Regions
Sunday, November 19th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips.
Suffering from burnout, I needed to get away from the problems that surround me at home. My favorite mountain getaway over in Arizona would be cold, but as a result, the cheap motel would have vacancies. I could hike in the daytime, and in the evenings I could get restaurant meals – something I never get at home since we lost all our decent restaurants during COVID. Normally the only time I eat out is during my semi-annual visits with family back east.
The weather up there was forecast to be dry. But as I drove north the sky was full of towering cumulus clouds, past the halfway point it got positively threatening, and I hit rain in the high passes. It was cold enough that I switched into 4wd to keep from spinning off into a cliff or a canyon.
By the time I reached the motel, it was almost full dark and the office was closed. My room was unlocked, but when I opened the door a heavy wave of artificial fragrance poured out. Entering, I sniffed the bed, but it smelled fine. The odor simply filled the air, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was too cold to air out the room, so I drove to the restaurant for dinner – which included one of the best malbecs I’ve ever had.
When I returned, my allergies were triggered by the odor, and I discovered I’d forgotten my antihistamine and nasal spray – something I can’t remember ever doing before. I faced a night of no relief in this very remote place.
Adding insult to injury, I soon had a headache, and the normally complete and peaceful silence was disturbed by a rhythmic screeching noise, like an unoiled pump. I couldn’t figure out where that was coming from, either. I was exhausted enough to fall asleep, but I woke a few hours later and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning.
In the morning, the sky was perfectly blue and everything outside was covered in a thick layer of frost. I walked over to the office and found they open an hour later in winter. In the meantime, I would drive the 20 minutes to the nearest supermarket for antihistamine.
But by the time I got dressed for the drive, the sky was completely covered by low clouds and it was snowing!
The drive wasn’t wasted, though. I was rewarded with multiple rainbows and sightings of the bighorn sheep that were introduced here decades ago, frequenting the shallow canyons that wind through this volcanic alpine plateau.
When I returned to the motel office I met the new owners. The couple looked and sounded like urban hipsters in their late 40s or early 50s, and I guessed they’d seen this place on visits from Phoenix over the years, and decided to relocate and invest in a modest resort, planning to renovate and increase the rates for more profit.
In any event, they seemed shocked when I told them the fragrance was a problem. They said they’d installed devices in all the rooms that emit fragrance continually. I know I’m not the only person bothered by artificial fragrance – every supermarket carries fragrance-free and hypoallergenic products – but we seem to be an aberration in Arizona. They were anxious to help, though – they said I could simply search the electrical outlets to find the device, unplug it and air out the room. They said the screeching sound was probably the well pump, in a shed outside the motel, and I suggested it might need lubricating.
Tuesday, November 21st, 2023: 2023 Trips, Baldy, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
I woke up Monday to dense fog and a dusting of snow here at 8,400′. The temperature was 27 and forecast to reach 37. I hadn’t hiked yesterday – in fact, I hadn’t had a good hike in three weeks, partly because my foot condition had returned after five years pain-free. Despite the weather, I was determined to get out into this spectacular alpine landscape.
I knew there’d be more snow at higher elevations – my favorite hike reaches 11,200′. The highway to the trailhead is closed in winter, and the shortcut from town to the highway is a steep and narrow dirt road. I decided to do a lower-elevation canyon hike I’d started once but never finished.
But I packed my winter gear, and shortly after leaving the motel, I saw the turnoff for the dirt shortcut, and swerved into it. I’d never hiked in these mountains in snow before, so I just had to try it!
I found an untracked inch of snow on the dirt road, up to 9,000′, where the highway had 2 inches. Snow was falling lightly, and the direction I was going had been plowed earlier. I was in 4wd and braked to test the traction before continuing.
When I reached the trailhead parking lot, it was untracked, but as I pulled on my pack and insulated Goretex gloves and started off, I heard an engine. It was the snowplow, returning to clear the highway in the opposite direction.
The trailhead is 9,400′, so I knew the temperature had to be in the low 20s. The only tracks in this fresh snow were from animals – elk, fox, cottontail, squirrel, something smaller.
The first mile and a half skirts the long meadows and bogs that cover the level ground on this volcanic plateau, passing in and out of small stands of spruce-fir forest. This was the first time I could remember seeing the meadows in their winter colors.
The first couple of miles of this trail see a lot of traffic in warmer weather, and I stumbled a lot because the snow hid irregularities like rocks, erosional ruts, and footprints in frozen mud. It would be even worse in deeper snow at higher elevations. My goal was at least to reach the spectacular viewpoint on the ridgetop. I was moving slow and making a lot of stops to enjoy a landscape renewed by snow.
When I reached the last clear stretch before entering the main forest, I could see what the snow was doing to the rock formations. I was in for a real treat!
The trail climbs about 3/4 mile through magical old-growth alpine forest before reaching the cliffs. Almost every aspen I passed had someone’s initials in its bark, but in this snow, silence, and solitude I was truly a pioneer.
Many of these photos appear to be black-and-white – but they were all taken in color!
At the foot of the cliffs, the trail switches back to traverse to the ridgetop. This is one of the most spectacular stretches of forest I’ve ever found, and as with everything else, the snow made it new.
I knew the overlook would be socked in with fog, but who cared? The snow up here at 10,200′ ranged from 3-5 inches deep, easily walkable without needing my gaiters. But the undulating bedrock surfaces had been smoothed over by snow, so I had to take special care in climbing to the edge of the cliff.
Having made it this far, I wanted to at least reach the second mass of exposed rock, about a mile farther up the ridge. That turned out to be a slow mile, with traverses of steep slopes where I could easily lose my footing and slide hundreds of feet down the mountain.
After arriving, I was especially wary of crossing this outcrop, since the route is unclear and the footing precarious even when clear of snow. But I carefully made it across, and with most of the day left, decided to keep going.
Past that last outcrop, it’s all alpine forest to the crest of the mountain. I would just keep going until I figured it was time to turn back.
But shortly after entering the forest I came to blowdown across the trail. I knew some of it had been there on my last visit, two years ago in August, and at first it was easy to step over. But I ran into more, and much worse, ahead. To avoid sliding off snow-covered logs, I ended up having to make long zigzagging detours.
After bypassing dozens of these fallen logs, I finally reached the edge of a burn scar. My time was almost up, and the burn scar would allow me to log a GPS waypoint so I would know how far I’d gone.
I hadn’t reached the crest, but I knew I’d gone almost five miles. In snow, that’s worth 50% more! And what a place! I can think of few places that would be as magical in snow.
The fog was lifting, so when I reached the viewpoint I could see past the cloud cover to the center of the plateau, with a sliver of blue sky.
I was wearing my winter boots, which offer maximum support. But on the way down, I could tell I’d done more damage to my foot. Only time will tell if I’ll be able to resume hiking this winter.
When I checked the map back in the room, I found I’d reached 10,600′. And by morning the weather had cleared, so while taking the long way home east across the plateau, I stopped for a view of the mountain I’d partially climbed.
Monday, January 22nd, 2024: 2024 Trips, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips.
I could tell from the clouds on Saturday that we were going to get rain Sunday. But I hike in the rain all the time and it’s never been a problem around here.
My problem was, as usual, deciding on a hike. I’d gone three weeks without hiking, in darkest Indiana under heavy cloud cover, and most of our local hikes involve a canyon – I wanted something exposed, with a view to remind me I was back in the West.
I was tempted to make a long drive into Arizona, spending the night over there. But the options there weren’t much better and would involve more complications. In the end, I used up an hour and a half trying to decide, then leaving late, headed north to a new area I’ve been studying on the map.
With the late departure, it would be a shorter hike than usual, but at least I could do some scouting for a later return. On the way, I spotted a blue heron standing in the Gila River – I assumed that was a good omen.
The trail I wanted to try is a long traverse west across the foot of a 9,000 foot mountain, with branches along the way. The turnoff is an hour and a half from town. It’d been raining on and off all the way, and the long forest road to the trailhead turned out to consist of mud, snow, and ice. I’d never really tried this vehicle in serious mud before. The road set out climbing a shallow ridge where, despite being in low-range 4wd, I immediately started sliding around. I only made it about a half mile before approaching a deeply washed out section where I was almost certain to get stuck. When I got out of the vehicle to scout, my boots sank an inch into the muck.
There was another option on my list, a six-mile ascent of a 9,800 foot peak. I knew I wouldn’t have time to reach the top, but again, I could do some scouting. It required driving east through the tiny county seat, a hotbed of the anti-government Sagebrush Rebellion. I had thought about spending the night there, if the town’s one motel actually existed. Google Satellite View showed a vacant lot at the address, but the place had a website and ample online reviews.
The motel was indeed there. And past the town, I found the turnoff to the next trailhead, a long and winding dirt road. It wasn’t too bad at first, but after a few miles it climbed to the rim of the canyon of the Tularosa River – which I knew it had to ford at the bottom – and I could see the descent involved more mud, snow, and ice. I definitely didn’t want to start down and find myself unable to drive back up. This day was turning into a real bust.
But on the way north to the first trail, I’d passed one of those little “hiker” signs that I’d never noticed before, about ten miles south of my destination. I checked the national forest map I carry in my pack, and found there was indeed a numbered trail there, heading west into the Blue Wilderness. This trail is not shown anywhere online – it only appears on the official printed map.
I drove another half hour back south and easily found the turnoff. The map showed a dirt road heading west less than a mile to the trailhead, but what I found was the deepest, softest mud yet. Still, after all that driving I was determined to walk, so I parked just off the highway, and began trudging west, immediately picking up several pounds of mud under my boots.
As bad as it was on this road, the mud was even worse when I tried to walk off the road, where it was uncompacted. The road climbed up a little peak to two transmission towers, part of the powerlines that bring our electricity from the coal-fired plants up north. Past the peak, the road enters the wilderness area, continuing downhill to the trailhead. I was surprised to find an old wooden kiosk, but I wasn’t surprised to find a family of mice living in the box where the visitor logbook is stored.
It’d been drizzling on and off. I’d only gone about 3/4 of a mile, and each boot was carrying a big pad of mud like a brown snowshoe. Past the kiosk, I started up the trail proper, but the mud was even worse than on the road. I made it only a hundred yards before realizing this was pointless. It was forecast to rain all day and this could only get worse. And both road and trail had been heavily trampled by cattle, despite federal wilderness designation.
On the way back I saw headlights approaching and stepped aside for a late-model Toyota pickup. I waved but couldn’t see inside – they’d had all the windows tinted, even in front. Where were they going? The powerline is the wilderness boundary – the road is closed past it. Maybe they wanted to camp under the transmission towers – there’s a great view – but they’d be camping in mud.
So much for hiking. It was close to 1 pm, and I’d had nothing but snacks, so I was hungry. There’s a roadside cafe about ten miles north that’s seldom open, but I’d noticed the parking lot was full earlier, so I headed north again.
I was able to get chorizo and eggs, served by a lady with a European accent and a teenage Black boy, and by the time I was finished it was almost check-in time for the mysterious motel in the right-wing county seat. I now knew that the geology in this area is unlike any of the other areas where I hike – the ground is some sort of fine clay that becomes unwalkable when wet – but I wanted to return in dry weather, and it’s far enough that I would need a place to stay overnight. So I might as well try the motel.
I turned out to be the only guest. Everything looked new, which explains the vacant lot on Google Satellite View. I needed yogurt for breakfast, which led me to the discovery that the “General Merchandise” at the crossroads is really a supermarket crammed into a small building. Of course – it serves an entire county that’s remote and sparsely populated but huge.
After settling into my motel room, I realized this was just what I needed. At home, I’m surrounded by work to do and problems to solve. Maybe this is why I like motel rooms so much. For a minute there, I imagined myself just living in motel rooms for the rest of my life. The phone rang and messages arrived – needy people, demanding my attention – but I ignored them. And the next day, it was hard to leave.
Sunday, May 12th, 2024: 2024 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
This is the story of a road trip I made to the desert, to visit people I love and places that are sacred to me. Nine months ago I had been asked to lead a ceremony there, and that was the main purpose of the trip.
During the intervening months I faced challenges and crises that repeatedly brought me to the brink of a mental and emotional breakdown, struggling daily with the cumulative effects of both recent and past traumas, and since January I’d been in almost constant pain. Nevertheless, I began planning weeks before the trip, preparing music I would try to play, songs I would try to sing, stories I would try to tell.
All my preparations were speculative; I had no idea what would work, or even what people would want. I wasted a lot of time on things I ultimately realized were off-target. Despite being the designated leader, I had no plan for how the ceremony would unfold. Maybe nothing I had prepared would be used.
The last week before I left was a whirlwind of activity, finishing the gifts I hoped to share with the group, packing and struggling to finalize my schedule.
Day One: Departure
On the day of departure, I still didn’t know how long I’d be gone, where I would be on most days, or when I’d get back home. I hoped to camp, so I loaded my 4wd vehicle with all the usual desert survival gear.
It’s a two-day drive, crossing seven or eight mountain ranges, the highest pass over 8,500 feet. The first stint was a six-hour drive, the last part on the interstate. I’m spoiled to live in a remote small town, and any amount of traffic makes me boil over with stress, so as usual I was a wreck when I reached my first destination.
For the ceremony, I really wanted one item I hadn’t been able to find, and didn’t have time to order, at home. The town at the end of the six-hour drive was where I expected to find it, but after that grueling drive, I ran the nightmare gauntlet of traffic jams and construction sites for three hours, checking five different stores all over town, only to realize it simply wasn’t available here. My only remaining recourse was the sole big box store in the next town, two-and-a-half hours west and half the size of this town.
I’d booked an affordable room in a new boutique hotel. It turned out to be popular with affluent, age-inappropriate couples from Los Angeles and arrogant, wizened tourists from back east. The only saving grace was the cassette boombox in the room, with interesting tapes custom-curated by the owners.
Day Two: Arrival
This was to be my last internet access before the desert, and feeling the pressure, I tried to make last-minute arrangements without committing to specifics. I checked out, and did my grocery shopping for the desert, because what we have at home is limited and I like to treat myself on these rare occasions.
Then I drove across the high plateau and descended to the desert. My luck was turning – the next town had exactly what I needed at a discount price, and I enjoyed lunch at my favorite Mexican dinner house. And I thought to fill my solar shower and strap it to the top of the vehicle so I could clean up in camp before going to bed that night.
My little 27-year-old 4wd vehicle is punishing to drive in any conditions, with its tall profile and big windows creating a greenhouse effect, its extremely heavy clutch requiring me to stand up in the driver’s seat to depress the pedal at every gear change or stop, and its light weight combined with stiff suspension that make driving a road with any imperfections like riding a jackhammer. But it’s also been having shifting problems for years, which may portend a transmission failure. The mechanical clutch had supposedly been replaced just before I bought it, and it soon became almost impossible to shift into first gear or reverse. I eventually discovered that adjusting the clutch cable would solve the problem, but only temporarily – it had to be readjusted every six months. And in hot weather it got much worse.
So before the trip I’d adjusted it in advance, but sure enough, when I reached the warmer weather of the desert it required up to 40 pounds of one-armed force on the shift lever to change gears, and sometimes the engine had to be shut off before I could shift. I had no time to stop and adjust it now, so I just suffered through it for the next week, relentlessly punishing my already torn rotator cuffs.
I’d brought plenty of water and firewood from home, so all that was left was to fill up with gas. Gas gets progressively more expensive on the way to the desert, from $3.50 to $7.00 per gallon, so I topped up my tank incrementally at each of the last three opportunities.
And at last, I was back in the land I love, the land I can only visit at long intervals.
Tomorrow, I’d been hoping to do some clean-up at the cave where the ceremony would take place. But I arrived in mid-afternoon, so I was able to get a head start. A friend had suggested the wildflowers might be good now, but all I found was beavertail and hedgehog cactus in bloom. I’d been warned of juniper mortality, and sure enough, I found many had died recently.
We’d never left valuable gear in the cave, and the cheap stuff that had accumulated over decades had been attacked by weather and woodrats.
I spent a couple hours assembling a load to carry out this first night. It was melancholy work, the end of an era lasting more than four decades, many items laden with memories of a loved one.
The sun was setting, and I was lucky to find a campsite nearby. I had just enough time before dark to lay out my bedding, shower, and warm up a can of chili.
The campsite lay along a deeply eroded dirt road that continued for another mile back to the foot of cliffs, and after eating, in full dark with no moon, I began walking down the road. I love night hikes in the desert; the ground is pale and even starlight is enough to go by. As far as I could tell, I was alone from horizon to horizon, and the night was still.
Near the end of the road, surrounded by the low, rounded silhouettes of dark junipers and pale boulders, I happened to glance north, and saw a hazy light in the sky, moving slowly from north to south, without making a noise. I couldn’t tell how high it was, but all round it, the stars were crystal clear and sharply defined. I could clearly see the tiny lights of jets crossing east to west behind it, but this light was much larger, and surrounded by an elliptical haze – an aura. Since the sky around it was clear, it was like the light was generating and illuminating its own haze – some sort of gas or vapor.
When I first saw it, it was about 60 degrees up in the northern sky, and about 15 degrees west of Polaris, the north star. It was moving north-south like a satellite, but slowly. For five minutes I watched it climb steadily, unchanging, through 30 degrees of arc. When it reached the zenith, directly overhead, it slowly faded out and disappeared over about 10 seconds. It completely vanished, with the stars uncovered in the space where it had been.
I call it the Aura. I welcome logical explanations – please just don’t mention UFOs.
Day Three: Work
The temperature in my camp unexpectedly dropped to 40 degrees that night, and even wearing thermal tops and bottoms, I was too cold in my summer sleeping bag. But next morning, a friend living nearby offered her dumpster for the stuff I’d hauled out of the cave, and I was able to return for another load.
Tramping out to the cave one more time, I sorted and packed up the really junky stuff, leaving our old cooking utensils neatly arranged around the hearth. Then I raked the sticks and cactus spines away from the floor so my companions could enjoy the cave when they arrived in a few days.
After disposing of the junk and trash and making lunch at my friend’s place, I drove over to my land in a much more remote mountain range for a couple days and nights of hiking and camping. The roads have gotten worse and worse over the years, which is a good thing, reducing both visitation and vandalism. It had been almost a year and a half since I’d been there last. High winds were forecast for the next two days, which worried me – it’s almost impossible to sleep outside in a high wind.
Our campsite, sometimes subject to vandalism, was in good shape. The air was still, and I was swarmed by flies and gnats as I set up camp. They had no interest in standing water or my open mug of beer – what they seemed obsessed with was my exposed skin, perhaps for the salts. They got so bad that I had to pull on my head net. I wondered if the invasive feral burros were responsible – they’ve only arrived here within the past five years. I tried to play guitar, but the flies and gnats crawled all over my hands as I played.
It was inconvenient eating and drinking with the head net, but I was in my sacred place, so I couldn’t complain. I could almost feel it starting to heal me, already. The flies and gnats disappeared at 7:30 – I assume it was getting too cool for them – and I had a wonderful night’s sleep.
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024: 2024 Trips, Mojave Desert, Nature, Plants, Regions, Road Trips, Rocks.
Day Four: Hike
Today was forecast to be hot, and despite the high wind forecast, the air was still and already warm in camp as I started the day. Tomorrow I needed to make contact with the folks who were traveling to the ceremony, and that would mean driving outside the mountains for a cell signal. But today was my free day, and I planned to hike.
Unfortunately, the flies and gnats were just as bad as last night.
Where should I go? On my last visit, almost 18 months ago, I’d done all the iconic hikes. There was one canyon I’d been wanting to explore, but the mouth of it was almost three miles away across gently undulating open desert with no chance of shade.
I finally decided to head up our main canyon, with the tentative goal of reaching its head on the crest, with a view east. I’d tried that once, 32 years ago, but had been stymied by a confusing maze of stone fins and pinnacles.
For the first mile and a half, my gaze was rooted to the sand of the big wash, where I was delighted at the bloom of wildflowers and puzzled by the vehicle tracks of trespassers during recent months. A big truck, some kind of UTV or ATV, and two or three dirt bikes. These people treat the whole desert as their God-given playground and can’t be bothered to walk anywhere; they consider it a failure if they have to get off their butts.
Before the trip, a friend had suggested I might find a decent bloom around the cave, but the flowers here in my home range were far more spectacular – and this was not even close to the best bloom I’d seen here. And that’s just the flowers – the rocks in this range are also more diverse and beautiful than those elsewhere in the desert. It’s wilder, richer, and more forbidding than other ranges I know.
Past the dry waterfall, I was approaching the old miner’s cabin, which used to be maintained by a family of gun nuts from Huntington Beach. The truck had to turn back early, but the dirt bikers and ATV rider drove up the banks to avoid boulders in the wash, trampling vegetation, until they reached the base of the old, deeply eroded road to the cabin. And that turned out to be just too rugged for them.
Fortunately the cabin is falling apart, the junk around it slowly rusting away.
Having reached the cabin, I remembered that an old, now-impassable road climbs behind it to mine works and a roofless drystone cabin farther up the canyon. I went a short way up that and discovered a developed mule trail with stone retaining walls branching off, appearing to lead into the next canyon south. This is a canyon I backpacked into and partially explored more than thirty years ago, but I remember nothing of its upper reaches. It’s hidden from below, which makes it doubly intriguing, so I made a snap decision to follow the old trail.
It was blocked in several places by big chollas, but it eventually led to a saddle overlooking the hidden canyon, and from there down into a side gully, where I stumbled upon a mine, almost completely hidden behind a thicket of catclaw acacia.
It turned out to be an unusually long tunnel for this range. It went almost straight back for more than 150 feet, and another man had explored it recently – I could tell because he’d broken a living branch of catclaw to reach it. Any tracks in this protected environment would last forever, and his were the only human tracks before I arrived.
I dug out and turned on my headlamp, and nearing the back, found bones, and then parts of animal skeletons – a spinal column, a collapsed rib cage, and what appeared to be a couple of skulls. And at the very end was a patch of damp mud.
The old trail had washed out around the mine entrance, but I could see some sort of manmade ledge farther down the gully toward the hidden canyon, so I climbed over the washout and kept going. A bend of the hidden canyon lay below me, and I thought I could discern a continuation of the trail across the slope above the bend, so I used that to reach a narrow stretch of canyon upstream. This canyon is exceptionally beautiful and decorated with spectacular rock, but it’s also full of long-established invasive tamarisk, in apparent equilibrium with native riparian vegetation.
Including honey mesquite! This is one of only two canyons in the range where I’ve found big stands, probably cultivated prehistorically by Native Americans. The other mesquite canyon also has spectacular rocks. I’d made the right choice in detouring over here.
I was amused to encounter a shrike who stood on a yucca blade only ten feet away from me, making continuous agitated calls while holding an insect in its beak.
I began encountering what would turn out to be a series of natural rock dams across the canyon bottom, some requiring technical bouldering moves to climb over. And suddenly I found myself at a fork in the canyon, where two branches of seemingly equal size converged. One featured a towering cliff and a narrows that looked potentially impassable, so that’s the one I tried.
I was able to get through the narrows, climbing more natural rock dams, and the canyon just kept getting more spectacular, until suddenly I spotted a pinyon pine ahead! This range is low enough that pines only survive on protected slopes at its highest elevations, so my heart always soars when I come to these trees that were so important to native people.
There were only a few in this stretch of canyon, but they beckoned me onward.
I next emerged into a basin where more drainages converged, and far above, I could see what appeared to be the crest, dotted with more pines. I wasn’t sure which route to take from here, so I climbed a rock formation a hundred feet or so above the wash, where I could get a panoramic view.
The main drainage came steeply down from a saddle that seemed to be on the crest, but I couldn’t tell if it would overlook the east side of the range or only the main canyon to my north. Also, the slopes of that drainage were really rocky and potentially hard to traverse. To the right was a slope that featured stretches of grassy ground, potentially easier to traverse, until the route vanished over a divide into a side drainage that seemed to lead to a higher saddle. I was sure that route would lead to the true crest, so that’s the one I would try.
To get there, I had to proceed up the main wash. But above it on the left was a sort of ramp that looked easier going, and after climbing it I discovered another big stand of mesquite. The mesquite here was really thriving – in fact all the vegetation here seemed to be doing better than that around the cave farther north.
Dropping back into the wash farther upstream, I reached a stretch of rugged ground congested with boulders, thorns, and cactus that took some getting through before reaching the grassy slope I hoped to take to the crest. This required a steep climb, but there were parts that almost hinted at a trail, and dramatic rock formations both near and far as landmarks to memorize for my return.
Wind had been rising as I climbed. The forecast finally seemed to materialize.
Up and up I climbed, over the divide into the next drainage. And there I began to find cairns. I believe these to be remnants of the old Sierra Club peakbagger group, and I dismantle them wherever it’s convenient – this is supposed to be a wilderness, not a recreational area. Still, it surprised me to find them in this obscure, hidden canyon that I hadn’t even explored until 35 years after first arriving. It suggests that even fewer Anglos know these mountains now than then, which has got to be a good thing.
Back and forth I meandered to avoid obstacles in the new drainage, steadily approaching what I really hoped would be the crest. As is typical, there were lots of fallen skeletons of big pinyon pine strewn across the slopes here.
Hours had passed since my planned turn-around time. The wind was howling as I reached a saddle on the crest, but I was ecstatic. I’d only been on this central stretch of crest once before, over 30 years ago, and never at this spot. I made my way higher and farther south to get a view of the iconic rock formations along the southern crest. Clouds were massing along with the wind and the temperature was dropping, which was fine with me.
I hated to turn back – I wanted to stay up there forever! That’s the way it always is. But the longer I waited, the colder my shower would be in camp that evening.
I had no trouble retracing my route down. And as usual, I paid more attention to the ground, finding a couple of old ram’s horns from mountain sheep, and a mushroom under a tiny nurse shrub.
It was when I reached the hidden canyon that I became entranced by the exotic rocks. The sky had grown overcast and mostly dark, and the wind bore directly down the canyon from the northeast. But in the lower stretch the sun came out again for a while.
The wind was so strong now, I was sure my tarp had blown away and been ripped to shreds in a catclaw. I’d forgotten to pack it away before leaving camp, and the little rocks I use to anchor the edges were surely inadequate. I feared I wouldn’t be able to sleep in that wind and would have to leave the mountains during the night.
But miraculously, my tarp was intact, and the wind died shortly after I finished my shower. The flies and gnats never returned, and I enjoyed a delicious dinner and a peaceful last night in my sacred mountains.
Since I’ve known these mountains by hiking them extensively for 35 years, I guessed that today’s hike only covered between 7 and 8 miles out and back, and when I plotted it on my mapping platform a week later, it turned out a bit under 8, with a little under 2,200 feet of accumulated elevation gain. But including many stops, it took 8-1/2 hours to complete.
It interests me to compare this with the hikes I do back home, which are all to some degree preparation for hiking in the desert. Two weeks earlier I’d hiked 18-1/2 miles near home in the same amount of time, with almost 60 percent more elevation gain, on maintained trails. The hardest hike I do near home, more than 16 miles out-and-back with over 5,000 feet of elevation gain, only takes a half hour longer.
Though much shorter, with much less elevation gain, today’s hike in my desert mountains felt harder than either of those, and as I discovered during the next week, it took a more serious toll on my body than any hike I’ve ever done near home – even the bushwhacks in severe weather. It was also more dangerous, but interestingly, I never stumbled or fell, which happens regularly on those hikes near home.
Numbers aside, it felt like one of the best ever, one I won’t forget. I wondered how much longer I’d be able to do this.
