooth dirt and dry leaves, which made my problem foot very happy.
After the long traverse down the side canyon, I felt relieved to be back in the canyon bottom, figuring a walk-in-the-park back to the trailhead. But this is where my body started giving out.
Hiking down the main canyon seemed to take forever, and I gradually lost most of the strength in my lower body, from hips to ankles, so that in some stretches I was stumbling every third step. I kept thinking “the cabin’s got to be around the next bend, and after that it’s only another mile or so.” But the canyon just kept twisting and turning, between its cliff walls.
I got to a deep swimming hole I’d spotted on the way in, and climbed down to it, thinking an ice-cold plunge might just be the ticket. But the rocks and banks beside the pool were swarming with ants!
Finally I reached the cabin. I was feeling just about dead, but I knew I had a climb ahead of me to get back out of the canyon. The final stretch was just a blur of aches and pains and fatigue, and after that I had about an hour’s drive back to town.
I’d worn long pants this time, to avoid the rash and sunburn I’d gotten when hiking in shorts. But when I rolled up my pant legs, back at the vehicle, to loosen my tight boots, I discovered my lower legs were again covered with an angry rash. What I’d thought was sunburn or an allergy was actually the infamous “hiker’s rash” or exercise-induced vasculitis, a poorly-known condition in which the circulatory function of your lower legs fails and your blood vessels become engorged and inflamed. Apparently it’s incurable – you just have to deal with it for the rest of your life.
So a rude awakening! After six months of striving for longer and longer hikes, it now seems I may be permanently limited to medium-distance treks. And that with a lightweight pack – who knows how much more restricted I’d be for backpacking? And my lower legs are just going to catch fire whenever I go out – no getting around that. All flesh is grass!
Monday, November 30th, 2020: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
Ground-Truthing the Data
It was now the end of November. We were finally getting nightly freezes, into the 20s, but the sky was still mostly clear. This Sunday was expected to rise to the low 50s in town, but I knew that in the mountains, in shady canyons I’d freeze, whereas on a sunny ridge I’d be sweating.
I’d missed my midweek hike, so I was hoping for something long – 13-16 miles – with a lot of elevation gain. A return to the trail where I’d hacked all that locust would be perfect, because I could potentially add a mile or two to my previous one-way distance without all those thorns slowing me down. But when I checked the map, I could see that it still wouldn’t take me into significantly different terrain, or yield significantly new views. Once you get into the back country here, it’s all, unfortunately, much the same.
However, I couldn’t think of any more attractive options at this time, so I packed up and left town fairly early. It’s a one hour drive to the trailhead, so I had a lot of time to think, while gazing at the peaks I was slowly approaching. I began to consider the next trail to the south, the one I’d last hiked over a year ago, finally giving up on it because a jungly section in the canyon bottom took up so much time that you couldn’t reach interesting destinations on the upper trail.
My mind flipped back and forth between the options as I drove toward the mountains. My original destination would be a sure thing, but it’d only been a few weeks since I’d last been up there. Just before reaching the turnoff for the “jungly” trail, I made a snap decision and took it.
It’s a long drive on a couple of slow dirt roads through pinyon-juniper-oak foothills. I slowed to pass a father and son out hunting. When I finally got to the trailhead it was empty, but the log book showed regular visitors over the past couple of months, typically two or three parties per week. The most recent, a party of two, had claimed a 4-night hike, which was really encouraging. That indicated they’d hiked the entire trail, which meant it should be passable for me, despite the official trail condition report saying it was impassable beyond Windy Gap.
Like I said, I’d last hiked this over a year ago, but I’d hiked it three times so I retained a rough outline of it in memory. One thing about this trail is the scarcity of information online, which in turn indicates how little used it is, at least in the past decade of GPS data logging and sharing. Maybe people have been discouraged by the jungle in the canyon, or by the official claims of obstructions and poor tread. But I think another obstacle has been gross inaccuracy of GPS distance data for this trail, and the complete lack of online trip reports. This trail is an online mystery, despite leading to the most distinctive peak in the range.
I’d first heard of it back in 2008, at a party held by one of my neighbors. A couple hours after dark, her younger brother had shown up, saying he’d tried reaching the peak – supposedly a 9-mile one-way – with some younger friends, only to turn back when he realized it would take much longer than expected. He was a big guy, an athlete, but it was just too much for him. The others had continued, and he figured they might not get back until after midnight. He said it was a real killer, way too challenging for a day hike. But that was before the big wildfire.
As noted in other Dispatches, after a fire, these trails gradually turn into obstacle courses, first through erosion and then due to deadfall – the trunks of fire-killed trees – “logs” – fallen across the trail, sometimes up to three together, and as many as half a dozen every ten feet. It takes many years, sometimes decades, for all the fire-killed trunks to fall, and with each passing year, more fall. The Forest Service does very little trail clearing, mostly leaving it up to volunteers, and the volunteers are overwhelmed, so many trails are simply abandoned, depending on their popularity and other factors. High elevation trails are the hardest to clear because that’s where the continuous stands of big trees are.
Recently I’d been forced to come to grips with these abandoned trails – I just needed more distance than the cleared trails had to offer. The physical struggle to climb over, under, or around these obstacles was partly psychological. If you expect a good trail, you’re more likely to give up. But if you expect an obstacle course, you’re more likely to persevere.
Since the 2012 wildfire, I could only find one trip report for this trail – in 2017 – and two GPS data sets: one from 2017, charted on a site called HikeArizona, and the other anonymous, from AllTrails. The trip report, by a guy who hikes and blogs about New Mexico trails, only covered the early canyon-bottom section of the trail, since the guy lost the trail where it starts climbing the ridge. The HikeArizona route is a mystery – the only actual trip report on that site documented a young woman bushwhacking a completely different route, not shown, using 4wd roads to the south to access the peak from a different direction.
Another data set is embedded in Google Maps – strangely enough, because it’s the only trail mapped in this area, and Google Maps seldom shows forest trails. And it gets stranger: whereas the HikeArizona GPS route for this trail is wildly inaccurate, and the AllTrails GPS route omits most of the many switchbacks, the Google route is fairly accurate, but includes no distances.
The GPS distances shown on AllTrails and HikeArizona can’t be relied on, since they don’t include the switchbacks, but it’s also clear that they’re way off because even the easy parts of the trail take much longer to walk than they would if the logged distances were accurate. For example, the first real milestone on this trail, Windy Gap, the point where you get your first real view over into the next canyon, is logged by AllTrails and HikeArizona as 3.7 miles from the trailhead, but takes 2-1/2 hours to hike at top speed in the best conditions. And past Windy Gap, both crowdsourced sites deviate wildly from the actual route.
Once I got down into the canyon, I realized I’d forgotten how beautiful it is – much rockier than the canyon I usually hike to the north. That, in turn, makes it a more challenging hike and results in the narrow jungly section in the middle where fire-erosion debris and thickets make for slow going. Unlike in the canyon farther north, the stream here was running the entire distance, and with its many small waterfalls, made for a great soundtrack.
A mile or so in, I came to the first major obstruction, a huge pine trunk that I’d previously had to climb over – and somebody had cut a gap in it. Yay! Maybe a crew had been working on this trail, without yet entering it in the official list.
The farther you go, the more dramatic the canyon trail gets, as it climbs dozens of feet up and down to get around boulder falls, between overhanging cliffs. But more surprising at this time of year was the fall color! Peak color in this canyon seemed to be a month later than it’d been in the canyon to the north. The maples were hallucinatory, and in two days it would be December.
I didn’t find any more evidence of trail clearing, but the jungly section seemed much easier than before, just due to tread laid down by recent visitors. The only thing that really slowed me down was the need to stop and take off clothing as I climbed out of the canyon. I’d started in the 30s, but while climbing in sunlight, it felt like the 60s.
Each of these crest hikes, which have been partially cleared since the fire, features a prominent initial milestone: a high peak or saddle. The first time I hiked the trail, that was my destination. Subsequently, it became only the starting point for the additional mileage and elevation I was aiming for. Windy Gap was the first milestone on this hike. I’d made two forays beyond that last year, the first about a half mile, and the second to a second saddle nearly a mile beyond. Today I was hoping to use the second saddle as a starting point. Ignoring my previous experience with distances on this trail, I was relying on the GPS data, and hoping to reach the big peak, which the GPS data showed was only a little over 7 miles in. I’d been doing 15 mile round-trip hikes easily, so why not? The 360 degree views up there, at 10,658′, should be amazing!
I reached my previous milestone, the second saddle, by about 12:30. This was a little worrying. According to the GPS this would be only about 4 miles into the 7-mile hike. I should turn back at 1:30, which meant I had only an hour to do a further 6-mile round-trip on a trail the Forest Service claimed was impassable.
But I forged ahead, and soon discovered the trail was indeed abandoned. Confusingly, there was a handful of pink or orange ribbons, placed seemingly at random, that I used to confirm I was going in the right direction, but no actual trail work had been done, and even the ribbons soon disappeared.
I got around dozens of obstacles, and scratched my head a few times regarding which way to climb, but in general, I could always find some tread, even if it was no wider than an animal trail. There were definitely no human tracks, and it soon became evident that no humans had been this way in recent years. Not only were there no human prints in patches of bare dirt – only the occasional elk hoofprint – there were trees that had fallen long ago, with dense, rotten branches blocking the trail, that anyone passing would’ve had to break off. That party claiming the 4-night backpack had clearly been fantasizing.
I was climbing up the side of a broad bowl toward ridges that arced around the head of the canyon below, climbing toward high stands of aspen – some killed and fallen like matchsticks, others still thriving. The living aspens had been landmarks on previous hikes, especially when carrying their fall color, but all the foliage was gone now, at nearly 10,000′. Occasionally leaving my own cairns or rock arrows at questionable turns, I finally summitted a last group of switchbacks below the first ridgeline, and began a traverse that seemed endless, at a minimum 30% grade. It took me across talus slopes into the first big grove of fallen, bonelike aspens, where I encountered my most daunting obstacles.
Still, I kept going, nearly a mile on the long, steep traverse, until near the ridge top, I came to still more switchbacks. I checked my watch – I hadn’t even reached the midpoint of the arcing ridges, but I was well past my planned turnaround time to get back to the truck before dark. I could keep going, fighting the obstacles and scouting for trail, but that would force me into difficult route-finding in the dark through the jungle in the canyon bottom, which might add another half-hour to my return hike. And I now realized that the GPS data was so far off, it could take me another 3 hours to reach the peak. 7 miles to the peak! Hah! It was more like 7 miles to where I was now, and 10-11 miles to the peak.
This was no auspicious turnaround point. The trail wasn’t even level – I was just trying to maintain purchase on a steep slope, thousands of feet above the canyon, in a thicket of aspen and locust seedlings. But I figured I’d gone 7 miles and climbed well over 4,000′. My body was pretty thrashed from fighting the obstructions and the steep grades, and I had a 7-mile return hike with very steep descents and that rocky jungle/rollercoaster between cliffs in the canyon bottom. At least I had a clear satellite signal to log position on my own GPS message unit.
My legs were burning by the time I returned to the second saddle. Then I brought my knee up to straddle a big log in the trail, and screamed with pain. My inner thighs had caught fire with cramps, both of them, and I toppled to the ground on the other side of the big log. I tried to straighten my legs, but it only made it worse. I was screaming and rolling back and forth, there in the wilderness, high in the sky. I’d never felt such pain from cramps, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I tried to get up to stretch, but the pain brought me back down. I tried to reach a leg up to stretch against the log, but every time I moved the cramps got worse.
Finally, lying on my stomach for I don’t know how many minutes, I was able to relax enough to carefully stand up. I began to hobble stiff-legged like Frankenstein, and gradually, with a hundred feet of walking across the saddle, the pain subsided. Then I did some stretching and drank some more water. I’d been drinking water regularly, but apparently not enough, and I was obviously short on electrolytes. Maybe I should start carrying some kind of electrolyte supplement in addition to water.
My legs recovered and I quickly descended into the canyon. Shortly after hitting the canyon bottom, with the sun beginning to set, I encountered another hiker just starting up the trail. It was a young guy carrying a smallish pack, but when I asked if he was doing an overnight, he said he just wanted to get somewhere with a view before dark, then he’d hike back out.
I told him he was shit out of luck, the sun would set before he’d reach the first saddle. I warned him not to get lost in the dark, but he said he had a couple of GPS units to keep him on the trail. Hah, good luck with that! But he was a nice guy and clearly wanted to chat. This was his first hike in the Gila – he’d just finished hiking in the San Mateos far to the northeast, in the recent burn scar. I recommended the next hike to the north, where the trail was much clearer and the accessible views better.
It’s interesting – before COVID the only other hikers I encountered on these trails were locals my age or older, but now, I seem to mainly run into twentysomethings from out of state. This guy was from Texas but clearly hadn’t grown up there – no accent.
I got through the jungle fairly easily, and reached the truck before dark, but as I started to drive out, a bright light flashed in my rearview mirror. Had the young guy given up and turned back right after meeting me? No, it was the full moon rising behind the mountains in the east, to light my way home.
Monday, March 1st, 2021: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Last night, I’d tried to come up with a plan for today’s hike and failed. The snow on all our regional mountains was melting fast, but I knew from my midweek hike that it was still deep on north slopes. There were few trails within a 2-hour drive that had southern exposure, and I’d done two of them, with the corresponding 4-hour round-trip drives, in the past two weeks. I didn’t want to make another long drive.
I got up this morning with little hope or motivation, and considered taking a break from my Sunday hikes. It’d been over three months since I’d taken a break and it wouldn’t hurt my conditioning
Then during breakfast, scanning the list of hikes I’ve compiled, I suddenly realized that the Little Dry Creek trail climbs south-facing slopes. I hadn’t thought of it at first because it’s not one of my favorites hikes, and anyway, I’d already done it three weeks ago. I don’t like to duplicate hikes that frequently…but what the hell. It would get me out into nature.
After an hour’s drive, I arrived at the extremely remote trailhead, parked, shouldered my pack, and started laboriously picking my way up the difficult early stretch lined with big loose rocks. After a half mile or so it climbs above the canyon bottom and you get a view of the peaks ahead. And I suddenly had a brainstorm.
Last fall, after finally getting close to the 10,000′ crest, I’d tracked down a recent online trip log for this trail. My destination here has always been the 10,663′ summit of Sacaton, one of the iconic peaks of this range. But the trail is just too long and blocked with too much deadfall from the 2012 wildfire.
The online trip log was from a young Arizona woman, a “peakbagger”, who left the trail after the first mile and bushwhacked up the right-hand ridge. That ridge eventually connects to the Sacaton massif, so she took it all the way, traversing all the intermediate peaks. I couldn’t recall her exact route, but I knew it connected with an old mine road not far from this canyon bottom. She took the mine road a short distance then bushwhacked up to the main ridge. What the hell, I thought. I’ll try to replicate her route, and see how far I can get.
The whole peakbagger thing is a turn-off for me – mountains are sacred, and the idea of “bagging” them to add to your life list is another sad byproduct of our hypercompetitive European culture. But before reading the young woman’s account and scanning her photos, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to bushwhack in these mountains with their loose, crumbly volcanic rock, especially through burn scars blocked by mazes of deadfall and choked with thickets that I believed to be virtually impassable. I admired her toughness, but I figured if she could do it, I probably could too.
Heading deeper into the canyon, with progressive vantage points out, I saw the right-hand ridge started low, only a few hundred feet above the creek, and there seemed to be a gap, a side drainage, before it connected to the high ridge. A mile up the trail, I found where the side drainage joined the creek. It was dry and narrow, but I turned off and started climbing. This must be where she left the trail…and if I followed this side canyon to its head, maybe I’d connect with the old mine road.
As I’d expected, bushwhacking was incredibly hard. The right-hand slope was in shade and covered with snow, so I climbed the sunny, snow-bare left slope. But it was steep and alternated between loose rock and dense shrubs: oak, manzanita, mountain mahogany, and occasionally thorny catclaw. I had to cut my own switchbacks, slipping and sliding the whole way, scratching my hands and clothes.
Eventually I climbed high enough to see the head of the canyon. Its sides were completely choked with chaparral, as was the continuation of the ridge above. But now that I could see the destination, I had to keep going.
High above the head of the canyon, rounding a rocky corner, I suddenly came upon a cleared patch and an apparently bottomless hole – a mine pit. I remembered there was an old mine farther up the main canyon. I must be near the road. I thought I could see another cleared spot a few hundred yards ahead.
Heading that way, I ended up on an old trail, which took me to the mine road. I kept following it around the foot of the high ridge, and eventually came to a junction. The main road from below continued higher, through pine forest, and I could see it climbing around a small peak ahead. It was trending away from the main ridge, but I figured it would circle back and probably get me higher and farther along.
Traversing below the little peak I came upon a big gash in the mountainside, with a pile of rock obscuring a mine entrance. I set my pack down and climbed over the rock pile. There was a heavy steel door, partly open. I squeezed past it and walked into the mine, but it quickly became too dark, so I went back out and put on my headlamp.
I love being underground! And the colors of rock in this mine, while subtle, were really pretty. It had several junctions and branches, and whoever worked it had left some valuable equipment back there. Some of the lumber looked very recent.
The first branch led to a chamber, partly blocked by an air compressor, where there was a steel platform over a vertical shaft with cables leading down out of sight. It was so deep my headlamp wouldn’t penetrate it. Beyond this chamber, a rockfall blocked the tunnel, but I could see it led farther into the mountain.
Back in the light of day, I continued up the road, around the little conical peak. Eventually I came to a broad saddle where I could see east into another big canyon system directly below Sacaton. And forming a gate across this canyon were the two most spectacular rock formations I’d ever seen in this area. They both had arches like the sandstone canyons of southeast Utah. Could there really be sandstone in these volcanic mountains, or was it an anomalous volcanic formation?
The ridge leading to Sacaton was my destination, and the rock formations didn’t lead there, but I figured I’d head in that direction and see how close I could get before climbing higher. First I had to traverse another steep slope of loose rock and dense chaparral. After a few hundred yards fighting my way through that, I came to a deep canyon, forested on this side, with patches of deep snow. To get a better view of the rock formations I’d have to cross this canyon. I could see a large clearing, like a saddle, on the opposite side. I descended a few hundred feet in snow to a stream running across bare rock, then fought my up through the shrubs on the opposite slope, finally reaching the clearing. Now I could see that a much deeper and wider side canyon separated me from the rock formations. But from the clearing I was in, a ridge led upward toward the main ridge and the foot of the 10,000′ peak that began the Sacaton massif. From below, I couldn’t tell if this was a good route, but I’d give it a shot.
Here the real work began. Climbing this ridge was some of the hardest bushwhacking I’ve ever done. I began to doubt that the young woman had really completed this hike in one day. Yeah, there were a few small patches of bare ground, and a few sporadic stretches of bunchgrass between thickets, but most of the way I had to stop and scout gaps in the vegetation, zigzagging constantly back and forth, finding dead ends, turning back and trying other routes. It was incredibly slow, but I kept trying.
This outlying ridge climbed in steps of a few hundred feet at a time. Each time I crested a step I stopped and tried to scout ahead. Eventually I reached a forested stretch below the top. Here it was much easier, and I found a game trail. I continued for a quarter mile or so, and reached a little peak before the saddle just below the high peak.
I stood there in about 10″ of snow and checked my watch. It’d taken me four hours to get this far, and I figured I was only about a third of the way. The peak above required another 1,500′ climb that would take me at least another hour, and past that were three or four miles and probably another 2,000′ of up and down climbing, most of it on loose rock through dense scrub. How could that girl have done this all in a day? It seemed a near-mythical feat.
But on the way down, I discovered something. I got so tired of rerouting around masses of shrubs that I decided to just force my way straight through them. It was murder on my expensive REI and Patagonia outerwear, but it turned out to be doable, and a little faster than zigzagging through the maze. The shrubs had interlacing branches, and I still had to zigzag between the cores of individual shrubs, but the outer branches in the gaps between them gave way to brute force.
Unfortunately, because the descent of the ridge went a little faster than the ascent, I overshot the clearing where I’d climbed out of the side canyon. By over a hundred yards, but I didn’t know that yet.
When bushwhacking like this, I always stop every few hundred yards, look back, and memorize landmarks so I can retrace my route. I’d memorized the shape of the snow slope I’d descended across this side canyon, but now that I’d overshot, it didn’t have that shape. I couldn’t tell if it was the same one – I didn’t know if I’d gone too far, or not far enough. And I was in the midst of a seemingly endless thicket.
I fought my way down into the side canyon. I figured I’d climb the stream bed to the nearest snow patch, and if I couldn’t find my footprints, I’d turn and go downstream until I found the right place.
The upstream patch was the right one. My footprints were right there. I followed them up out of the canyon, onto the slope that traversed back to the mine road. I took the road to the trail that led to the bottomless pit, and then began bushwhacking back down the side of the shallow canyon that led to Little Dry Creek. Downclimbing here was much harder than ascending. I stumbled, slipped, and slid constantly in the loose dirt and rocks, thrown off balance as invisible branches and roots grabbed my ankles, in between fighting through thorny thickets. It got steeper and harder toward the bottom, to the point where it was downright scary. But, obviously, I made it.
It’d taken me 3-1/2 hours to reach the high ridge, and 3-1/4 hours to get back down. When I got home and checked the Arizona peakbagger’s data online, I discovered she’d taken an almost completely different route. Instead of the logical path up the side canyon, she’d cut off the main trail earlier and climbed straight up the right slope to the peak of that low ridge. There, she’d hit the mine road, and used it much farther than I had, which enabled her to go much faster during that stretch.
Then, just past the mine entrance, she’d again climbed straight up the little conical peak, and from there, continued following the ridgeline all the way to Sacaton. She said the bushwhacking wasn’t bad, but I could see it was. Apparently peakbaggers are just habituated to forcing their way through thickets. Their goal is to bag as many peaks as possible in their lifetime, and most peaks don’t have trails.
I could also see that the end point of my hike was actually the halfway point for her hike. By reaching Sacaton, she’d logged over 16 miles round-trip. So my total distance was about 8 miles, and after subtracting the time I’d spent exploring the mine, it took me almost 7 hours – more than twice as long as it would take me on clear ground. She’d also saved time on the way back by leaving the high ridge and dropping from the head of Little Dry Creek back into the main canyon, where she reconnected with the trail so she wouldn’t have to bushwhack back.
I was proud of how hard I’d worked, but it’s not the kind of hike I’d choose to do again. I’m in great shape, but hiking in steep loose rock is the hardest thing possible on my vulnerable foot. I could go faster on a healthy foot, but would I even want to?
Monday, December 20th, 2021: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
This Sunday’s hike barely happened. I won’t bore you with the details, but Saturday was hard, I got up Sunday assuming I wouldn’t be hiking, and by the time I decided I might as well give it a try, I was almost two hours late getting to the trailhead.
Starting late, I should’ve done the hike near home, but my mind was still obsessed with that area over on the west side of the wilderness. Without the time for a serious exploration, I decided to hike the canyon-to-ridge trail that I’d previously given up on as too much trouble for too little payoff. If my body held up, I might be able to reach the junction at 9,000′ where another abandoned trail branched off into unknown territory. I didn’t expect to get much farther in the limited time I had, but at least I’d get a sense of the condition of that old trail.
It was another crystal clear day, just below freezing.
One reason I’ve avoided this trail is the condition of the canyon bottom. The canyon is narrow and very rocky, and would be spectacular if it weren’t choked with deadfall and post-wildfire thickets. All the crowd-sourced websites show the trail from the canyon to the ridge top as 3.8 miles, but they omit all the zigzags, switchbacks, and up and down sections required to avoid obstacles in the canyon bottom. And because of the towering cliffs and forest cover, I’m sure there are huge gaps in everyone’s GPS readings. The hike to ridge top takes a minimum of two hours, and I’m convinced it’s closer to 5 miles.
The saddle at 8,240′ is no place to linger. That’s where I hit the first patches of snow from our storm a couple weeks ago, and the north slope below the saddle was coated by a couple inches. The trail continues straight east up the next steep section of ridge then starts a series of six long switchbacks, none of which are shown on the maps, before traversing around a white conglomerate cliff into the bowl at the head of Little Dry Creek. There, you face the arc of ridges that top out at over 10,000′. I’d previously bushwhacked up to 9,800′ there, but now I was hoping to turn off onto the abandoned trail at about 9,100′. I was looking forward to getting above 9,000′ for the first time in months – usually the higher elevations are inaccessible this time of year due to deep snow.
There was virtually nothing left of the old trail, but I clambered over deadfall, followed gaps in the oak seedlings, and used occasional sections of tread maintained by elk, for a few hundred yards, reaching a level clearing on the shoulder of the next outlying ridge.
Beyond that clearing, a solid thicket of Gambel oak had completely obliterated the trail, but another couple hundred yards past the thicket, I could see the old trail crossing a wide talus slope. That’s one of the few good things about talus – as long as it stays clear of vegetation, it preserves trails.
Due north of me were some of the highest peaks in the range, and thousands of feet below me were the parallel canyons of Spruce and upper Big Dry Creeks, whose junction I’d bushwhacked to last July on another abandoned trail. It was a great view, but all that country was essentially inaccessible to humans now due to post-wildfire deadfall, blowdown, and regrowth.
Since I couldn’t get any farther, I had some extra time. I hung out there for a while, soaking up the views, eating a snack, and reminding myself not to rush the return hike. I hadn’t even expected to hike today, so it was sort of a free day anyway.
Unlike the other hikes I’d done recently, this return was almost all downhill. Not to say it was easy – in addition to the usual loose rocks, I faced that canyon obstacle course, which is equally hard going up and coming down. But I finally realized I just had to stop thinking of it as a trail, and treat it as a bushwhack. So much of hiking is in your mind, and your mental attitude.
Monday, March 14th, 2022: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Apologies to my loyal readers for the long hiatus between hiking Dispatches! No surprises – life’s been a little challenging lately, and an earlier attempt to resume my hiking routine was kind of a bust.
This Sunday morning, the time change confused me, because I rely on my iPad’s alarm to wake me, and the iPad was set on Phoenix time from a flight I made months ago. The time change makes New Mexico an hour later than Arizona, so I was sure I’d lost an hour of hiking until a mile or so up the trail when I realized the sun – and my body – was still on the old time, and despite what my watch said, I had a full 8 hours to do a serious hike.
The hike I’d chosen was actually my third choice for the day, because I’d done it before and it had ended inconclusively, short of a ridge top, at a logjam of wildfire deadfall. But the important thing, after a hiking hiatus, was that it gained me plenty of elevation. It was a real workout.
The day started just below freezing but temperatures were expected in the 50s by afternoon, under clear skies. The creek in the canyon bottom was running strong from continuing snowmelt. Small butterflies were everywhere.
This is the canyon whose middle stretch is choked with debris flows and deadfall, twisting between sheer bluffs and giant boulders that require constant detours. The trailhead logbook featured a recent entry from a couple who’d continued over into the next canyon, to the remote creek junction I’d bushwhacked to last year. They’d done it as an overnight and complained about the bad trail condition – I’d done it as a day hike.
One thing that surprised me in the canyon was the large number of seemingly healthy firs and alders which had fallen recently. I don’t think of a narrow canyon with sheer walls as supporting the kind of wind that could bring healthy trees down, but it’s hard to imagine a hidden disease that would weaken such different species, and drought shouldn’t be an issue in this well-watered canyon.
The trail traverses steeply out of the canyon to a pass where the trail into the next canyon begins. But from there, I continue up and across the west wall of the first canyon, snaking around massive rock outcrops and following a scarcely visible but well-remembered route which is now only maintained by elk. In fact, elk love this trail so much their scat and tracks were all over it. There was no sign of human use since my last visit here – this route is generally believed impassable.
Like before, I was able to follow the elk trail all the way to the deadfall logjam near the ridge top. Whereas my first visit had been frustrating – the top is tantalizingly close – this time I was just glad to be back hiking and reaching my highest elevation since last summer – 9,750′.
I’d tweaked my back, which remains on the edge of severe pain, climbing over a big log in the trail, so the first thing I was looking for on the way down was a clear, level spot to stretch. It took me nearly a mile to reach that, because the upper trail traverses and switchbacks across steep and rough ground, including talus slopes. Finally stretching on a grassy saddle high in the sky, in the warmth of the sun, felt wonderful.
I reached the vehicle exactly 8 hours after starting. No adventures, and at this point that’s a good thing!
