Sunday, November 6th, 2022
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, March 28th, 2022: Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Southwest New Mexico.
Nothing exciting or spectacular to report this week. Sunday’s hike was a personal milestone in that I was finally able to return to the highest-elevation trail in my regional circuit. It crosses a 10,000′ peak, traversing a densely forested north slope that retains deep snow late in the season. Our unusually cold winter finally broke during the past couple of weeks, so I guessed that I could now handle whatever snow remained up there with my normal 3-season boots.
Over the years, as I increased my capacity for longer hikes, I’d encountered a catastrophic blowdown on the far side of the peak which obliterated the crest trail. Becoming accustomed to bushwhacking and routefinding, I’d fought my way through that blowdown, and through a half mile of wildfire deadfall beyond it, eventually reaching a saddle marking the crest trail’s junction with feeder trails coming up major side canyons. Out and back, that hike amounted to almost 20 miles round-trip on the crest trail, which felt like quite an accomplishment. Not only did it include climbing over, under, and around the blowdown and deadfall. I also believed I had that part of the trail to myself – I never saw evidence of other hikers making the effort I was making.
The trail starts at an 8,200′ pass and traverses alternately across east-and-west-facing slopes, climbing steadily through exposed burn scar high in the sky, with long views across the southern landscape, until it reaches intact stands of pine and fir at the top of the peak. It crosses the peak through beautiful alpine meadows and groves of old-growth conifers, passing near a famous fire lookout which is the destination for most hikers.
The temperature in town was forecast to reach the high 70s, and I found it warm enough at the pass to take off my sweater. The sky was mostly clear with a few wispy clouds. It can be windy up there on the ridgeline, but was fairly calm during the climb.
Shortly after entering the forest on the flanks of the peak, I saw another hiker coming down the trail toward me. This stretch of the trail to the fire lookout is the most popular trail in our region, because it’s the highest elevation – hence coolest – hike accessible to the nearest low-lying cities – Las Cruces and El Paso. So I always expect company here. We stopped and had a lengthy talk. In his late 20s or early 30s, tall and slender, he was from California and completely unfamiliar with local culture and habitats. He couldn’t get over how much brush and deadfall he found in our burn scars – he’s apparently accustomed to easy, groomed trails in stable climax habitat.
He’d come prepared for backpacking and spent the night on the peak, returning in frustration after failing to find water up there. He shook a floppy, empty water bottle at me and said his filter had become clogged with melting snow. But he was impressed with our “real wilderness” – as opposed to what he was used to farther west – and wanted to return for a longer stay.
Leaving the popular trail behind on the far side of the peak, I was prepared for my hike to begin at the big blowdown, which no longer seemed like an obstacle for me. Imagine my surprise when I reached the saddle and saw an opening had been cut through those giant ponderosa logs!
A trail crew had arrived some time after my last visit, toward the end of our monsoon in early September. My first reaction was actually disappointment, and my disappointment grew as I discovered they’d logged and brushed almost all of the trail from the saddle to the distant junction. What had become a fun obstacle course was now like a wilderness superhighway.
Wildlife was sparse on the ground and in the air. It was too early for migrating birds, and I saw no deer or elk. With the trail clear, I had no trouble reaching the junction saddle in good time, so I stretched out on the ground. The temperature was still mild, but the sky was being covered by a thin cloud layer, and wind was picking up.
Climbing from the saddle exposed me to a fierce wind out of the southwest, and I had to snug the chin strap of my shade hat. Wind and cloud cover dropped the air temperature but the gradual climb back to the peak kept me warm. Still, the higher I climbed, the stronger the wind became.
Nearing the peak, my acculated elevation gain for the day exceeded 4,000′, and I could definitely feel it. Remaining patches of snow were unstable enough to throw me off balance several times, so I had to focus on staying calm and composed. Then, descending out of intact forest on the other side, the wind reached gale force, nearly blew me down, and tore my hat off despite the chin strap. I was able to chase it down and had to carry it for much of the remaining descent. It was now cold enough to require the sweater.
About halfway down, I spotted the smoke of a wildfire, 20 miles west and a few miles north of the highway I’d be driving home. Then I came upon a mysterious piece of blue synthetic fabric about two feet long, labeled “Mission Enduracool.” It had obviously been dropped by the young hiker from California. I stuffed it in an empty pocket. At home I learned it’s some sort of high-tech “cooling towel”, apparently used by athletes. After decades of running, hiking, and backpacking in the Mojave Desert, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Wonders will never cease, and it remains a mystery why someone would need it at high elevation in late winter.
Then, only a few hundred yards before the trailhead, I came upon that floppy water bottle. Yeah, I know, I’m prone to losing things on hikes, but I generally make the effort to go back and retrieve them. This California hiker was shedding gear right and left, and he didn’t have the wind for an excuse – it started long after he would’ve returned to his vehicle.
All in all, it was a hike on thoroughly familiar ground that offered nothing new, but still felt like an accomplishment – after a long winter, the high ground was again accessible, and from now until next winter I’d have a lot more choices in my hiking routine.
Saturday, April 2nd, 2022: Restoration Projects.
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Saturday, April 2nd, 2022: Restoration Projects.
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Monday, April 4th, 2022: Bear, Hikes, Pinalenos, Southeast Arizona.
Trying to maximize the time available for my Sunday hikes without rushing and stressing out, my weekend schedule is tight, and I’m still having trouble adjusting to daylight savings time. This weekend I set my alarm to go off early, but still ended up getting a late start, because I couldn’t decide where to go. I really wanted to return to the range in Arizona with a trail that climbs through granite boulders – it’d been almost a year since I’d been over there – but it comes at a high cost.
I burn a prodigious amount of energy on these hikes, and end up starving afterward. But it’s a two hour drive, and there are no restaurants along the way, so I need to end the hike in time to get back home at a reasonable hour. I never like to drive home in the dark anyway, because of the chance of deer on the road. Those time constraints generally result in shorter hikes than I can do closer to home. But for other reasons, the cost of today’s hike was much higher than usual.
The day was forecast to be partly cloudy with a high of 70 at home. Perfect hiking weather. But I wasn’t thinking about elevation and aspect – the trail starts 1,000′ lower than home and is fully exposed on a south-facing slope for most of the way.
One reason I like this trail is that it’s a steady 4,000′ climb to the crest. But since most people prefer an easy hike, trails in this range are intended to start at the paved road on top and end at the bottom, where there is no marked trailhead. You have to know the turnoff onto a high-clearance 4wd track that meanders a few hundred yards into the foothill scrub, and then you have to know where to start the trail, a few hundred yards beyond the end of the track. I figured all that out on my first visit.
Nobody had driven that 4wd track recently, but it’d been fully trampled by cattle. The boulder-strewn base of the mountains alternates between meadows, dense scrub, and giant old Emory oaks, and the trail meanders between them while climbing gradually into the complex topography of the foothills. I could hear the cattle before I saw them – they were grazing a grassy basin to my left – then while stopping to stretch I was surprised by a cow and her calf emerging from the oak scrub a few yards away.
This is generally a good trail, and a very beautiful one, but it’s seldom used. One large man had walked the first mile or so recently, but his footprints ended soon. Even the cattle seem to stick to the foothills and never venture higher.
Flies were bad and I had to pull on my head net shortly after starting. Small flowers brightened the trail, and the Emory oak leaves were turning. We think of deciduous trees as changing color and losing their leaves in fall, but the Emory oak does this in our windy season of March and April.
The day felt hot from the beginning. My memory of this place was rusty, and things had changed in the eleven months since my last visit. The steady climb that yields spectacular views is exhausting, and last summer’s wet monsoon had resulted in overgrowth of the trail by grasses and shrubs. Near the bottom it was thorny mesquite that scratched my hands and made me especially grateful for thorn-proof pants. Since virtually no one besides me hikes the full trail, grasses had obliterated much of the tread and hid rocks that kept throwing me off balance. Game trails often had more tread than the hiking trail, so I really had to rely on memory and cairns, which were themselves sometimes buried in overgrowth.
Fortunately the flies disappeared beyond the foothills – hopefully they were localized around the cattle. But it seemed to take much longer and require much more effort than expected to reach the midway point, a saddle in the ridge that stays to your right during the climb. Since the entire trail, ending at the crest highway, is only a little over 6 miles – shorter than my usual Sunday hikes – my plan had been to add a mile or two on a side trail. But I was so fatigued by the halfway climb I wondered if I’d even be able to finish this trail.
The second segment of the climb to the crest runs through completely different habitat: a unique mixture of scrub oak and fir forest between outcrops of white rock. The vegetation is so dense you know it’s the product of wildfire and is now overdue for another burn, but in the meantime it’s a great place to visit. But in dense vegetation, protected from wind, it felt like it was 80 degrees, and my head net went back on because the flies in that area were terrible.
Entering the shadowy old-growth fir forest near the crest I got a second wind. The second milestone on this trail is a tiny saddle where it crosses to the north side of the crest and enters dense, cool fir forest – the third completely different habitat adding to the appeal. It’s a 3,200′ climb to that saddle, and while traversing upward on that north slope you occasionally get glimpses through the firs of the vast Gila River Valley 5,000′ below to the north.
Shortly after starting that traverse I heard the voices of a young couple hidden in the trees above the trail. Like most people, they’d walked down from the crest highway and were just hanging out. Three quarters of a mile farther, near the 8,700′ high point of the trail, I heard kids yelling and screaming on the little peak above – more people who’d simply walked over from the crest highway – and that made up my mind about what to do next.
Just below the peak there’s a signed junction – a trail that’s sort of the mirror image of mine, climbing from the northern foothills. I couldn’t remember anything about this trail, but I figured I’d explore and use it to add mileage and elevation for the day.
It surprised me by dropping very steeply through more dense fir forest, in a seemingly endless series of switchbacks, the most I could ever remember, some of them only two or three dozen feet long. Due north of me I could see a white rock spire and knew there had to be a saddle between me and it. I figured that would be my turnaround point, but it seemed to take forever to get there, in 600′ of descent that I would then have to climb out of.
When I finally reached that saddle in a small sunny clearing, it was hard to leave it. But my hip was hurting and I couldn’t afford to delay.
I counted the switchbacks on the way up – 32! But they actually made the steep climb tolerable. It was late enough now that everyone else had left and the only sounds were from wind and birds.
Heading down the south slope from the junction saddle, my hip was so sore I took a pain pill and began favoring that leg. Precarious footing on loose rocks, swarms of flies – but in partial compensation, those endless views!
As expected, I made much better time going downhill, but in the foothills, where tread was often buried under grasses, I first got confused, and then got completely lost.
In a level patch where grassy slopes declined on three sides, there was a nice big cairn, but nothing more that looked like a trail. Why hadn’t I noticed and marked this spot on the way up, like I usually do if the way seems confusing?
I spent 20 minutes scouting far and wide for trail in all directions beyond the cairn, but could find no sign of trail. I was now running late, so I said “Screw this, I’ll just bushwhack.” Far below I could see a little rocky peak. I knew the trail crossed a grassy saddle just before it, then traversed the left side. If I just headed straight down I should intersect the trail somewhere.
With the deep grass hiding sharp rocks and drop-offs, it was slow and hard going. After another 20 minutes, I came upon another cairn and the continuation of the trail. I figured I was now a half hour late.
I was in one of the prettiest parts of the trail when a golden eagle flew over, hazed by a small, screeching hawk. I couldn’t get a picture because they were directly in front of the setting sun.
Further down, I found the cattle in exactly the same place as 8 hours ago.
The drive home was uneventful until dusk, when the highway home climbs through the foothills of the low mountains south of town. I’ve occasionally found deer standing in the road there and am always paranoid. I did pass a small group standing off in the grass on the right, but they didn’t even raise their heads as I drove past.
Then, about 10 miles outside of town, when visibility was getting poor, I suddenly noticed another small group standing off in the brush to my right, grazing peacefully. I was driving the speed limit, 65, but since they weren’t on the move I figured I’d make it.
But just at that moment, one doe darted directly in front of me, the length of her body slamming against the full width of my car’s grille, and her sideways momentum combined with the forward momentum of my car threw her limply all the way across the highway to my left.
She was killed instantly, and parts started flying off the front of my car. In shock, I slowed and pulled over and got out to check the damage. The car seemed to be running fine, but the grille was gone, the front frame and hood were slightly buckled, the radiator fan was just hanging loose behind the bumper, and the headlights, glass completely gone, were barely hanging on by their wires.
It was getting dark fast, and I focused on just getting home, especially since my headlights were useless. Approaching town I started to smell anti-freeze and knew I was on borrowed time. I took a detour on back streets to avoid cops. The temperature gage still looked normal. But a block from home, the engine emergency light came on and I noticed the temperature gage was pinned in the red. I managed to roll up to the curb in front of my house just as smoke started pouring out from under my buckled hood and I turned off the ignition.
I was still in shock, but I knew this was an overdue initiation to rural driving, and I was very lucky. A guy in his 20s had recently died just outside of town after swerving to miss a deer, and one night in the Sierra Nevada of California, my dad rolled his car, was thrown out into a field, and broke his collarbone after swerving to miss a deer. More recently, one of my oldest friends hit a buck while driving home late and, like me, barely made it home with his crippled car.
