Chiricahuas
Tuesday, September 1st, 2020: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona, Stories, Trouble.
Third Sunday
The third week after my house fire was just as traumatic as the fire itself, because I had another apparent brush with death during oral surgery. And my trials at home continued, with only one encouraging break: I found temporary housing.
As the weekend approached, in rare moments of forethought I imagined driving two hours over to the Range of Canyons for a Sunday hike. It was looking like possible rain on the weekend, which would be the only thing that would make that trip bearable, since it’s a thousand feet lower and correspondingly hotter over there.
Unfortunately on the drive over, I jinxed myself by mentioning rain to a friend on the phone. So the day turned out to be rainless, as humid as the previous Sundays, but mercifully a little cooler due to continuous cloud cover.
The trail itself doesn’t have much to recommend it – the payoff view is too far for a round trip day hike, especially when you subtract the four hours of driving there and back. But despite the drought, I was surprised by the variety of unfamiliar flowers – most of them tiny – which don’t seem to grow across the border in New Mexico.
I also saw several white-tail deer, and a big hawk I flushed from undergrowth in the forest near the trailhead. It flew heavily off carrying some long, slender prey animal, and all I saw clearly was its tail, dark brown with broad, pale, clearly marked bands.
The hike felt harder than usual. I’d gone from 6 workouts per week down to one – my big Sunday hike – and I’d lost a lot of weight, all of it muscle mass. Probably 5-10 pounds, which is a lot for a little guy with no body fat. I’d tightened my belt and my pants were still threatening to fall off. From 22 miles and 6,000′ of hiking per week down to 12 miles and 3,000′. I was surely losing the conditioning I’d worked so hard to build up during the past two years of recovery from disabilities.
Despite the difficult week, this hike finally succeeded in calming me down a little, in preparation for more crisis and trauma in the week ahead.
Monday, October 19th, 2020: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Nature, Plants, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
Bleak Saddle
With my new hiking super powers, it finally occurred to me that I might be able to complete a hike that had frustrated me for the past year. It was over on the Arizona state line, but I’d already waited a month before taking the risk of driving over there again.
The trail was listed as a 17 mile round trip, but when I checked the map again I noticed that the actual crest was only a little over 8 miles from the trailhead. However, that trail had been the last I’d hiked over there, and I was getting really bored with it. Fortunately, there was another trail providing a short cut to the same destination. It required a 15 minute longer drive, because the trailhead was deeper in the mountains and a few hundred feet higher. And it was a real slog – the previous time I’d hiked it, last March, it had kicked my butt. The middle section was a virtually continuous 15% grade in loose volcanic rock.
But I figured that with my new powers I could make short work of it. And it would take roughly 4 miles off the round-trip distance to the crest, which should make it easy for me to complete this hike that had frustrated me so many times in only a year.
Unfortunately, our weather had been discouragingly hot and dry all month. Normally October is cool here, and often rainy – we’ve even had snow – but I don’t remember any rain since August, and most days at home, at 6,000′ elevation, were reaching the 80s. The high at the entrance to those mountains, a thousand feet lower, was forecast to approach 90. My hike would take me over 9,000′, but I was learning that without a cooling wind, radiant heating at high elevation could be just as punishing as air temperature in the valleys and basins below.
Facing a 2-1/4 hour drive to the trailhead, I’d have to get up early Sunday morning – a day when I usually like to sleep in. But I was motivated and set my alarm for 6, and after my usual Sunday chores, was able to hit the road by 8. I had a little over a half tank of gas, probably not enough to get me there and back, but I figured I’d buy gas at the truck stop on the Interstate, at the halfway point.
I should’ve known better. As often happens, there were lines at the pumps there. There was a big group of Black motorcycle cruisers who seemed to be having a party around two of the pumps, and other motorists were locking their vehicles at the pumps and going inside to grab a snack. The minimum wait for a pump seemed to be 15 minutes. So I took my chances and set off for the mountains.
There were two problems with this. First, if my gas gauge was accurate, I should have enough to get back here in the evening. But I knew it wasn’t – that was the first thing I’d learned about this vehicle. You could drive all day and the needle would barely reach halfway. Then in the next 20 miles it would drop rapidly toward empty.
The second problem was that I didn’t know of any gas stations anywhere near my destination. But I hadn’t really explored, and there might be something I wasn’t aware of. I decided to take the chance and worry about it later. After all, I had a premium AAA membership in case I ran out.
There’s a dramatic moment where the lonely highway tops a low pass and you get your first view of the mountains, and that moment provided my next worry. Although the air and sky were clear in front of the range, the interior was obscured by a heavy haze that looked like wildfire smoke. Great! Why hadn’t I checked for fires before leaving?
I kept driving, and fortunately, the haze gradually cleared, the closer I got. Maybe it was residual and had blown over from somewhere to the south, maybe from Mexico. Maybe it was even windblown dust – although there didn’t seem to be any wind here.
Making the turnoff toward the mountains, I found myself behind a very funky pickup truck going about 5 mph. The back window of the cab was broken out, and a fringe of plastic blew out of it in a failed attempt at patching the window. The front wheel of a bicycle hung over the side of the pickup bed, a guitar strapped to the handlbars, with the neck of the bare guitar extending a couple feet out into traffic. I couldn’t even identify the rest of the junk piled in the pickup bed, but it had a California license plate. I passed, giving it a wide berth, but about ten minutes up the road I saw the same truck racing up in my rearview mirror, and it passed me going 20 mph over the speed limit. When I reached town, it was parked outside the cafe and store.
Past the entrance, as the road twists through a shaded canopy of sycamores under towering cliffs, the speed limit drops to 15 and you can expect the occasional birder on the shoulder with binoculars or camera. However, today was obviously some kind of big birding event. Vehicles were parked everywhere, sometimes blocking traffic lanes, and crowds of birders massed beside the road, peering up into the canopy with their field glasses and huge, unwieldy cameras. Finally I got past them – they were all confined to the lower riparian area – and eventually, watching my gas gauge in despair as it rapidly approached empty, I reached the trailhead, a tiny creekside campground which was unoccupied.
It was only 10:15, and the shade of the riparian canopy still felt cool. Expecting a difficult ascent, I decided to summon my super powers and attempt as much of the trail as possible without stopping to rest. I wasn’t sure exactly how long it was, or what the cumulative elevation gain would be. I still don’t, because there’s only one source for trail mileages in this range – an amateur who publishes the online trail guide – and I’ve learned to doubt all published mileages. This guy uses GPS, which has been proven to significantly underestimate mileage in forested areas. But it’s easy to figure out from topo maps that the elevation gain is over 4,000′ (in the end, it turned out to be nearly 5,000′). And amazingly, I ended up doing the whole damn thing without a rest stop.
Sure, I had to stop to pee, to drink water, or to grab a snack from my pack. But even those stops were rare, and took only a few seconds. What’s more impressive, I didn’t even pant – I made a point of controlling my pace, breathing through my nose – until the last mile or so.
It’s a brutal trail, and not just during the initial shortcut. The second half is a continuous, steep, three-plus-mile traverse of a south-facing scree slope – a burn scar from the 2011 wildfire – at the angle of repose. The trail is just a bare strip along the slope – hardly any of it is flat – which is a strain on your entire lower body. And the scree is white volcanic tuff, so with that southern exposure you’ve got sunlight not only bearing down from above, but bouncing back at you from below, almost the entire distance. I got no help from the wind, so although the air temperature was mild, the radiant heating was fierce.
As on previous hikes this month, there was plenty of fall color, but with my determination to reach the crest, I wasn’t stopping to enjoy the little things. It’s one of those hikes that presents a series of false milestones – in this case, shoulder after shoulder after shoulder of secondary ridges that each seems to get you no closer to the crest. But each one presented a slightly different view of young aspen groves in gold tinged with red.
I’d memorized some features of the upper trail before heading out. I knew there was supposed to be a spring above the trail, just below the saddle. When I arrived there was a trickle of water crossing the trail, but I didn’t stop – I could sense the crest not too far ahead.
What an anti-climax! I was expecting a decent view, but the only views were of nearby ridges and low summits. The peak I’d been traversing presented an additional doable challenge, less than a half mile away, but after considering it seriously, I realized it would add another hour to my hike, make getting gas potentially harder, and ensure that I drove home in the dark, through deer-infested foothills.
The saddle itself was bleak. It, and most of the visible slopes around it, had been sterilized by the fire, so that not even aspens, oaks, or locusts were growing back. The trail guide said the peak above was “beautiful” and had “incredible” views, but I could see it was topped by an isolated grove of pines, so it didn’t really beckon me that strongly. I knew it would be just like all the other forested peaks I’d climbed in the Southwest. I’d never really loved these Southwestern mountains – they were just a temporary stand-in for my beloved Mojave Desert – and now it seemed like I was finally just sick of them.
So I spent only a few minutes up there, then strapped on my knee brace and started back down. Where the trickle of water crossed the trail, I began climbing toward its source, a low wall of striated black rock that clearly trapped groundwater draining from the peak, creating a perennial source of surface water. The trail guide said there was a catch basin above the rock bluff, but it had fallen into disrepair, so you needed to collect the runoff. I reached a point where water was dripping through a cleft in the rock, and set up my bottle to collect it. It was a pretty scenic spot, perched up a steep slope above a dramatic canyon. I carry a Steri-Pen for questionable water sources, but I couldn’t imagine that this was polluted. There hadn’t been livestock here in generations, if ever, this was clearly a rarely used trail, and I couldn’t imagine anyone camping on the peak above. The water was clear and had a neutral taste, so I waited ten minutes for my bottle to fill, had a good drink, and continued down the brutal traverse.
It wasn’t until I’d left the main trail for the shortcut, and dropped into some tiny, parklike basins, where widely spaced ponderosa pines provided dappled shade for deep bunchgrasses, that I regained my appreciation for these mountains. Humans just can’t help responding to parklike forest, especially in late afternoon in autumn, with a low angle sun accentuating colors and contrast.
I was entertained in this stretch by raucous groups of acorn woodpeckers, who at first seemed to be involved in a fracas, and later were clearly upset about me in their midst.
On the drive out of the mountains, I came upon the remnants of the birders, still at work in fading light. I stopped at the cafe to ask about gas, and found their outside patio teeming with unmasked diners. The chef makes the best burritos east of California, and in the crisp sunset light, I really longed to join them. How long it’d been since I’d been exposed to such a convivial scene! How I missed being able to hang out with friends and enjoy a beer and a meal!
Inside the store, the masked waiter said there was gas at Animas 15 miles away. They’d be closed now, but the pumps worked with your credit card 24 hours a day. I’d never been through Animas so it would be an adventure.
It turned out to be a long detour. The Animas Valley is vast, treeless except for what people have planted and irrigated around their homes, and seems to be perfectly flat – not my favorite landscape. The settlement itself is just a crossroads with a handful of businesses and a high school. The people live far out on the parched, featureless plain, dispersed in isolated ranch houses. So eerie. Returning north up the plain toward the Interstate, you pass through a seemingly endless Mormon community of dusty industrial farms where your speed is limited to 45. Finally you reach the stark playa, the Interstate and the railroad.
As predicted, I ended up driving home in the dark, where I encountered groups of deer standing in the middle of the highway waiting to be killed, and headlights in my mirror, people tailgating because I was driving too cautiously. But all in all, I’d finally reached that crest, it felt like a huge accomplishment, and I was still in a good mood when I got home.
Monday, October 26th, 2020: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Nature, Plants, Southeast Arizona.
Since last Sunday’s underwhelming hike, my chronically injured foot had become inflamed, and I’d skipped my midweek hike, replaced the metatarsal pad on that orthotic, and conscientiously iced and contrast bathed the foot until it calmed down. And, I’d had a very stressful week trying to finish, for my insurance adjuster, my inventory of “items lost” in the fire – describing in excruciating detail the thousands of priceless things, full of life stories, that had been burned in my basement – things I’d already been reminded of week after week for the past three months.
On Friday, I’d sent off an inventory with glaring omissions, the product of desperation and PTSD, which I then spent additional desperate hours racing to correct. I needed a good hike. But I was still really tired of the hikes near home, so I did a little more research and discovered that a trail over on the Arizona line, that’d been blocked to me last winter, had been cleared by volunteers in September.
I was especially interested in this trail because it led to a different part of the crest of the range, and might allow me to climb the highest peak. After last week’s hike I wasn’t expecting it to be particularly scenic, although the early segment did overlook the 365′ high waterfall – which I was sure would be dry now, after our prolonged drought.
We were due for our first storm of the season on Tuesday, and clouds were already blowing over from the west. The day’s high, at the foot of the mountains, was forecast to each 80, and after last week’s experience with radiant heating at high elevation, I didn’t think I’d need any winter clothing. But I packed my chilly-weather gear as usual, because in the mountains you never know.
One challenge with this trail is that the trailhead lies at the end of a very nasty 1-1/2 mile 4wd road lined with sharp rocks and boulders, constraining my vehicle to a literal crawl. While planning the hike at home, I’d struggled to find ways to extend the distance and elevation to match other recent hikes, and after I’d already driven most of this difficult road, I realized I should’ve just parked at the bottom and walked the road – that would’ve given me the extra distance and elevation I craved. Oh well, next time. It’s just another example of how absent-minded I’ve become since my fire.
After parking at the trailhead and starting up, I glanced back at my vehicle and suddenly noticed a snag – a dead tree – with its top leaning over the left side of my vehicle, held up only by the limb of another tree. The snag itself was rotten and its trunk sagged. What were the chances it would fall on my vehicle while I was hiking? Based on the position, I was pretty sure it would just cause cosmetic damage. Due to the slow drive, I was already getting a late start. I decided to trust the universe, although I know a certain risk-averse friend who will chastise me yet again for taking unnecessary risks.
At 10:30am the morning was chilly but partly sunny and calm as I worked my way up the long, shallow canyon toward the switchbacks that led to the falls overlook. I had my shirt buttoned up, but didn’t need a sweater or jacket. When I reached the overlook, I noticed a little trail that led out along a narrow ridge, and discovered something I’d missed on my first visit. If you held onto the branches of shrubs, you could scramble out onto the edge of a cliff and get a full frontal view of the falls. I was surprised to see a trickle of water still running over the falls, and the foliage around it was amazing! I couldn’t figure out what those red trees were – I didn’t see them anywhere else.
From the overlook, the main trail switchbacks steeply up to the mouth of a “hanging” canyon, where I’d been stopped last winter by a big blowdown of living pines. The crew had cleared them all, and I made my way quickly up the canyon, along a trail that dips toward the creek in the bottom, which was still running. Golden aspen saplings carpeted the opposite slope above.
I had a vague notion that the trail would cross the creek, but instead, it entered a narrow, rocky gulch and followed the creek for quite a distance. It was one of the prettiest places I’d yet seen in these mountains, singing with the sound of water and painted with a riot of fall color. Maybe I’d underestimated this trail!
Finally the trail climbed above the creek, and after a few more gentle switchbacks I spotted the cabin ahead through the trees. I knew there was a cabin, used by trail crews and locked, but I had no idea it’d be so pretty. It’s always a shock to see a house way up in the mountains, miles from any road.
From there, it was a short walk to the saddle where this trail ended in its junction with the main crest trail. But just before I reached the saddle, I began to hear a roaring like a freight train. I looked up, and saw the tops of tall pines bending in a gale force wind. I walked directly from calm air in the canyon to a hurricane on the saddle, and it was easy to see why. I’d crossed the watershed, and now had a view more than a hundred miles to the west, with nothing to stop that west wind.
I dropped my pack and hauled out my sweater, windbreaker, and knit cap, and packed away my straw shade hat. The cloud cover was nearly complete, air temperature was probably in the 50s, and wind chill brutal, but I was now plenty warm. From here, the crest trail led south toward the peak of the range, traversing a steep slope whose forest had been completely burned off. In fact, most of the slopes I could see had been cleared by the 2011 wildfire, but like all burn scars in these Southwestern mountains, they were being patchily colonized by ferns, oaks, and aspens, so the old carpet of green was now a coat of many colors. And the lack of forest meant that I had a truly spectacular view west for the entire distance of the traverse, out over a long canyon to a broad plain and many far blue ranges I couldn’t identify.
The wind continued throughout the traverse – it was like being a fly on a wall, bearing the full brunt – but I love all kinds of weather and this was exhilarating at the end of an unusually hot, dry October. One of my favorite things in the world is to walk along a ridge with endless views across the landscape below. It’s a luxury that comes at the cost of the effort of climbing up there – it’s the payoff.
I’d been seeing fresh boot tracks – the ubiquitous Merrell Moabs – in the dirt of the crest trail, and halfway along the traverse, I passed a college-age couple returning, dressed in shorts and short-sleeved shirts – ah, the optimism of youth! They seemed to be having a great time, though. I hadn’t seen their tracks on the lower trail, so I figured they’d started from the crest trailhead, farther north, which is reached by a very long forest road and eliminates the need for a climb.
The next saddle, at the base of the peak, was aglow with fall color and offered three choices of trail. I’d planned to hike the peak, and since the trail guide showed the peak trail continuing down the back side, I figured I’d use that to add distance, looping around on a lower trail to return to the saddle and gain some more elevation.
In general, trails in this range are much better maintained than our trails near home, but the short trail to the peak was almost shockingly good. To my frustration, forest on top was intact, so there were no views, and after exploring a few hundred yards, I couldn’t find the extension of the trail down the back side. So I had to return the way I’d come.
Back at the junction, I took the western fork, which I believed dropped a few hundred feet to another junction saddle behind the peak. It turned out to be mostly forested, but with enough breaks to keep the western view in sight. It was quite rocky and really a beautiful stretch of trail, adding over a mile one-way to my hike. Despite the cloud cover, the colors of isolated trees and patches of foliage seemed to be intensifying as the sun sank lower in the southwest. I was realizing this was by far the best hike I’d found in this range – finally!
The hour was getting late and it was time to head back the way I’d come. I was really craving a red chile pork burrito at the cafe at the entrance to the mountains – it’d been so long since I’d had good Mexican food! But they close at 6, and it was almost 3, and I had a 6 or 7 mile hike back down to the trailhead. And from there, that mile and a half of road from hell – which took at least 15 minutes. And after that, the long dirt road down the main canyon, with its 15mph speed limit and blind curves hiding oblivious birders.
But the biggest obstacle to my burrito was COVID. According to the guidelines, if I interacted with anyone here, I’d need to self-quarantine and get tested back home. All that for a burrito? I was sorely tempted, because I live alone, have no social life anyway, and no pressing plans to go out while at home. Hell, I’d probably even get a room at the Lodge, since otherwise I’d be driving home in the dark, tired and sleepy after that burrito.
All the way back along the howling traverse with its glorious western vista. And finally to the first saddle, with its apocalyptic gale. A few yards down the trail past the saddle, I stepped out of the wind, and the freight train sound fell away. The temperature increased about 20 degrees and I packed away my outerwear and strapped on my knee brace for the long descent.
Approaching the cabin, I flushed a hawk out of the lower branches, but it stopped on a snag nearby and ignored me.
My vulnerable foot doesn’t like to be rushed. But in the end, it was the beauty of this place that slowed me down the most. Once I was in the canyon bottom, the streamside foliage stopped me again and again.
At the falls overlook, I had to clamber out on that cliff again, because the light had been bad for pictures in the morning. And the farther I went down the trail, the more wonder I found in little things.
By the time I got to the vehicle, it was 5:45. No way was I going to get that burrito. It took me 20 minutes to drive the 1-1/2 mile 4wd road. It was 6:30 by the time I reached the cafe. I tried the door but it was locked. There was nothing for it but to drive the two hours home in the dark and warm up some leftovers.
It was worth it.
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.
