Chiricahuas
Tuesday, October 5th, 2021: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
Two weeks without hiking! Life was only going to get harder in the weeks to come. I just had to get away for a day – maybe to that “range of canyons” on the Arizona border.
Like so many times before, I swore I would do an easy hike – from the first, most popular trailhead, a 9-mile out-and-back peak climb with 3,100′ elevation gain. Only a half-day hike, leaving me time for another short hike if I felt like it, an early burrito and beer, and a reasonable drive home before dark.
Since my last hike, our weather had flipped from monsoon heat to fall chill. Everyone agreed that this monsoon had been our best in over a decade. But most people had only experienced it in town, in the form of flooded streets, rain and hail on windows, pets frightened by thunder. I’d experienced it deep in the wilderness, soaking wet from sweat, dew, or cloudbursts, struggling through rampant vegetation, with lightning striking nearby. In this new cooler, drier regime, I found myself looking forward to winter.
At a thousand feet lower than home, the weather at my destination was forecast to be mild and partly cloudy, with no chance of rain.
I got an early start, but by the time I reached the trailhead, the parking area was filled with half a dozen vehicles. I checked the time. There was another hike I’d really been hoping to do here, but had decided would just take too long to get me home at a decent hour. It involved a slow drive up a rough 4wd road to the trailhead, and a 15-mile out-and-back, extending the last hike I’d done there, to the farthest southwest peak in the range. If I could fit it in, it would yield views over completely new terrain.
I did the math in my head. My goal would be to return to the cafe for burrito and beer before the 6pm closing time. I was early enough that I should be able to drive that 4wd road and reach the actual trailhead with enough time for an 8-1/2 hour hike, which on decent trails would yield at least 17 miles. 15 seemed totally doable, so I drove deep into the mountains and started up the 4wd road through rolling oak and juniper forest.
Someone had left the cattle gate open. The rocky road was bone-rattlingly bad as usual – I had to creep between 5 and 10 mph, switching into 4wd at the high-clearance part. I passed a parked pickup truck, and a half mile later, a second. Damn, what a busy day here.
But nobody besides me had made it all the way to the trailhead. Plenty of water was coming down the unnamed creek, from our wet monsoon and last week’s heavy rains. I set out up the trail, and within the first half mile met two bear hunters.
They were young guys, probably early 30s, tall and fit. One looked like an urban professional, the other seemed more like a skilled tradesman. I said there always seemed to be a lot of bear sign around here, but they pointed to a tall Gambel oak nearby and said there were no acorns to speak of, the bears were likely to be someplace else. They wished me a good hike and I continued past them up the trail.
This north slope was saturated with moisture, and the creek poured noisily through its rocky gully. Where the trail led across meadows, the grass stood chest-high.
Partway up the switchbacks to the waterfall overlook, in burn scar overgrown with oak and scrub, I came upon tall shrubs I’d seen before, bearing, to my surprise, what looked like black raspberries. They were thimbleberries, Rubus parviflorus, but I didn’t know it at the time. I tried one – slightly sweet, but mostly bitter. I tried another. All in all, not enough flavor to make them appealing, and I wondered idly if they might even be poisonous.
I continued climbing the steeper and steeper slope past the overlook to the high entrance to the hanging canyon. I was intending to make short work of this first part of the hike, where most of my elevation would be gained, so I could focus more on the crest part of the hike, which consisted of long traverses with only a few hundred feet of up and down, and those spectacular views. But I’d forgotten how steep this first part is.
And in the hanging canyon, the section along the creek is always slow as you work your way back and forth over boulders and through dense vegetation. That creek bottom is the coldest place I know in the Southwest, so I pulled on my sweater. Fall had already started to color the riparian foliage down there.
I met a forty-something backpacker coming down the creek. He said he’d driven to the campground on the crest and had spent a couple of nights along the crest trail. I should’ve asked him how he was planning to get back to his vehicle after dropping thousands of feet on this trail. But I was already running late.
Up out of the congested canyon bottom and into the old growth fir forest on the upper slope. I stopped at the Forest Service cabin to drink water and dig out snacks for lunch, and surprised two middle-aged day hikers, guys who looked like professionals from a big city, who were resting in the grass before returning down the trail. I’d never seen so many hikers in these mountains.
By the time I reached the crest trail junction in the high saddle, where intact forest ends at the burn scar, I’d used up almost 3 hours to go less than 4 miles. My goal for the day was looking unlikely, but I would go as far as I could.
The crest trail goes much faster, and at 9,000′, it was in transition from the last of the monsoon flowers to the beginning of fall color. Butterflies, mostly smaller ones, were swarming all over the trail ahead, but it was chilly up there and I had to pull on my sweater again. That would turn into a theme of the day – getting chilled, pulling on my sweater, getting sweaty, taking it off again.
On this good trail, I walked fast up to the junction below the summit of the range, and turned downhill to the west from there, traversing across a steep, burned north slope into more fir forest where the trail becomes slow again across talus partly buried under damp soil, moss, and lichen. I was seeing where the mountains stored moisture in a wet monsoon, and where the vegetation was responding to it.
From the forested saddle west of the high peak, I entered a new watershed, which I’d only just discovered on my last hike here. I’d found it to be a wonderland of rocks, and this is where today’s hike really began for me.
The time it had taken to reach this point proved that I’d miscalculated the distance to today’s goal. Whereas I’d believed it to be about 7-1/2 miles one-way, it was now looking like between 8 and 9, and much of that was always going to be slow. I was now hiking out a rugged, exposed ridgeline with lots of ups and downs, and at every little saddle along the way, I could spot the fire lookout on the peak I was heading for, and it didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
But what a trail! This ridge was interrupted regularly by rock outcrops through which the trail builders had threaded a narrow track, taking advantage of natural gaps in the rock. I would look at a wall of rock ahead and expect the trail to bypass it, but it climbed and zigzagged through instead, and there were often fields of wildflowers before and behind.
In the short saddles between outcrops, the trail got harder and harder to follow, but eventually I always came upon some sort of minimal cairn, sometimes just a single rock perched on a stump or boulder. I didn’t bring a map and was expecting the trail to cross over the ridge into a new watershed earlier, but it became obvious that I’d reach that part only after traversing the modest peak – 9,440′ Raspberry Peak – at the end of this ridge. And I ran out of time at the saddle just before the trail’s turning point. Checking the map later, I would find I’d gotten with two-thirds of a mile of my original destination, but the lookout tower due west of me still appeared no closer.
If I’d known how close I was, I might’ve been tempted to continue. But the lure of that beer and burrito was strong, and I’d already had too many experiences of driving home in the dark, hungry and exhausted, desperately needing a shower and too tired to eat when I finally arrived after bedtime.
I felt I’d timed my turnaround well, allowing a little less time for the return because it’s mostly downhill. So I didn’t rush back – in fact, I took time to enjoy the views, rocks, flowers, and butterflies, stopping often for photos. With the cooling weather, aspens were beginning to turn, yielding isolated patches of gold widely separated across the vast slopes.
I was dragging my feet a little before leaving the big, rocky southern canyon and crossing the watershed north. From the little forested saddle below the summit, I began picking my way faster through the buried talus. Heavier clouds had formed just west of the crest, and I wondered if I would get any rain.
From the trail junction below the summit, the good, smooth trail went fast, and I soon turned my back on those top-of-the-world crest views to drop into the hanging canyon. It struck me that despite running into 5 people along the lower trail, I hadn’t seen anyone on the crest. It was Sunday afternoon, and the weekend visitors were probably well on their way back to Tucson by now.
After working my way down the overgrown creek bottom, when I reached the rim of the hanging canyon and regained the broad view over the interior basin to the northeast, I realized my time was getting tight. My left knee was starting to hurt, so I dug out and strapped on my knee brace, which makes me feel a little like a “bionic man”. With the knee brace, I can pound my way down steep slopes with relative impunity.
The farther I went, the tighter my time was looking. I figured if I kept up the pace to the trailhead, I might just have enough time to reach the cafe. With the changing of the season, the sun was lower now and the last part of the trail was in shade. I was chilly but still drenched with sweat from the effort of hiking fast – not my favorite combination.
Finally I reached the vehicle, stashed my gear, and began driving down the rough road. Despite its violent bouncing and rattling, my vehicle wears good all-terrain tires, and I knew it could handle a little abuse, so I drove it much harder and faster than usual, watching the time as I went. When I reached the graded gravel road, I really started speeding. It was going to be super close.
In the end, I reached the cafe about 5 minutes before closing. There was only one other party in the tiny dining room, an elderly couple. This county is one of Arizona’s worst COVID hot spots, and the lodge website features a dire virus warning from a local doctor, but no one was masked, not even the staff. I ordered my beer and asked if they had a room available. It would be great to finish dinner, take a shower, and get a good night’s sleep before driving back early in the morning. Yes! They had a room.
Whenever I run into a backpacker, I envy them. And whenever I pass an empty campsite returning from one of these hikes, I yearn to pull over and stay the night. I’ve replaced much of the camping gear destroyed in last year’s house fire, but while working 6 days a week to get my house habitable I just don’t have the time or energy for camping or backpacking yet. That day will come.
Monday, January 31st, 2022: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
After last week’s scary experience with wet hands and feet in near-freezing conditions, I finally broke down and got a pair of waterproof mountaineering boots. I guess I was in denial all those years, believing like most people that I shouldn’t need waterproof boots in the arid Southwest, and after all those decades of hiking in the desert, convinced that all I really needed was breathable boots to keep my feet from overheating in the summer.
So for this Sunday’s hike, I was looking for some deep snow to test the new boots. For the first time since our New Year’s Day snowstorm and my misconceived snow hike with the UTVs, I actually wanted a trail that ventured above 8,000′.
But we’d been having an unusually cold winter, so that New Year’s Day snow was mostly still up there. The high-elevation trails near home would require me to spend most of the day slogging through knee-deep snow. That made me think of the trail over in the “range of canyons” that climbed a steep north slope to a clearing at 8,000′, then spent over 3 miles traversing an exposed south-facing slope to finally connect with the crest trail at 9,300′. Snow on that south-facing slope would’ve melted by now, so it was one of the few ways I could reach 9,000′ in winter, but I knew that when the trail cut back into side drainages it would have to traverse short sections of north-facing slope that remained in shadow, preserving isolated patches of deep snow a hundred yards or more wide.
Those patches should give my boots a test, while the overall distance and elevation gain should help “break in” the new boots, which are the stiffest I’ve ever worn. After last week’s wet pants and freezing legs, I would also wear my “upland hunting” pants, which are both waterproof and thorn-resistant. The cuffs adjust to fit tightly around the boots like gaiters, so I should be fully prepared for deep snow.
Approaching the mountains from the northeast, I could see there was still plenty of snow around the crest.
With all that snow up above, I was surprised to find the first creek crossing dry, and where it was still running a little farther up, the level was unusually low. Apparently low temperatures persisted here, too, so the snow that remained on shaded slopes up above was keeping frozen and releasing its moisture slowly, a good thing for the habitat.
The new boots were so stiff it felt like walking in ski boots at first. I kept tightening them to keep the heels from slipping and raising blisters. This is what most hiking boots used to be like – you had to rub oil or wax into them to limber them up, and spend days or weeks breaking them in. My feet were starting to hurt before I even reached the halfway point in the high “park”.
Long before that I passed a friendly retired couple from Wyoming, the only other hikers I saw that day.
Past the “pine park” I turned the corner into the big canyon and began traversing the burn scar, parallel to the spectacular snow-draped slopes of the opposite side. Partly cloudy conditions had been forecast, and I was hoping I might even get some weather. But the alternating sun and shadow during the climb meant that I had to keep stopping to shed or add layers to keep from overheating or chilling.
When I reached the patches of snow on north-facing cutbacks, I found they were covered with frozen crust – something I should’ve anticipated this long after a storm. So instead of testing the water-resistance of the new boots, they became a scary test of my ability to kick footholds on steep, smooth slopes where a slip would’ve sent me sliding a hundred feet or more down toward rock outcrops or standing snags in the gullies. My feet were now really sore and side-hilling in the new boots made me grit my teeth. It took me 20 minutes to cross the first 100-yard patch.
But after safely crossing the two biggest patches, I realized it was doable and focused on what was ahead. In previous years, it had taken me three tries to reach the crest on this trail – the traverse had seemed really daunting. Today I’d gotten a late start, so my time was limited, but I was determined to reach the crest. And despite the many stops and the slow snow crossings, my pace on dry trail was good and I thought I could do it.
Wind increased the higher I got, and whenever clouds came over, the wind chill became brutal. In shadows between shrubs over 9,000′, I encountered tiny surviving patches of snow 2 feet deep, showing just how much snow that New Year’s storm had really dumped here. I finally made it to the “bleak saddle” at 9,300′, but only by assuming that a trail that took me over 4 hours to ascend could be descended in less than 3 hours. As usual, I wanted to get back to the vehicle in time to catch a burrito and beer at the cafe before its 6pm closing time. I’d done this hike 5 or 6 times before, so my guess was based on experience. I prefer trails like this that involve hard work early in the day and reward you with an easier hike on the return.
I was able to literally run down much of the trail on the way back – it’s very rocky, but there are stretches of steep fine gravel that beg to be taken quickly. When I reached the pine park, I could tell I was cutting it close and had just enough time to finish the hike and drive to the cafe, if I maintained my pace on the next section.
The boots were still stiff, but I was developing a little more feel for them. My feet were hurting a lot, so I loosened the laces on the last, steepest descent, and found that helped. The last half of the trail was mostly shaded so I had to pull all my layers back on to keep warm. And then my left hamstring began cramping, from crossing patches of icy snow. It was all I could do to avoid the cramp taking over and paralyzing me with pain.
Still, I managed to reach the vehicle with just enough time to reach the cafe before closing. There was only one other table occupied, by a couple in their late 70s, probably birders. That burrito and beer were as good as usual and convinced me to get a room for the night. All clean from a very hot shower, lying in a strange bed, I tried to imagine the canyon, ridges, peaks, and rock formations outside my room. But with the heat turned off, the room was absolutely silent and darker than any place I could remember sleeping in, and I felt like I was literally nowhere, floating in a void.
Monday, February 21st, 2022: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
Still excited about my new boots and gaiters, I was looking for more snow this Sunday. If you’re only wearing boots, there’s definitely a limit to the depth of snow you can move through. I’ve skied and snowshoed over snow in the Sierra Nevada that was fifteen feet deep. But historically, my part of the Southwest has never seen the snow depths people a little farther north have to deal with. And with climate change, our annual accumulation at the highest elevations now seems to be two feet or less. Knee deep is bearable for short distances.
Before getting the new gear, I’d been avoiding one of my favorite trails in winter, because it goes through the bottom of a narrow, shady canyon that collects deep snow, stays cold, and holds snow and ice from winter into spring. From that canyon bottom, the trail climbs to the 9,300′ crest, where I was hoping to continue up a 9,700′ peak, depending on how much snow I found. This would be a revelation – for the past three years I’d completely given up on those elevations in the winter.
The range I was headed for averages a thousand feet lower than our mountains at home, and based on the forecast I expected temperatures into the seventies on sunny stretches of the hike. In fact, I wondered how much snow would even be left this long after the New Year’s storm, even with the light snowfall we had during the past week. Most people outside our region would be surprised simply to see snowy mountains 40 miles from the Mexican border – unaware that the mountains of Mexico itself get plenty of snow.
Approaching from the northeast, I could still see snow on north slopes above 8,000′. I had the choice of driving up the rough 4WD road to the trailhead, or walking it, and I chose to walk in order to prolong my hike with more distance and elevation. What I wasn’t sure about was being able to reach the peak in the time I had – on my last visit I’d remarked at how strangely long it takes to reach the crest, probably because parts of the climb are really steep, and the passage through the shady canyon is just plain slow.
In my first view of the upper slopes I was excited to see that the waterfall was still frozen. Snow was patchy below, as expected – I was surprised to find patches even below 6,000′. And even before the waterfall, at 7,800′, I faced long traverses in calf-deep snow.
Last week’s storm had dropped a couple of inches here, so there were clear tracks of a couple who had hiked to the waterfall overlook with two dogs, probably two or three days ago. Beyond that, the trail switchbacks across a vertiginous slope to reach the saddle at the mouth of the hanging canyon. I put on my gaiters before proceeding. That slope bore knee-deep snow with the much older tracks of a single male hiker. He had cut corners in a couple of places where the slope was just too steep to be safe with this much snow.
I’d taken off my sweater shortly after starting the hike, and made it this far in just my shirt. Considering how much snow there was on this steep north slope, I was surprised to see the first butterfly of the season.
From the saddle, the trail traverses at a gentle grade across a forested, mostly snow-free south-facing slope down into the hanging canyon that feeds the waterfall. Just before reaching the deep snow of the canyon bottom, I saw the first lizard of 2022 dashing under rocks beside the trail.
As expected, the snow in the canyon bottom was up to two feet deep, but I could hear the creek running underneath it. I pulled my sweater back on. It was impossible to tell where was solid ground and where was running water, but I’d been here enough to generally remember – until at one step my boot sank more than knee deep.
I mostly followed the tracks of the hiker who’d preceded me weeks ago. His tracks had been smoothed over by last week’s dusting, but I could tell he was using trekking poles, especially to traverse the steepest, least stable slopes. I wondered how far he’d gone.
As expected, it seemed to take forever to get through that canyon bottom, but it was a beautiful place to be stuck in.
The other hiker’s tracks continued up through the old-growth forest with its patchy snow and past the Forest Service cabin below the crest. But the tracks ended just before the trail junction at the crest. A howling wind comes over that saddle – it’s always crisscrossed with recent blowdown – and the snow at the junction was both knee-deep and trackless, although it had melted and refrozen enough to have a hard crust.
It was late enough now that I knew I wouldn’t make it to the peak. But I had enough time to go another mile at least, so I proceeded north toward the saddle below the peak, where the snow appeared patchy – I could see the trail in the opposite direction traversed more deep snow.
It was an easy, fairly level trail until about a third of a mile before the saddle, when I again entered deep snow.
The wind at the saddle, which faces southwest, was fierce! I gazed wistfully at the peak above – it was only a half mile and a few hundred vertical feet away, but if I took the time to climb it I would probably miss the burrito and beer at the cafe and end up starving as well as tired on the two-hour drive home.
I definitely enjoyed the return hike more than the climb up! I was torn between rushing and taking it easy, but mostly I took it easy and enjoyed the beautiful snowy canyon and the exquisite frozen waterfall.
In fact, despite a slower than usual pace, I reached the vehicle 45 minutes before closing time, allowing me to obey the speed limit on the narrow, winding road out of the mountains. It wasn’t until after dinner, on my way up the lonely highway toward the interstate, that I fell prey to a sheriff’s deputy hiding on the dark roadside. I had to endure 15 minutes of apocalyptically flashing lights to find out he was only giving me a warning.
Bushwhacking the Last Frontier
Monday, March 21st, 2022: Chiricahuas, Hikes, South Fork, Southeast Arizona.
It hurts to write this. Standing at my desk, with my laptop and papers raised on cardboard boxes because my back pain won’t let me sit, an ache throbs up the back of my legs, and I’m so exhausted I can barely think.
I’m not sure why – I’ve done much harder hikes than the one I did yesterday. It may be allergy – I had my first bad attack of the current season a few days ago, my eyes have ached and watered since, and a headache kept me awake much of last night. These things will pass.
I’d been wanting to get back to the range of canyons in Arizona near the Mexican border, but didn’t want to repeat the hikes I’d done there recently. I finally decided to try a trail I’d been avoiding because according to the description, most of it would be easy, and the rest might be impassable. I wanted to reach the crest, which would reward me with 4,000′ of elevation gain, but I was actually looking forward to some bushwhacking. It would be a final frontier of sorts – the last major trail on this side of the range that I hadn’t hiked yet.
Our weather was getting cooler, but under a clear, sunny sky at lower elevation than home, I hit the trailhead with my sweater off. Climbing up a long canyon with spectacular rock formations and exotic vegetation, it’s the most popular trail in the range, so there were 8 vehicles parked in addition to mine, but I knew most of them would be birders, confined to the first mile or so. And that’s what I found – I passed all eight groups, including many young people, in less than a mile and a half. Of all those parked at the trailhead, I was the only one actually hiking the trail.
Birders are seldom friendly – they view strangers as annoying interruptions in their competitive hobby. One older man was actually hostile – when I wished him a good morning, he scowled and said “Is it morning? I’m not so sure.” I checked my Arizona-adjusted watch and said we still had an hour and a half of morning left. His wife smiled but he kept scowling as I passed.
As I left them all behind, my sweat began attracting flies and I had to pull on the old head net.
The trail description claims it’s level for the first four miles, but I found that it climbed 1,100′ in that distance, which is hardly level. Being popular, it is much better maintained than trails back home, at least in the first few miles. Virtually all of it lies within federal wilderness. The rushing creek, draining from snow still clinging to the crest, is lined and clogged in many places with debris from floods after the 2011 wildfire, so the trail is occasionally diverted high upslope.
But I do love the riparian canopy here, visually dominated in winter by the leafless white sycamores, with oversize yuccas and agaves along the trail. The map and trail description mention an apple tree about three miles in from the trailhead, but I never found it, enjoying maples and dark groves of majestic cypress instead.
At the four-mile point I reached the noisy confluence of two creeks. The main stem came down from the right, draining the vast upper canyon whose rim I’ve hiked many times. But the trail continued straight up a side canyon. According to the trail description the next stretch was in worse condition, but I found that a lot of work had been put into logging, brushing, and grading it during recent months. It was very steep and much of it was rocky, but the only thing slowing me down was my stamina – I had to stop more often than usual to catch my breath.
One strange thing about this tributary creek was its color. Where it was rushing it looked clear, but where it pooled, it was a pale, opaque turquoise.
Narrow, hemmed in by cliffs, the side canyon climbed 1,500′ in the next two miles. Patches of snow still clung to slopes above, and I was excited when I reached a small stand of aspens.
But just beyond the aspen grove, the creek disappeared underground, and I emerged in a small basin where several side drainages converged. The maintained trail ended there, and the only thing that beckoned me forward was a pink ribbon above a brushy, trackless slope which had burned intensely in the old wildfire.
I followed a series of ribbons through the brush and bunchgrass for a few hundred yards, and came to a chaotic erosional gully choked with boulders and logs from above. The ribbons continued across it into a thicket, so I scrambled over, and began fighting my way through dense brush, much of it thorny locust, up the opposite slope in search of more ribbons. I’d brought the map with me but was trusting to the ribbons now.
Several hundred yards up this slope the ribbons ended, but the brush remained thick. High over my right shoulder I could see the snowy crest, still a thousand feet above, where I’d hoped to end my hike. But I wasn’t going to fight my way through locust all the way up there, and that log-and-boulder-choked gully would be no easier.
A more attainable goal loomed ahead of me: a lower ridgeline where I knew there was a trail I’d approached from the opposite direction more than a year ago. Somewhere in my current vicinity there was supposed to be a spur trail that led up there, but it seemed to be buried or hidden in thickets. I saw a minor spur of the mountain ahead of me, across a minor drainage, that was sparsely forested but showed no thickets, and might be a direct route to the ridge. Getting there was not easy – fighting through more thorns, climbing over logs, descending steep boulders, clawing my way up a loose slope – but as I approached, I saw a trail on that spur where no trail was supposed to be.
When I reached it I found it was just a game trail that quickly disappeared, and I found myself ascending a knife-edge ridge choked with sharp rock outcrops, random deadfall, and more thickets. Looking at the surrounding landscape, I saw I’d picked one of the more difficult routes to the high ridge, but I’d committed myself, so I kept climbing. After about 45 minutes I’d only gone about an eighth of a mile, but I suddenly emerged on the spur trail and felt I had a real chance at reaching the ridgetop.
I’d be cutting it close. Bushwhacking had used up a lot of time, and as usual I wanted to finish the hike in time for beer and burrito at the cafe. And although the spur trail had good tread, it was overgrown with thorns and blocked by huge logs and deep, debris-filled gullies. I even had to carefully cut steps across a long, steep patch of snow, where I found footprints from weeks or months ago, evidence there was somebody in these mountains as crazy as me.
Soon enough I reached the trail junction on the ridge, and got my reward – a new view to the southeast of the range and the mountains of Mexico beyond.
The wind was howling up there and I had to hurry back. I didn’t want to repeat that bushwhack and wondered if I might be better off taking the other trail back, but checking the map I could see that route would be at least a mile farther. I thought I might return on the spur trail as far as the tread lasted and see if I could find a shortcut to the main trail.
In the event, the spur trail disappeared high above that thicket where the ribbons had led me earlier. It ended at a sheer-sided gully ten feet deep, so I had to fight my way down through thorns to the big boulder-and-log-choked gully above my earlier crossing. This was as hard as any bushwhacking I’d done, but I finally reached the pink ribbons and the trackless traverse that led me to the small basin and the resumption of the maintained trail. I figured I now had just enough time to reach the cafe, if I walked fast down that steep trail.
I hadn’t seen or heard much wildlife on the way up, but just before reaching the confluence of creeks, I heard a sharp, catlike cry. Then, under the canopy of the lower canyon, two spotted towhees dashed into a bush at my right, then a woodpecker landed on a tree trunk at my left. Shortly after that I came upon a solitary whitetrail doe that merely sidestepped up the slope a few yards as I passed her.
Dark clouds had been blowing over. I finished my first beer while waiting for the burrito, then drank another half glass, so I had to stay in the motel that night. Heavy rain began to hammer the roof after dark.
In the morning, I saw a dusting of new snow on the upper slopes. Rain fell sporadically during the drive home, and it was actually snowing lightly when I entered my hometown.
Monday, July 18th, 2022: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
I was half inclined not to hike this Sunday. I hadn’t felt good on Saturday, and Sunday was forecast to be hot, reaching the low 90s in town.
I’d just finished repairing my deer-damaged 4wd Sidekick the day before. It seemed okay, but most of my favorite hikes involve long drives without a cell phone connection, and after an impact like that I wasn’t sure I wanted to immediately put it to the test.
There are typically two ways to get away from the heat: elevation and shade. But all the high-elevation hikes within an hour of town are either closed due to fire or involve long approaches through hot, overgrown low-elevation canyons.
Finally I realized that my best option actually involved the longest drive. One of the coolest places I know is a hanging canyon ranging from 8,500′-9,000′ down on the Arizona border, with a shady old-growth forest at its head. And most of the drive there retains full cell coverage and AAA road service would be available if the Sidekick broke down.
It was counterintuitive because if it was in the low 90s here, it would be 100 degrees at the entrance to that range, which is 1,000′ lower. But the trailhead is actually even higher than here – 6,500′ – and I would get there early enough so the climb to the canyon should be bearable.
The drive was a real leap of faith in my vehicle and my repair job. Not only did it start with 1-1/2 hours of high-speed, high-temperature driving, but it ended with a thousand-foot climb up the incredibly rough, rocky, high-clearance 4wd-only road to the trailhead, which few people besides me are willing to risk anymore. But the Sidekick performed perfectly.
I was drenched with sweat within the first half mile of the gradual climb up the first canyon. Our early monsoon rains had ensured that the trail was more overgrown by vegetation than ever, and I saw no evidence that anyone else had used it in the past month. Except bears! I found a continuous trail of fresh scat all the way up.
When I reached the switchbacks that take you to the high pass into the hanging canyon, I found a real puzzle. I was already fighting my way through thickets of thorny locust when I came upon big branches of elderberry that had been torn down, so that they blocked the trail and had to be climbed around. Dozens of mature branches, a dozen feet long and over 2″ thick, had been violently broken off, far back from the trail, requiring a long reach and a lot of strength. More strength in many cases than a human would have – and there was no sign humans had used this trail during the growing season, and why would a human pull down vegetation to block a trail anyway? It could only be bears, but bears don’t eat elderberries – all the berry clumps on the branches were intact.
Another surprise occurred when I reached out my thumb to touch a herbaceous leaf that reminded me of mint. I recoiled in pain at the lightest touch – it was stinging nettle! I’d never encountered stinging nettle in this region, but suddenly it seemed to be everywhere on this trail.
Wikipedia says stinging nettle is only native to the Old World, which is patently false. My aboriginal survival course in southeast Utah had included a lesson in how to cook and eat the native species. But in the more than 3 decades since then, I’d forgotten about them. On this trail, it was literally impossible to avoid touching them, so I was plagued by stings throughout the day. Why had they all sprung up suddenly this season, in this place, for the first time?
My lungs have turned out to be the slowest part of me to recover from their near-fatal crisis 2 months ago. Drenched with sweat, with little forest cover, I had to stop over, and over, and over again on the way up to the high pass, to catch my breath. When I finally crossed into the hanging canyon, and made the long traverse to the creek, it was loudly rushing, but it was no shadier and no cooler down there. The many crossings of the rocky, log-choked gully have always been a slow passage. As beautiful as it was, a riot of wildflower color, I found myself trudging and yearning to reach the upper end where the trail enters the shady forest.
I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to hike uphill. The slightest grade just wore me out. Would I ever recover the capacity I had before the illness?
I stopped at the Forest Service cabin, just below the crest, to rest in the shade of the big pines and firs. The trail to the crest is 4 miles, gaining 2,750 vertical feet. It’s always been a difficult, slow trail, but today it was taking me 3-1/2 hours to hike those 4 miles – painfully slow.
Somehow, leaving the cabin, I got a second wind. I couldn’t climb any faster, but I’d trained myself to walk at half my usual pace, which enabled me to go farther without stopping to rest. And the saddle at the crest trail junction, with its long view toward Mexico, was carpeted with yellow flowers. A young couple was coming back up the crest trail – like most people, they’d done the long, slow drive to the alpine campground several miles north, so they could do the easy crest hike, which involves little elevation change.
I’d started this hike not knowing how far I would get. But from the junction, it was an easy hike north through shady forest to the next saddle, so I continued that way.
I typically pick my turnaround point based on my planned end time minus my actual starting time, divided by two. Closer to home, I usually have 9 hours to hike in summer, but over here, 8 hours is usually the most I have, in order to reach the cafe before closing time.
But when I reached the saddle where I’d planned to end my hike, I realized that whereas the ascent was slow, the descent would be much quicker, because it was only climbing that was hard for me now. That might give me extra time to climb the 9,700′ peak above the saddle.
It’s not much of a peak – the original south side forest burned by the 2011 wildfire has been replaced by aspen thickets, so there’s barely a view. But the remaining forest makes for a nice shady spot to lie in the grass, and the minimal view of distant peaks peeking above the young aspens reminds you that you’re high in the sky.
A variety of birds were passing through, there was a nice breeze, and monsoon clouds were forming all around, occasionally drifting over the sun and providing even more cooling shade. My clothes were so drenched with sweat from the hot climb that they wouldn’t dry out until long after the hike, but I’d learned to ignore that minor discomfort, whenever my body had a chance to temporarily cool off.
In the past, I’d always tried to hike as far as possible, so I was left with no margin on the return and had to descend way too fast, which was hard on my joints. But today I felt I had enough time to return slower than usual. Hah! My joints still didn’t like it at all.
The flies had been with me all the way up, but on the return they became much more aggressive – maybe because of the rising heat – so I finally pulled on my head net. And the stinging nettles seemed to be jumping out at me at every turn.
But I got back to the vehicle with plenty of time to reach the cafe, for that beer, that burrito, and that room for the night. Amazingly, despite how hard and slow it had been, I’d hiked over 10 miles and climbed almost 3,300′, which represented a significant improvement from last weekend. Maybe I really was recovering!
