Monday, October 2nd, 2023
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023: Coronado, Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Society, Southeast Arizona.
I set out simply hoping to escape the snow in our local mountains – and ended up enduring hardship and danger in a remote, exotic landscape, to finally discover an ancient mystery.
City people think of mines as 19th century phenomena and copper as a 19th century commodity. But all the electronic and mechanical devices and machines we use are made of natural materials mined from holes in the ground that used to be natural habitat.
Electric cars use up to ten times the copper of conventional cars. Solar plants and wind farms consume massive amounts of copper. Mines and copper aren’t the past – they’re the future our colonial lifestyles and worship of progress have committed us to.
I live in a copper mining town – I can’t ignore or deny our impact on nature. It hurts me deeply to see these gaping wounds where wildlife and indigenous people once flourished, former heavens we’ve turned into toxic hells. 24-hour factories manned by dark-skinned laborers who are taught that they’re making life better for the rest of us. Hells we enlightened white professionals tend to avoid while fantasizing that our progressive lifestyles are saving nature.
As huge as our local mines are, they’re nothing compared to the ten-mile-long monstrosity over in Arizona. I was interested in trails in the mountains just north of the mine, but they were far enough away that I’d need places to eat and stay overnight after the hike, in or near the forbidding company town.
After weeks of sporadic research, I discovered a refurbished historic hotel in the quaint village below the mine town, reserved a room and put together some information on the closest of the trails. The topography of those mountains is incredibly complex – it’s not even a named mountain range, it’s just a confusing region of countless ridges and peaks, ranging from just below 4,000′ to just above 8,000′, rising between the valleys of a south-trending small river in the east and a south-trending large creek in the west.
A narrow, vertiginous paved highway leads north through the open-pit mine and up into the mountains, where it follows sinuous ridgelines for about another 50 miles to the base of the Mogollon Rim, finally climbing the Rim to the 9,000′ alpine plateau.
According to my topo map, the trail I wanted starts about 8 miles north of the mine, on a north-south ridgetop at 6,200′, surrounded by higher ridges and peaks. Trending generally westward, it first circles the head of a small north-south canyon then climbs to a high saddle on the next north-south ridge. This high saddle is the divide between two landscapes.
The first landscape is the north-trending corridor beginning with the mine and continuing up the highway. The second landscape, past the high saddle, appeared on the map as a long, broad valley descending westward between two east-west ridges.
Past the saddle, the trail appeared to descend this valley along the foot of its northern wall, through lower-elevation habitat I expected to consist mostly of exposed grass-and-shrublands. The entire trail was variously listed at 10-11 miles one-way, too long for an out-and-back day hike this far from home, so I planned to go only as far as conditions and time allowed – ideally 7 or 8 miles.
I usually avoid trails that start by descending and return by climbing, but beggars can’t be choosers. I do seek elevation gain, and while the map showed this trail descending from 6,200′ at its start to 4,200′ at its end, when I plotted it, the cumulative elevation gain over a 7-mile segment turned out to be more 4,000′. I would learn the reason for this soon enough.
I found little online information – this trail seemed seldom-used. I did find, in one old hiking trip report, mention of a prehistoric Native American pictograph site somewhere above that western segment of the trail below the east-west ridge, along with some vague, poorly shot photos. They didn’t clearly identify the location, which was both good for the site and bad for me, but they mentioned springs and black water piping left by a rancher in the vicinity.
Sunday’s sky was forecast to be mostly clear with scattered clouds and a high in the mid-60s. The drive took longer than expected, but in crossing the state line, I regained the hour I’d lost at home with daylight savings time.
As I drove through the mine, house-sized trucks and apartment-building-sized shovels operated in the distance, so dwarfed by the scale of the pits that I could barely discern them. But on the highway itself, I encountered virtually no traffic, nor on the narrow, winding, crumbling road with sheer drop-offs and no guard rails that climbs out of the mine canyon into the mountains. After pulling over briefly to check my map, I easily found the turnoff for the trail, a high-clearance dirt track. The map I’d brought showed the trail starting at the highway, but I decided to drive up the dirt road a ways instead.
The dirt road led to a ridgetop saddle with a big cleared parking area, where I found four pickup trucks with camper shells parked at random and 8-10 young people milling about with miscellaneous gear piled on the ground. Yikes! But their trucks were old and they were drably and cheaply dressed – not in the latest styles from REI – so I could tell they weren’t typical yuppie adrenaline seekers. And they were largely ignoring me, looking a little dazed like they’d just gotten up.
I parked and asked the nearest guy where they were from and what they were up to. He said they were near the end of a ten-day trip, mostly from Montana. They’d been in my hometown last week, and were planning a two-night backpack on this trail. He said he’d hiked it back in 2007 – but they all appeared to be in their early-to-mid twenties so he must’ve been about eight years old then. He mentioned the pictograph site and said it was right above a corral, with a black plastic water pipe running straight up to the site. That’s where they were heading and planning to camp.
As we were talking, one of the pickups drove away, back toward the highway. Perplexed, I thanked the young guy for the information, shouldered my pack, and headed off. It was chilly but sunny, so I tied my sweater around my waist, hoping the exercise and sun would keep me warm. I’d gathered from the old trip report that the trail began as a two-track mine road. Descending steeply into a narrow canyon through scrub and open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland, it was deeply eroded and blocked sporadically by boulders. The only tracks I found were from horses and a couple of hikers, from a week or more ago when the trail had been wet and muddy.
I began to realize that I’d misinterpreted distances on the topo map. I knew that in this first part of the trail the mine would remain visible on my southern horizon, but once I got past that high saddle it would be hidden and I would be in a new, wild, yet unseen world. Now, I began to realize that the high saddle was going to be much farther than I’d expected. This old road wound in and out of side drainages and forested habitat, traversing up and down steep grades, from which I couldn’t even glimpse the far ridge with the high saddle.
I was surprised to find Arizona cypresses on east-facing slopes. I have a couple of big ones in my backyard, but I’d never encountered them in the wild. Here, they were mixed in with pinyon, juniper, and oaks. From a distance, they looked much like firs or spruces, but at much lower elevation.
Eventually the road took me up over a low, rounded, exposed ridge, where a cold wind yanked my hat off. I was discouraged to realize I needed to drop into yet another deep side drainage before climbing toward the high ridge. I hadn’t noticed any of this up-and-down stuff on the map.
The old road ended at the bottom of the drainage, at a muddy, nearly dry stock pond and a low earthen dam. Below the dam I found a dilapidated trail sign pointing to an almost completely overgrown single track. This followed a trickle of water a few hundred yards to the edge of a cliff with fairly spectacular rock formations. From there, instead of climbing to the high saddle, the trail continued to descend, rounding an outlying shoulder where I found myself facing a dense forest across yet another narrow canyon. My high saddle was still hidden somewhere even farther above.
The farther I went, the steeper the climbs I faced. The next climb entered the forest, which turned out to be an almost pure stand of Arizona cypress. The grueling climb was only partly compensated by the botanical novelty. Disorienting, the cypresses felt like an alpine forest from three or four thousand feet higher – strange and mysterious. I saw the occasional pinyon or alligator juniper, but mostly just the stately cypresses, their branches densely interwoven.
Somewhere in that climb, the horse and hiker tracks ended and I seemed to be on virgin trail. By my watch I figured I’d gone a couple miles. I eventually climbed out of the forest and found myself facing east across a mile of intervening drainages to the cleared saddle where I’d parked. I could see my vehicle, but all the Montana pickup trucks seemed to be gone. Why had they given up on their trip?
The trail then curved to my right onto a south slope which was mostly scrub, facing the distant mine. Then, surprisingly, the trail began to descend again, rounding several more shoulders, still overlooking the mine to the south, before I finally spotted what must be the dividing ridge holding the high saddle.
This required yet another steep climb, but it was a huge relief to finally reach the little saddle which marked the divide between the “mine” side and the western backcountry I’d worked so hard to reach. It had taken me an hour and a half and more than three miles of steep up and down climbing.
The trail past the saddle was as steep as anything I’d faced so far, and much rockier. But gaps in the forest began to reveal a new world of endless western views and, to my right, the south slope of a ridge banded with red and white cliffs and ledges.
I’d left the cypress forest behind and was now dropping from open pinyon-juniper-oak woodland onto shallower grassy slopes dotted with shrubs. The narrow track got fainter and more overgrown, but I was reassured by the periodic appearance of long-established cairns.
The temperature remained in the low 60s, and a cold wind was hitting these open slopes so I had to tie my hat down tight. But the sun kept me warm.
I’d completely misinterpreted the map on this side, too. I’d expected the trail to descend a long valley westward along the foot of a high east-west ridge. The high ridge was there on my right, but a seemingly endless series of drainages cut southward from it, dissecting the valley into a seemingly endless series of rounded humps and deep gullies. My trail would have to climb down into and up over them like a rollercoaster. I was still hoping to find the pictographs, but I couldn’t imagine where anyone would put a corral in that convoluted landscape.
At this elevation, both catclaw acacia and honey mesquite grew together along the trail, and before long my skin, shirt, and pants all bore numerous scratches.
Up and down I went, over and over again, on a nearly invisible trail lined with sharp embedded rocks that had me stumbling and cursing. At several points I had to stop and spend minutes scouting among the dense, dry grasses for the trail ahead. In a few spots with bare dirt atop low ridges, I found the tracks of a man in sneakers who’d walked this way during a wet period, more than a week ago. Apart from him, no one.
Finally I reached the rounded top of the highest intervening hump and faced a big side canyon that cut far into the high ridge on my right. I found it on my map – it would require another steep downclimb of several hundred feet, and another steep ascent on the other side. Great.
I figured I’d gone five miles so far and simply had no chance of reaching the corral – which was also marked on my map – or the pictograph site. It was a beautiful day and this was a spectacular landscape, but it’d been one of the hardest hikes I could remember.
However, I still had time, so I carefully descended the dangerous, rock-strewn trail to the dense riparian corridor in the canyon bottom, where I found a creek carrying clear, ice-cold snowmelt.
Unfortunately, the trail seemed to end at the creek. The only clue was an old sign pointing downstream to a spring – apparently the creek is normally dry. I followed a faint path to where it ended at the bank of the creek. I crossed and saw a dim opening in the dense vegetation ahead, and shortly came to a tiny clearing where a barely discernable track switchbacked up the dark slope through the trees. Emerging from the riparian canopy, I found myself in what looked like a very steep, rock-filled erosional gully, but I kept climbing, and soon emerged on the familiar, overgrown, rocky, almost completely hidden single-track. A cold wind again threatened to take my hat, and I faced more rollercoaster ridges and steep climbs ahead.
The cairns had ended and I was left with only my routefinding skills. And past the big canyon, trail conditions deteriorated further, with the thorns of both catclaw and mesquite often blocking my way. With no hope of reaching the pictograph site, but with a little time still remaining before I had to turn back, I forged ahead as best I could. The rock “bluffs” above on my right were getting taller and more spectacular.
And after climbing up and down several more side drainages, I finally reached a deeper one where the trail really seemed to end. I explored a few options, but they all terminated in catclaw thickets and piles of rocks. Suddenly, returning from one of these forays, I noticed something bright red in the distance, just above the trail I’d arrived on.
It turned out to be a jumble of plastic cord, and next to it was a loose pile of galvanized water pipe, all stashed under a little tree. Scouting around a little I also found some loose lengths of black plastic pipe.
No corral – not even the hint of level ground on this high slope – but could this be the departure point to the pictograph site? I had no more time left – but shouldn’t I at least make an effort to find the water pipe descending from the bluffs?
I returned to the bottom of the steep little gully. Above me, giant boulders blocked the drainage below the cliffs. I laboriously climbed a little ways up, getting more and more discouraged in the boulder-choked drainage. But then I saw the black water pipe, draped over a boulder above! This had to be it!
It was obviously going to be a brutal climb, and I was sure that if I continued, I’d be stuck trying to find my way back to the vehicle in the dark. But I had a headlamp, and the last hour and a half of trail should be easy to follow. So I continued.
Having started in the gully, which was getting deeper, with sheer walls, I had to do some really dangerous moves to follow the pipe out of it onto the 45 degree, catclaw-choked slope above. From there, it was a long, slow, dangerous scramble toward the foot of the cliff, which loomed at least 150′ tall. But I was now absolutely sure this was the place – it matched what I’d read in the old hikers’ trip report, and I could tell there was an overhang and a ledge up there under the cliff.
Interestingly, although the pipe had clearly been abandoned, and surplus sections of it littered the slope, when I came to a tee fitting with shutoff valves, water was leaking out abundantly. It was still connected to the source, somewhere above.
Emerging onto the ledge below the bluff, I immediately spotted the pictographs, and the cave behind them, with its two seeps. The previous hikers had called it an Anasazi site, showing typical ignorance. But as I approached these signs from the deep past, my whole body registered its presence in a sacred place, starting with the tingling in my spine. I hadn’t felt like this since my last trip to Utah.
Canyon wrens cried and cliff swallows wheeled above as I explored the cave and the long ledge. It was blanketed with old cowpies and strewn with ranchers’ debris, but the rock writing was undisturbed. This was the most remote and little-known major site I’d ever found.
The Forest Service map I carried showed the corral nearly a mile west of here, in a fairly level spot. The 16-year-old memories of the Montana folks had understandably been a little rusty. But I was more curious about the water pipe, and the seeps under the cliff. This is normally a very dry area – the creeks and springs were running now after our wet winter, but would there really be a water source here, high on this slope, year-around? That would certainly explain the pictographs as well as the water pipe, and make this a precious site in more ways than one.
At this point, I no longer cared that I was late. But I was facing a really dangerous descent from the ledge, followed by a long climb to the high saddle, with countless brutal ups and downs before and after – hence the over 4,000′ cumulative elevation gain. My first job was to avoid injury on the way back down to the trail.
Taking it slow, I made it down safely, and vowed to take it easy on the entire return. But my left foot condition had been triggered for the first time in almost a year. I’d switched to winter boots in June when our monsoon started early, and when monsoon transitioned to snows I’d kept wearing them until now. Those boots have the stiffest available soles, but today I’d reverted to my old favorites, Goretex boots with slightly more flexible soles, and my foot was not happy. My knee was complaining, too.
If I took a pain pill, I would dehydrate faster, and with the arduous climbing in warmer temps, I was already running low on water. So when I reached the creek in the big side canyon, I stopped to fill and zap a liter bottle with my Steri-Pen. It was cold and delicious, and I popped a pain pill for my knee and foot.
After the steep climb out of that canyon onto the next shoulder, as I started down into the next drainage, I was surprised by voices. A twenty-something girl, wearing a bundle of fine rings through her nasal septum, appeared out of the scrub, followed by three tall young guys. As we talked, I learned they were part of the group with the pickup trucks. They said their other friends had had to leave early. I started raving about the pictograph site, but the girl said she’d also been here in 2007. I found myself liking them more and more for their cheap, well-worn gear and outfits. They were taking ten-day camping trips instead of competing for high-paying desk jobs. But I remained mystified about what they’d been doing all day, and why they’d gotten such a late start.
I continued and got lost in a badly overgrown area, wasting about 20 minutes scouting in several directions before relocating the trail. The final climb out of this remote backcountry to the high saddle seemed endless.
Once past the saddle, although it would still be a rollercoaster with brutal grades, on average it would be downhill – at least until the final climb to the parking area. I was mostly in shadow now and had to pull on my sweater. And those cypress forests were downright gloomy.
Most of the trees were less than 20 years old – many tall snags stood among them, but they hadn’t been killed by fire, so their deaths remained a mystery. The new trees and seedlings formed impenetrable thickets.
In the broad drainage before the final climb, another old two-track takes off north. I assumed it led to abandoned mine works. But checking the map again that night, I saw that it has its own Forest Service trail name and number – the Crystal Cave trail. It’s only a tenth of a mile long. But I couldn’t find any information on it online. More intrigue.
I’d hiked through time, from our misbelief that copper mining is an industry of the past, to our deluded future of “clean, green, renewable” technologies that rape Paradise and turn it into a toxic Hell, to the not-so-distant antiquity of sustainable indigenous culture. And back again.
I’d gained more elevation than on any hike since last October, before the winter snowstorms. Preparing to return to the mine town to look for dinner and my hotel room, I wasn’t sure whether I envied the backpackers, or should consider camping on these Arizona day hikes instead of sleeping indoors.
The fact is, whereas city people plan backpacking trips once or twice a year, and do the rest of their hiking in crowded parks near town, I get to do these remote day hikes every Sunday. Turning them into backpacks would subtract several days a week from the work I desperately need to finish at home, and camping overnight would reduce the time left for hiking – I’d have to return earlier to set up camp and cook. Although I do envy backpackers when I meet them, I get much more wilderness hiking in, week to week – and I still do longer camping and backpacking trips once or twice a year.
The sun set as I was driving back through the mine. I turned off into the company town for the first time, found the sole restaurant, where I orded dinner to go, and grabbed beer at the nearby supermarket. Architecture and infrastructure were functional, bare-bones, but well-maintained.
Then, in full dark, I located my hotel in the old village below. I was exhausted, sore, and starving. The little building, which is not staffed, and in which I was apparently the only registered guest, was dark and locked up for the night. I had the code but couldn’t figure out how to operate the coded entry, so I had to call and wait for the manager to show up and let me in.
After dinner and a shower, I was still so excited about the hike, I finally had to take a sleeping pill, sometime long after midnight.
Canyon of the Long Skinny Creature
Sunday, March 19th, 2023: Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Lower Box, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
After last week’s false spring, our weather got cold and wet again. I’d done a midweek hike on a muddy trail and wasn’t up for any more of that.
And after last week’s Arizona pictograph hike, I’d done some more research on the “high desert” area along the border, a large, remote region I’d previously ignored. There weren’t any trails there, but there were some buttes I could probably bushwhack, and by chance I learned about a canyon with petroglyphs. It would require an overland approach in unfamiliar terrain, and I couldn’t actually tell if the canyon itself was passable, but I’d give it a try.
I expected the petroglyph hike to be short, so afterward I hoped to drive north to the buttes and get some real mileage and elevation in.
There was frost on my windshield when I left the house – really unusual for this time of year. And our windy season starts in March – we were forecast to get gusts in the 40s.
The sky was mostly clear with high clouds. It took me an hour to reach the turnoff onto the first dirt road – as usual my topo map had it mislabeled, so I wasted 10 or 15 minutes looking for it. Once on the right road, I passed a Fish & Game truck, then found the next turn, onto a winding, high-clearance ranch road that turned out to be in terrible shape, with dozens of washouts. That road took me over a low rise, then down into the broad alluvial valley of our famous river. The road was so bad I averaged less than 15 mph.
Then I reached the final turn, onto a dirt track that hadn’t been driven in a year or more. It was even worse than the previous one – there were parts I could’ve walked faster than I drove. But I continued, through an old wire-and-branch gate that had almost dry-rotted apart, until I finally reached a dry wash where the track completely disappeared.
My topo map showed a couple of major tributaries approaching the canyon from this direction. I was hoping this dry wash was one of them, and sure enough, I immediately found the tracks of recent hikers. They’d come down the wash from much farther east – like the vast majority of urban hikers, they were probably driving a Subaru or some other low-clearance vehicle that couldn’t handle the track I drove.
I figured it would be a little over a mile to the main canyon. I was walking in deep, dry sand, which is no fun, but at this latitude and elevation, I was surrounded by familiar plants – honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and best of all, really healthy creosote bush – so I almost felt like I was back home in the Mojave. I had to keep slowing down – my normal pace doesn’t work in sand.
This tributary, cut through alluvial deposits, finally reached a bedrock layer of conglomerate where it tightened and dropped through a slot. Around a few more bends and I was at the main canyon.
The main canyon started shallow and wide, but as it twisted back and forth it soon got deeper, and I reached a broad central area featuring old cottonwoods, living and dead. Water appeared flowing on the surface, green with algae.
Past there, it began to feel more like the canyons of Utah, with tilted strata rising from underground, water running over sculpted bedrock, and finally a slot canyon, where I had to climb down several short pouroffs.
Past the slot canyon, I carefully picked my way across a long, flood-sculpted ledge and found myself at the edge of an overhang, looking down at a deep emerald pool.
The ledge ended in a sort of ramp that I shuffled down on my butt. And turning to look at the pool, I discovered the first petroglyph panel, in a niche of a boulder overhanging the water.
Walking down the canyon from the pool, I immediately saw another petroglyph panel at the base of an outcrop on my right. To my left, high above the wash, I spotted a big white petroglyph at the base of cliffs. And straight ahead was the river, muddy and racing along in flood.
I walked toward the end of the wash, but soon got bogged down in mud. So I began climbing the left slope toward the petroglyph I’d seen above. The surface was a sort of flaky, treacherous shale dotted with catclaw.
The first thing I noticed was that there were two layers of carvings, one ancient, patinated, and dim, and the other much more recent, in high-contrast white. Unfortunately I’d arrived at noon, and the sun was casting a shadow that divided the panel. So I ate lunch and waited for the shadow to move.
What I was most interested in was the left side of the main panel. There were two tall images in parallel – a sort of ladder, spine, or trunk with branches, and what looked like a long skinny lizard with the head of a bird wearing horns like a sheep. They were obviously designed together to convey a single message.
From my lofty perch, I watched hawks wheeling on thermals over the riparian corridor. This whole valley is a wildlife sanctuary and wilderness study area, and is known for its exceptional bird diversity. But the more time I spent up there, the more I noticed the lichen.
Finally I got the shadow and pictures I wanted, and made my way back down, to check out the smaller panel across the wash. It had the same two layers, likely separated by thousands of years. So-called “rock art” is mostly ignored by scientists, and relegated to amateurs, who divide it into regional and temporal styles. But indigenous people recognize it as writing, and the rock writing I’ve seen is a continuum spanning the West, sharing a common vocabulary.
A gale-force wind was blowing straight up the canyon as I started back. I had to lean into it.
The wind was a little less harsh when I turned off into the tributary wash. There, I began to pay more attention to the year’s first wildflowers.
When I finally reached the vehicle, I discovered I’d spent 3-1/2 hours on a 4-1/2 mile hike. That’s partly because I was walking in soft sand, which probably requires 50% more energy than walking on a hard surface. It’d also taken me an hour to drive 9 miles on those bad roads. So there was no time left for a hike in the buttes to the north. But I drove up there anyway, and found that my map again had the roads mislabeled, so I couldn’t find the one I needed.
I arrived home after being gone for 8 hours, most of which was driving. And as soon as I got out of the vehicle I could smell the creosote bushes, which had scraped my fenders and doors on that abandoned track. Best thing I’d smelled in months!
Monday, March 27th, 2023: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Indian, Southeast Arizona.
Still looking for lower-elevation trails, I wanted to try a new one over in Arizona this Sunday. But surprisingly, there was no room at the nearby inn. My second choice was the abandoned, flood-damaged, overgrown trail farther south that had defeated me in early February. I wasn’t really looking forward to the bushwhack, but it’s a pretty canyon and I was still hoping to reach the “Indian cave” and the prominent rock formation at the head of the canyon.
Whereas on my previous visit, I’d been alone in the valley of the remote “ghost town” that leads to the trail, this time I passed two vehicles and a jogger on the road in. And as I approached the sycamore-shaded creek crossing, the water level seemed surprisingly higher.
The creek was higher, but forgetting about all the crossings, I’d brought my non-waterproof boots. Since all the snow was long melted off this low part of the range, I’d expected less water in the creek, but it was just the opposite. In fact, as I made my way upstream and more bedrock was exposed on the surrounding slopes, water was streaming down the surface in glistening sheets. Apparently the peaks and ridges above are porous, collecting and storing snowmelt all winter and releasing it slowly in spring.
The sky was clear, the air temperature was mild, and I was under riparian canopy in the bottom of a narrow canyon, but when I stepped out of my vehicle I was hit by a bitterly cold wind, which whipped at my hat and sucked at my body heat the whole day long.
As before, I found no other human tracks as I scrambled up the first mile-and-a-third of catastrophically washed-out forest road, climbing up and down sheer drop-offs, crossing and re-crossing the rushing creek. But I did find recent tracks and scat from both cattle and what seemed to be wild burros or horses.
The road ends at the abandoned cabin, where two creeks come together, and my trail leads up the right-hand creek. But before the catastrophic floods, the road continued up the left-hand creek, and I suspect that road is still mostly intact above the canyon bottom. Heading up my trail, I immediately found the tracks of three recent hikers, who I assumed came down from above on the upper road, which can be reached from the opposite, west side of the mountain range. When I checked the map that night, I saw they could actually do a 12-mile loop from the paved road in the national monument on the west side, using a combination of trails and forest roads, with presumably the hardest part being the canyon trail I was taking.
I’d expected my previous experience to result in an easier hike than before, but it actually felt even harder this time. Harder to distinguish remnants of the hiking trail from cattle trails, harder to relocate the trail after long scrambles up debris flows in the creek bed, harder to avoid the thorny shrubs on the banks, harder to get around log jams and thickets. I was already discouraged by the time I reached the first washed-out tributary, where I’d mistakenly looked for the cave last time.
And at one creek crossing, I found a rolled-up blanket up on the bank. One of those cheap, lightweight, synthetic fleece things that you’d pull over yourself to take a nap on the sofa – not something a sensible person would take outdoors. I assumed it had fallen off the pack of one of those three recent hikers, and they hadn’t missed it until it was too late to go back. But it set the tone for the rest of the day.
Past that tributary, more bedrock is exposed in the canyon bottom, and if anything, the way gets even harder. But I still hadn’t come to the “narrows” which the trail guide mentions – based on second-hand historical sources, because nobody’s actually surveyed this trail since the 2011 wildfire.
Passing the point where I’d turned back in February, I came to a massive log jam across the canyon, and climbing around it, reached a sandy ledge with an old fire ring. The previous hikers had tramped around here before continuing up canyon.
Finally I reached the “narrows”, where the canyon forms a “V” of stone, and the creek has cut a sinuous channel with many semi-circular hollows, deep pools, and small waterfalls. Here, I found a few decades-old trail improvements – including one walkway across a steep rock face, reinforced by half-rotted logs anchored by rebar sunk into holes drilled through the rock.
It was really tricky walking in the bottom of the V, climbing past the waterfalls, trying to avoid slipping into the three-foot-deep pools of cold water. I fell twice, each time barely avoiding injury. But it was a beautiful stretch of canyon, full of sound from the roaring creek and full of light from the glistening sheets of water flowing down the bare rock sides. And I occasionally got glimpes of the cliffs I was headed for, far upstream.
Finally I reached the junction with a smaller creek on my right, coming down from the cave. The bank was completely trashed by cattle.
The side creek drains a hidden basin, which opened before me as I walked up the creek. The water soon receded underground and I was making my way up a dry wash, surrounded by the eerie white skeletons of trees burned in the 2011 wildfire and green thickets of oak and juniper that had filled in afterward. And ahead, the cliffs, over 200 feet tall, under which I expected to find the cave.
Eventually my way up the wash was blocked by deadfall. The head of this basin consists of nothing but spectacular cliffs and rock formations, and would be a wonderful place to explore if it wasn’t so choked by fire debris and regrowth. But I noticed a narrow track – another cattle trail – up the bank to my right, heading toward the base of the cliff. And following it, I began finding the trash.
It was really old trash – the recent hikers hadn’t come this way, and nobody else but cows had been up here in many years, perhaps not since the 2011 wildfire. But there was literally a trail of trash leading through the brush to the cave itself, where faint prehistoric pictographs had been covered by someone’s huge red initials.
The ceiling was heavily blackened with soot – people had obviously camped in this cave for centuries, if not millenia. And some old hermit had lived here at one point – the rusted top of his cast-iron wood stove lay half-buried just outside.
I wasn’t up for a thorough search among the dense shrubbery and sediment, but what I encountered right on the trail and on the floor of the cave included: a black plastic garbage bag, three decomposed nylon day packs, a decomposed nylon fanny pack, various other decomposed nylon items that may have been gloves or climbing accessories, two small decomposed hiking boots, a cooking grille, a bunch of tuna cans, and a pop bottle. Cheap and shabby stuff like you’d find around an abandoned homeless camp, but some of it was presumably essential for whoever wore it here. Why had they walked a long and difficult trail to this remote location and left it behind?
And of course, there was a deep layer of cowshit across the entrance.
It’s only a four mile hike to the cave, but it’d taken me four hours – half my day. So I knew I wouldn’t reach the rock formation above the main creek. But I should have enough time to explore a little farther up the main creek, to see how far I could get in a half hour.
The answer was, not far. I did reach the next tributary gulch, where I encountered a solitary bull. I didn’t want to risk irritating him, and it was time to turn back anyway.
On my difficult, dangerous way back, I wondered whether it would ever be possible to improve this trail and clean up all that trash. It’s far outside the designated federal wilderness – hence the cattle – so this area was obviously sacrificed in a compromise with the ranching and mining industries, decades ago. And now, limited trail maintenance efforts prioritize trails within the wilderness.
It’s only one beautiful canyon in a range of beautiful canyons. But cleaning up the trash wouldn’t be that hard. There was far too much for me to carry out that day, but three people could do it if prepared.
Logs and brush can always be cut, and tread could be improved, on the creek bank and upper slopes, but big obstacles in the creek bottom will always exist due to flooding. And hikers will always have to carefully pick their way up the narrows. But on my way back, I discovered historical bypasses that climb above the narrows – these could definitely be restored.
There will always be stretches where no trail is possible, where the route leads up long debris flows that get rearranged in floods. But the whole cairn situation could really be improved. Many existing cairns are decorative – something special to this canyon that I haven’t seen much elsewhere. But cairns exist in only about half the places where they’re most needed – at creek crossings, places where the route leaves a debris flow and climbs up a bank, and around major obstacles. That’s another easily solved problem.
A hiker could probably move 50% faster with those improvements, and be rewarded with the prehistoric cave and the spectacular cliffs and rock formations.
I was a little sorry to leave the narrows behind, and my way did get harder in the lower canyon. But I had plenty of time and was able to focus more on my surroundings.
Once past the cabin, I saw a couple of whitetail deer. Before that, I’d seen many, many birds and butterflies throughout the day, but they’d been too skittish to photograph.
Driving under the sycamores across the creek to the valley road, I stopped for a drink of water, and as I was sitting in the vehicle, an old bearded man came out to his gate across the road and stared at me. I waved, he waved and kept staring. It was the gate to what was apparently a big family compound with at least two houses, one of them huge. I was in kind of a hurry, so I just waved again, and drove off. But I regretted not being able to question him about his community. Of course, he just wanted to know what I’d been up to back there – hopefully not vandalizing his neighbors’ properties in this extremely remote, hidden valley.
Monday, April 3rd, 2023: Hikes, Holt, Mogollon Mountains, Nature, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
I was tired of driving to Arizona for lower-elevation hikes, and was hoping that the recent warm weather had melted most of the snow on our mountains below 9,000 feet. But I knew that my favorite high-elevation trails would still be blocked.
Reviewing the topo map one more time, I saw a trail up on the west side of the wilderness that I’d never noticed before. Starting at only 5,100 feet, it climbed to over 9,000 feet, eventually joining one of the crest trails, but it took it a while to get there, so even if I ended up blocked by knee-deep snow, I’d still get some decent mileage and elevation. I had no idea what the condition would be, but I found a note online saying part of it had been worked on last year, so I was optimistic.
Weather was forecast to be clear and warm, but we’d been in our windy season for the past month, and today there was a “red flag” fire weather warning as well as a dangerous wind alert.
The map showed this unfamiliar trail beginning along a road drawn with the same heavy black line as the paved road it branched off from – a road I’d driven many times. But that first road is narrow and twisty, and I missed the turnoff, coming to the stream crossing on the main road, which I’d completely forgotten about.
This is the big perennial creek on the west side of the range, draining a fifty-square-mile watershed ringed with peaks over 10,000 feet tall. The road crossing is simply a shallow concrete dip in the road, where the creek normally spreads to no more than an inch deep. But after our heavy snows and warming weather, today it was a raging flood. And because it flowed to my right, I knew the access road for my trail would also cross it.
I turned around and found my access road a quarter of a mile back. Despite having the same line on the map, it turned out to be a little-used gravel road. And the creek crossing looked bad.
Because I’ve never had a serious high-clearance vehicle, I’ve never gotten really comfortable with stream crossings. This one had a submerged berm of rocks on the downstream side, but the water was too cloudy to tell how deep the crossing would be. I’ve crossed creeks up to about 8 inches deep, but I was afraid this might be a foot or more. If I got submerged above my door sills, the flood might exert enough force to wash me downstream into deeper water.
As usual, I decided to try it anyway, switching into 4wd low range and rolling slowly down the bank into the flood.
All that water raging around the vehicle sounded and felt scary, but I successfully rocked and rolled across and climbed the opposite bank, where I stopped to get out and see how high the water had reached.
My vehicle’s minimum mechanical ground clearance is 8.5 inches, and the door sills are 16 inches off the ground. The water level at the front had barely reached the bodywork, but the wake had pushed about ten inches higher toward the back. I wasn’t shaking in terror, but I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again.
The road on the opposite side continuously deteriorated as it climbed along the foothills, eventually reaching a washout with ruts requiring all my ground clearance, followed by a stretch where a side creek flowed down the road surface, two or three inches deep. I got out and walked up it a ways in my waterproof boots. It would be driveable, but I was still worrying about the previous crossing. I’d always heard and assumed that snowmelt streams flow light in the morning and heavy late in the day. I was frankly afraid the crossing I’d survived would be impassable when I returned from my hike, and I hadn’t brought camping gear. So I turned around and carefully recrossed the flood.
At this point, my only option was the final remaining west side trail with access to the crest. This is my old favorite, and since last November, I’d been anxiously waiting for the snow to melt enough to make it accessible. Now, the snow would likely still be knee-deep on the crest, but at least I could do the climb, for up to 9 miles and over 3,000 feet of elevation gain.
On the drive up the dirt road to the trailhead, I passed a late-model minivan with Texas plates and a fancy roof box, parked in a clump of junipers. Then at the trailhead log, I was surprised to find a whole page of visits recorded since November, with most in the past month. They were from all over – New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, Alabama – not just the western states. In the past, this trail has remained a well-kept local secret, going up to two weeks without a recorded visit, especially in the winter and summer. But after my initial surprise, I realized that it’s the last remaining entry point to the west side of the wilderness – all the others were washed out last year by catastrophic monsoon floods.
And unlike me, virtually every other hiker is either casual – only venturing a mile or two into the canyon – or if more ambitious, they’re taking the branch trail to the old prospector’s cabin in the next canyon over. In the general public, more people are drawn to historic man-made structures than to true wilderness.
One log entry, a couple weeks earlier, mentioned “trees on trail”, but I ignored that. There’d always been a few fallen logs on this trail.
I’d had food poisoning two days ago and was only gradually recovering. I found myself fatigued and short of breath, nearly as bad as after my hospitalization last spring. A short way up the trail to the wilderness boundary, panting heavily, I saw a trail runner approaching – a slender guy in his late 20s, the minivan driver. The trail was narrow and the slope was steep, but with difficulty I used the edges of my boots to sidestep up enough to give him space. I smiled and called good morning, but with barely a glance and no change of expression, he brushed past me silently. Locals would return your greeting and thank you for yielding right-of-way.
The way into the canyon is through a stark burn scar from the 2012 wildfire. The creek in the bottom was flowing about as expected – this is one of the smaller watersheds on the west side. A few hundred yards up the canyon bottom, you leave the burn scar and enter the only-patchily-burned canopy, and it gets pretty – mature ponderosa and Doug fir, maple and Gambel oak, and lichen-encrusted boulders, with the creek flowing briskly and noisily over rocks in its bed.
Spring flowers were spreading and checkerspot butterflies were out in force. But before I reached the branch trail there was an ominous sign – a mature ponderosa snapped off on the opposite bank, its yellow heartwood a chaos of splinters.
I reached a creek crossing dammed and flooded by a perpendicular log which had clearly been there for a while. It made the crossing much more difficult, and it was an easily removed small-diameter log, but none of the other hikers had thought to remove it. Weird. I pulled it out of the way, the flood quickly subsided, and I crossed easily.
Two miles in, past the branch trail, I met the blowdown. And it just got worse, and worse, the farther I went. Living pines and firs, at least half of them between two and three feet in diameter, had either been uprooted or snapped off like twigs, and much of the ground was blanketed with foliage that had been blown off crowns of surviving trees.
The damage was selective – most of the canopy survived. But the wind event had opened the forest enough that I could now see the rock towers that line the slopes just above the canyon bottom.
In my weakened state, as I climbed over and through obstacle after obstacle, the only thing that kept me going was the belief that conditions might change at the switchbacks, a mile and a half beyond the branch trail.
Conditions did change, but there was one final giant down across the trail right at the base of the switchbacks, like a grand finale – a ponderosa 30 inches in diameter. And after climbing over and past it and starting up the loose dirt of the upper trail, I began to discern the tracks of the only other hikers who had gotten this far in the past months – a medium-sized man and woman.
There was blowdown on the switchbacks, but only the smaller-diameter trees that can mature on these steep upper slopes, and less of them, indicating lower wind speed. I kept encountering branches and small trees blocking the trail that could easily be moved, but the couple before me hadn’t moved them, despite the fact they’d had to repeatedly step around, going up and coming back down. I moved all these out of the way myself and wondered, not for the first time, at the cluelessness of people venturing into nature these days. I’m sure many if not most are urban novices whose only preparation is the GPS on their smart phones, and who, like that trail runner, are trained to ignore strangers.
My stomach was still recovering, so I was not only weak and out of breath, I was actually feeling sick. But with well more than half my time gone, I reached the rock formation with a southwest view where I’d stopped on my first attempt at this trail, 4-1/2 years ago.
My left knee began hurting on the descent, which was otherwise much easier on the rest of me – even climbing over all that blowdown in the canyon bottom. But the day had been just as discouraging as so many hikes in the past year. The equestrian trail crew the Forest Service has authorized to do trail work is not equipped to cut these big-diameter trees, and it may take USFS years to get funding for their own effort. And if there was a blowdown here, there were likely blowdowns elsewhere. Three of the five other wilderness trails on the west side were already blocked by flood damage – now there’s only one left, and it doesn’t access the crest. So the crest is now only accessible to a very tiny minority who are even more hardcore than me, willing to accept an experience which is more obstacle course than trail.
Monday, April 10th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
It looked like spring was finally here. Still hoping to regain more mileage and elevation on my Sunday hikes, I decided to try an area in the high mountain range east of here, a range that had been off limits for months due to heavy snow.
I’d always assumed the trails on the west side of the range could only be reached after long, slow drives on poorly maintained dirt roads. One of those roads actually reaches the crest, at 9,500 feet with the highest peak only a mile and a half farther – more driving and less hiking is definitely not what I need.
But further map research over the winter had revealed a couple of high-elevation trails that should be little more than an hour’s drive from home. They topped out over 9,000 feet, so I expected some snow, but one had mostly southern exposure, which should be bare by now.
So I headed over there. And ironically, just like last week, I’d ignored the fact that the access road starts by crossing a river, which of course was in flood now.
So there I was, 45 minutes from town, blocked and in search of a second option. I’d previously hiked three trails in the vicinity and had no desire to repeat them. But a little over three miles north there was another dirt road I’d been curious about for a long time. It was known to be challenging to drive and would ultimately yield more driving time and less hiking time in my day. But it didn’t cross a river, and it featured several trailheads – including the CDT, which should be in better shape than the now-brutal Forest Service trails.
The road is historic and fairly legendary. Built originally by the military in the 1870s, it was improved in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and during the same period, it became the narrow corridor between our two huge wilderness areas.
The first stretch runs up a mesa toward the distant crest and goes quickly. The first trailhead was well-marked, and I set out on a surface pockmarked by hooves. Within a half mile I came to a side drainage, with a view toward the river canyon, downstream to the right. And I saw smoke, drifting through the pinyon and juniper.
As I stood watching, the smoke moved off and dispersed. I followed the trail around the head of the drainage and came to a junction where a branch trail went down toward the river. I saw another cloud of smoke drifting just below the canopy. Damn! This is the dry, windy season when most of our wildfires start – had I avoided a flood only to be turned back by a forest fire?
Today’s air was perfectly still, the sky was mostly clear, and we hadn’t had any storms for weeks. But the last couple of days had been cloudy in town – maybe there’d been dry lightning over here?
There were isolated remnants of a burn scattered around me. They looked recent but not fresh. This was on the edge of last year’s mega-wildfire. I watched carefully and couldn’t see an origin for the smoke, so I headed down the branch trail. After about a hundred yards I saw a meadow off to my right in the bottom of the drainage and made my way over there for a better view. Again, isolated charred logs and patches of ash-covered dirt, and another little cloud of smoke drifting through the trees. I touched a charred log – it was warm, but it was in the sun. I hadn’t smelled smoke yet at any point.
I decided to return to the main trail and keep going, while remaining vigilant. Maybe I’d get a better view into the river canyon, if that was the source of the smoke.
After climbing a steep, rocky slope, I reached a sort of grassy plateau dotted with junipers, and suddenly noticed another wisp of smoke drifting through the crown of a low tree. What the hell?
In the distance I could see what appeared to be the edge of a precipice, so I headed over and found myself atop the rimrock of the river canyon. But there was no smoke anywhere to be seen. So I returned to the main trail and climbed still higher.
Eventually I had a view back over my approach. And the first thing I saw was a cloud of smoke which appeared to lie in the side drainage I’d first encountered. There was an active fire, burning toward my route back!
I took off running down the trail. But with 4 liters of water in my pack for warmer weather, I couldn’t really run on the rocky stretches without risking a broken ankle. My heart was pounding, even when not running. If the trail was on fire, I’d have to try to bushwhack around it. Or reverse and go the long way around, connecting with other trails to reach the road much farther north, fifteen miles or more. Meanwhile, my vehicle might be destroyed by the fire.
I was exhausted when I reached the side drainage – and there was no sign of smoke. I began to wonder if maybe the “smoke” I’d seen had actually been dust raised by the passage of a vehicle on the road, a mile farther away. In any event, I had no interest in retracing my steps after that desperate run downhill.
The next trails were about 7 miles north, past the gnarliest part of the old road. It climbs in hairpin twists up a tall ridge, then winds down in more hairpins into a dark, narrow, rocky canyon, where it basically turns into a path up a debris flow, crossing and recrossing a network of flowing creeks, where my vehicle slowly rocked over small boulders, humps and ruts, averaging less than five miles per hour.
Finally the road left the creek and climbed through more hairpins over another high ridge, and I emerged in the north country, with a long view north and the main crossing point of the CDT. I hadn’t really studied the topography of any of these trails that trended eastward toward the crest of the range – starting from trailheads a little below 8,000 feet, I just figured they would go up over ridges and down into drainages, while gradually rising toward the crest. I knew I was about 12 miles from the crest and wouldn’t reach it in the time I had left – I was just exploring, in preparation for a better-planned return.
As I’d expected, this part of the CDT was in better shape than Forest Service trails – it’s maintained annually whereas a few forest trails are cleared once or twice a decade, and most are simply abandoned. But I couldn’t find any recent tracks, and heavy growth from last summer’s monsoon meant that tread was nonexistant in many places. I had to imagine a path forward much of the time, but I’m getting pretty good at that!
The first milestone shown on my map was called “Rocky Point”, which I was hoping would offer a vista across the landscape. But I hadn’t checked to see how far it was, and the trail just kept climbing, and climbing. This area had burned patchily, and I could sometimes see north between the trees, but that wasn’t very interesting. Finally I spotted a peak with talus slopes ahead – maybe that was it? But the trail turned, and climbed around its flank, where I finally got some longer views west across country I already knew well.
Past the talus peak, the trail climbed toward outcrops I figured had to be Rocky Point. It turned out to just be a slope dotted with outcrops. I could see a much taller peak in the distance, with a trail traversing across it. After making my through the rock outcrops and across a saddle, I found myself on that trail. I was glad to be gaining some good elevation. I knew this trail would eventually connect with the one I’d attempted earlier, but I didn’t know how far I would get in the time I had.
The trail eventually reached its high point, a little below 8,800 feet, crossing another saddle into a shaded north slope where some patches of snow remained. There, the trail condition deteriorated farther – but I’d been noticing faint bootprints and finally confirmed that one medium-sized person had been here before me, maybe as long ago as last fall, before the snows. That’s another thing about the CDT – despite all the effort put into maintaining it, it tends to see little use outside the window of late-April to early-May, when most through-hikers start north.
Even harder to follow now, the trail began to gradually descend, across saddle after saddle, until in a shallow drainage, I came upon the junction with the other trail. Nothing spectacular, but my time was up.
As soon as I turned around and started back, I discovered that the downhill run I’d done after that early-morning smoke scare had damaged my left knee. It was like having a knife in my knee, so I now only had one good leg to hike about 5 miles downhill on.
Despite the excruciating pain, this had been a beautiful day and a pretty nice trail. I wish it had better views of the crest to the east – all I had was narrow glimpses through surviving stands of conifers. But the west flanks had been cleared in past wildfires, and were so steep that the traverses were impressively dizzying.
Another thing that impressed me was the past trail work. In level spots this trail had often been outlined with rock berms, and on traverses and switchbacks it had been built up with retaining walls that must have taken many days to construct, sometimes using rocks weighing over 200 pounds.
Still, the drive is a little too far, and the accumulated elevation gain turns out to be too modest, to encourage a return visit.
But back home, studying my photos, I realized something I should’ve guessed on the trail, something I learned when I first moved here, and had since forgotten. Tolkien’s ents aside, we think of trees as passive and immobile. But junipers can forcibly eject their pollen in explosive clouds. The “smoke” I saw on that first trail was actually juniper pollen. And the smoke I saw lying in that drainage had to have been dust from a vehicle on the road. That knee damage turned out to be pointless.
