Monday, April 24th, 2023
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.
Sunday, April 16th, 2023: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
Another warm, clear Sunday. I wasn’t sure if the snow had melted yet from my favorite high-elevation trails. But studying the map for the trail I’d aborted last Sunday, it looked like I might be able to use it to reach a 9,700 foot peak farther east. At almost 19 miles out-and-back it would be a long shot, depending on trail conditions and my endurance. But the map showed it as part of the CDT so I figured it would be in good condition.
On the drive east, a deer suddenly raced across the highway in front of me. Then another followed, slamming into the side of my vehicle. I slowed and pulled over, glancing in my rearview mirror. The deer that had hit my car was rolling on its back, kicking its legs. Then it jumped to its feet and ran off, following the first deer, as if nothing had happened. More deer followed, all racing across the highway in single file. It was like a lottery to see which of them would get hit. And it was only a little over a year since my last, and first, deer collision. Fortunately for me, there was little damage this time.
The first trail – shown on some maps as the “old CDT” – climbs almost 1,500 feet to a saddle where other trails branch off. Nearing the saddle I met an older couple with an off-leash dog. The dog barked hysterically at me, and as usual they struggled to leash and subdue it. I asked them if they were enjoying the hike, but they ignored me.
I had three choices at the junction. The left-hand branch was the branch I’d hiked last Sunday – from the opposite direction. Straight ahead a trail went down the drainage, and a sign marked it as the “New CDT”. Interesting. The right-hand branch I planned to take, shown on my map as the CDT, had faint tread traversing the slope, but whoever had put up the “New CDT” sign had blocked this trail with logs.
I started up it anyway, but it turned out to be a disaster. Frequently blocked by deadfall and blowdown, with many places where there was simply no sign of a trail. I continued as best I could, but after 3/4 of a mile I came to a broad, shallow valley where the trail completely disappeared. I cut for sign in a circle about 100 yards in diameter but found nothing. The trail shown on the map as the CDT simply didn’t exist on the ground.
So I returned to try the “New CDT”. It started okay – a couple had even gone down it before me – but it rapidly turned into an erosional gully with no sign of a trail. The farther down I went, the worse it got, turning into a debris flow choked with fallen logs. So this is the new CDT? Good luck, through hikers! Again, I fought my way 3/4 of a mile down before giving up and turning back.
I still had a couple hours left for hiking, so I decided to go up the left-hand branch a mile or so – the one I’d hiked last Sunday – just for the exercise.
Back home, I checked the official CDT website. They show the trail that no longer exists as the official route. This year’s crop of through hikers will likely be really confused. If they take the “New CDT” they’ll end up fighting their way down a flood-damaged canyon with no surviving trail, adding 15 miles and several days to their trip. I hope they’re carrying enough food!
Monday, April 24th, 2023: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
It was late April and I figured my favorite high-elevation trails would be sufficiently snow-free. But a combination of snowmelt flooding and blowdown in this windy season had left so many inaccessible. Plus, I was losing too much productive time to hiking and chores, so I needed to stay within the local area – leaving only one good option, the crest trail east of here.
The day was going to be warm but partly cloudy, and up on the crest it should be cool. Getting an early start, I drove 12 of the 40 miles east, only to be reminded that the highway over the range is closed – cracks in the roadway indicate a potential failure, our climate taking its toll on the works of man.
Another option, closer to town, would take me through exactly the same kind of terrain I’d been hiking all month. The early start meant I now had an on-time departure. So I decided to violate my better judgement and drive over to Arizona after all. I would decide on a hike once I got there.
To my dismay, when I entered the range, I found cars and people everywhere. But there was no turning back now, so I decided to take the most remote trail, which involved a very rough high-clearance 4wd drive up a rock-lined canyon. Hopefully that would discourage the riff-raff.
But I found two cars parked at the turnoff – hikers walking up the canyon since their vehicles wouldn’t handle it. And approaching the most difficult section, I saw a well-dressed, distinguished-looking older man, standing in the road ahead, staring and frowning at me. I smiled and waved, but he just kept frowning back, refusing to move. It was really hard to drive around him safely, but I smiled and waved again, while he kept staring and frowning.
I parked and started up the trail. After a quarter mile, I met a twenty-something guy coming down, carrying binoculars but without a pack. I asked if he’d gone to the waterfall, and he said he was looking for birds. Of course! All these people were birders, here for the big spring migration! That’s why the old guy in the road had been pissed at me. Birders treat everyone else as an obstacle in the way of their competitive obsession.
But this was good news for me – birders aren’t hikers, and would stay within a mile of their vehicles. I had the wilderness to myself.
The winter of pain and trail closures had weakened me, so I felt slower than usual. And even on the lower, eastern segment, our windy season had snapped living pines and firs that now blocked the trail.
Blowdowns continued when I reached the hanging canyon – our prevailing southwest winds funnel through here from the saddle above. And just below the crest, a 100-foot-tall fir had been snapped off right next to the historic Forest Service cabin. It was a miracle the log cabin hadn’t been crushed – the tree fell less than a foot from the corner. But its branches damaged the roof, which will need repairs in the next month or so to avoid water damage.
I’d been climbing with my shirt unbuttoned, but the saddle is a wind tunnel – when I reached the crest I encountered a bitter gale and had to pull on both my sweater and shell jacket. Clouds were building and casting cold shadows too. But I fought my way south – I thought I had just enough time to reach the saddle I’d hiked to six months ago, when our monsoon was transitioning to winter snowstorms.
The last stretch of trail was where I found the most remaining snow, plus more blowdown – and this is the rockiest part of the trail. In my weakened state, I’d been slipping, stumbling, and even falling a few times so far, narrowly avoiding injury. I found a couple of faint bootprints on the upper trails, but their treacherous condition is discouraging most hikers.
On the way back, I thought about how, through a combination of our ecological ignorance, hubris, and a changing climate, nature is systematically destroying the works of man. From the eastern highway to trails and a wilderness cabin, my whole day told the same story. And these aren’t skyscrapers and palaces we’re talking about – these are basic infrastructure even the most environmentally-conscious of us take for granted. Like it or not, none of it’s sustainable.
The descent was really hard on my knees – more evidence the long winter weakened me. I was hobbling by the time I reached the vehicle. And to add insult to injury, the birders were running the cafe staff ragged – I had to wait an hour for my order while they were deliberating over their fine wines. And they’d taken all the rooms at the lodge, even on a Sunday night. I had to drive all the way home in the dark, arriving exhausted at 10pm – having put in a 14-hour day to accomplish a 7-hour hike.
