Saturday, May 27th, 2023
Monday, May 1st, 2023: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Rain, Southwest New Mexico.
Still trying to rebuild my strength and lung capacity after a frustrating winter, I planned to do a nearby hike on a trail I knew would be in good condition. But I’d seen road cyclists all over the area, and a last-minute check showed that the road I needed would be closed for our annual cycling race. So I fell back on my old favorite trail, an hour away on the west side of the mountains.
There was a brand-new city SUV, a Toyota Highlander, parked at the trailhead, and the trail log turned out to be unusually entertaining. On April 17, a party of two from Missouri had taken up four rows with an extended rant using a red pen that they’d obviously brought for situations just like this. According to the Missourians, the wilderness map shows a good trail here, but the trail is actually “very dangerous for backpackers” and “constantly giving out when you walk on it”. They reached the second creek, where another trail branches off, but found “the trail does NOT exist anymore for the past 50 years” and therefore they “tore off the sign”. Adding insult to their perceived injury, they found no Rainbows or Gila Trout in the creeks, and they admonished the Forest Service to “get out the trucks and start cutting some trails!!!”
The next log entry, a week later, simply said “Trail is great! Grow a pair of ovaries” with an arrow to the previous comment.
Shaking my head, I started down the trail into the first canyon. The Missouri rant was so over the top, I figured there was a good chance it was a prank. I’d made a prank entry myself last year after someone else had criticized the trail condition. This is a trail of contrasts – unlike most other trails in our wilderness, it’s been easy to follow and clear of overgrowth, deadfall, and blowdown throughout the three years I’ve been hiking it. But its route involves very steep ascents and descents that make it inherently the most challenging hike I do.
I knew it was going to be a hot day – record heat was forecast throughout the Southwest, with temps in the mid 80s in town. I already had my shirt unbuttoned before I reached the canyon bottom, where I expected the creek to be in flood – hence I’d worn my waterproof boots. I strapped on my gaiters just to be safe, but keeping my balance with a couple of handy sticks, I was able to use stepping stones without slipping or submerging my boots more than about two inches.
The trailhead log showed 18 visits in six months, and most of those were day hikes which typically end after only a mile, here at the first creek crossing. Even the backpackers often get no farther than the campsite less than a half mile upstream. But I was here for the full workout, as much as 17 miles out and back.
The flies started bugging me as soon as I began climbing the switchbacks and started to sweat, so on went the head net, which I kept lowering and raising as needed for the rest of the day.
Up on the rolling plateau between the first and second creeks, there’s enough loose dirt to read tracks. Equestrians had been up here months ago, but there was only one recent human track – some kind of sneaker. And at the west end of the plateau a dog – a big shepherd mix – appeared, barking, followed by a trail runner, a big girl who looked like a college student. She raced past me as I asked how far she’d gone – “to the West Fork!”. She was the Toyota driver, and I wondered if was her parents’ car – it would be a spoiled college student who owned a fancy new vehicle like that. Most surprisingly , I didn’t notice her carrying any kind of gear – she might’ve had a small water bottle in her hand, or not. I spent the rest of the hike marveling at someone who would run more than 11 miles on a trail with over 3,000′ of elevation gain, on one of the hottest days of the year, with no more than a liter of water – if any!
I was even more perplexed when I started down the rock-lined switchbacks into the canyon. I did three months of trail running in our Mojave Desert mountains back in 2002, when I was in peak condition, and I recall only being able to run up about 300′ of elevation gain on good trail before slowing to a fast walk. And when I reached steep, rocky sections I was definitely walking. This trail has two sections of switchbacks, each dropping/climbing 1,400′, with sharp, loose rocks underfoot for much of the way.
I simply didn’t think it would be possible for anyone to run either up or down those sections. It would be like running in a road with a dump truck ahead of you pouring a layer of bricks in your path. Crazy.
I reached the beautiful floodplain of the second creek and discovered the Missourians were not pranking after all – they’d not only torn off the old trail sign, they’d either stolen it or hidden it somewhere. This was even worse than expected. What kind of hiker destroys a trail sign?
I’d already known their excuse – “the trail does NOT exist anymore for the past 50 years” – was false, because I’d hiked that trail several times in the recent past, for over a mile upstream, to a beautiful swimming hole. I began to think hikers – and especially backpackers – should have to pass a test in order to qualify for using our trails. Apparently what’s happening is that in our age of social media and parents who assume schools will raise their kids for them, naive, ignorant, and poorly socialized young people have unlimited free access to unreliable information online, and conceive wilderness trips they’re completely unprepared for. And when the reality doesn’t match their preconceptions, they take it personally and lash out.
In this case, the result was sad, because those historic trail signs are not easily replaced. And I hold outfitters like REI partially accountable, because their products and photo spreads set false expectations for conditions in the burn scars that now cover much of our public lands.
Despite being in the midst of a heat wave, I decided to bypass the swimming hole and continue across the second creek, over a shoulder toward the third creek more than a mile and a half away, because that would yield a much better workout. The third creek is a little too far for a day hike, but I did get as far as I’ve ever gone before, to the edge of a cliff a couple hundred feet above the third creek. And I paid for it on my return.
I found no tracks other than wildlife on this stretch of trail – I’m the first hiker here in the past six months.
It was the last day of April, but it felt like mid-June. After turning back, I could tell that despite bringing four liters, my drinking water was running low. But there were two creek crossings on my return where I could refill if needed.
Starting up the switchbacks, I began to feel the strain on my body, and thought about that girl again. I was having to stop about every 50 feet to catch my breath, and my whole lower body was on fire. I figured she must’ve known in advance that this is one of our few trails that are clear of overgrowth and blowdown in our current fire/climate regime – how could you run in shorts through thorn thickets and fallen trees? But in general – what kind of human would run up and down a steep trail like this, on loose, sharp rocks, with little or no water? It still boggles my mind.
The climb took me over an hour, and I finally swallowed a pain pill while crossing the rolling plateau.
I ran out of drinking water on the descent into the first canyon, but I decided not to refill at the creek – the final ascent to the trailhead is only another mile in the shade.
The pill kicked in and I felt much better climbing out of the first canyon – although it still feels like it will never end. At 14 miles and 4,400 feet of elevation, this was the longest hike and biggest climb I’d done in the past six months! Hopefully it’s another step forward in the recovery of my lost capacity.
PS: Directly above the Missouri rant on the trail log, there was an entry from a party of four, an “RAF/NMPA Work Party” claiming to have spent 3 days on the trail. I found this curious since this party claimed to have been working on the trail at the same time as the Missourians’ bad experience, so I looked it up when I got home. Turns out RAF is the Recreational Aviation Foundation and NMPA is the New Mexico Pilots Association. These guys weren’t using or working on the trail – they were installing a porta-potty at a dirt airstrip which has recently been refurbished nearby. Since there’s no rural community near this remote location, the only reason for an airstrip is so airplane hobbyists can fly in and out, adding it to their life list.
And of course, the past history of this airstrip apparently includes plenty of use by drug smugglers from Mexico….
Monday, May 8th, 2023: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
Today I got to do the hike I planned last Sunday – 18 miles on good trail to rebuild my capacity. Only 20 minutes from town so I can get an earlier start and have more time to hike.
The first stretch is two miles on a primitive road, crossing and re-crossing a perennial creek below rock cliffs and pinnacles. I usually run into others in the first mile, and today was no exception – I met two birders from New England a quarter mile in. They’d already seen new warblers and were really excited. I encouraged them to continue to the narrows, the most spectacular part of an otherwise fairly boring hike.
I was a little surprised to find the road through the narrows recently rebuilt after last fall’s severe flood damage. It must’ve cost the private landowners an arm and a leg, and of course it’s likely to happen again every few years. The property up the road was recently sold, presumably to outsiders who had no idea what they were getting into – like the birders who built and had to abandon the cabin I found over in Arizona.
As usual, I made good time on the six-mile climb out of the canyon to the 9,035′ peak, where the trail is mostly shaded by forest and I was kept cool by a breeze. It really is nice to have a good trail for a change after slogging through deep snow or fighting my way through flood debris and thorny overgrowth for months.
On the way down the north side of the peak I ran into a friendly couple about my age, from a rural community west of town. They were trying to reach the iconic twin peaks north of town, but had missed the turnoff I used and had continued another 5 miles on the highway to the dirt forest road that accesses the fire lookout, driving that an additional 5 miles all the way up to a nearby saddle at 8,600′ instead. Now they were hoping to descend this trail in reverse from the high peak, to reach the much lower twin peaks. They asked about my hike and were pretty shocked by the distance I was aiming for. I gave them all the helpful info I could think of, but was perplexed because there’s no actual trail up the twin peaks, and I’ve never thought of them as a destination.
My destination was the “park” – the level basin at the far end of the eastward ridge, where the national trail crosses and drops to lower ridges. I love these incongruous geological features with their ring of tall pines surrounding a grassy meadow in the center, high in the sky on top of a ridge, and assuming I could make it that far today, I planned to collapse on the ground in the shade of a pine and rest a while.
But first, a half mile after passing the couple, I met a guy in his 40s or early 50s with a dog, running a chain saw, cutting logs that had recently blown down on the national trail. He refused my offer of help so I thanked him and continued another couple of miles on the gentle grades of this section, to the park, where I was still feeling good, but stopped to lie in the shade for at least 20 minutes.
This is one of the two longest hikes I do, and the longest I’ve done in over six months, by a margin of four miles. I expected to develop some pain on the way back, and sure enough, both feet got sore before I reached the lookout road. And I encountered the log-cutter and his dog again. He was finishing up for the day so he was glad to stop and talk a while. Turns out he’s a mountain biker and fisherman, and clears trails so he can ride them himself or use them to access fishing holes. Of course he resents not being able to use his chain saw in wilderness areas, which have the most attractive fishing holes and are now out of reach because of flood damage and blowdown.
The most interesting thing I learned from him is that this section of the national trail isn’t used by through hikers. He laughed when I mentioned other sections I’d found abandoned or blocked by flood damage. “All the through hikers just go straight north from town on other forest trails, to the river, and from there to Snow Lake (50 miles west of the official national trail),” he said. “Nobody but me uses the national trail anymore – they all want to be next to water.”
This confirms what I’ve long suspected. So many times, I’ve seen through hikers tramping along highways, short-cutting much longer sections of trail through backcountry, so they can save time or reach town quicker to resupply. We just had our big “Trail Days” celebration a few weeks ago, but that’s mostly about business – through hikers spend a lot in local restaurants, motels, and stores. I doubt anybody admitted they weren’t actually using the highly publicized, internationally-known trail.
After climbing to the high peak and crossing the saddle to the south slope for my final descent, I ran into the couple from the western community again, on their way back to their vehicle. This time we really got to know each other and exchanged names. She was admiring my old Swiss Army surplus pack, and he was curious about how much water I take on these marathon hikes. This was really turning into a social day, and I was glad I’d met friendly people who were willing to talk.
I was walking so gingerly on the descent I had to take a pain pill, but in general, I was surprised not to feel more exhausted during the last couple of miles along the canyon road. I only do this non-wilderness hike when I feel the need to pile on the miles, but most people find parts of it both beautiful and memorable.
Wilderness Access, but at What Price?
Monday, May 22nd, 2023: Hikes, Little Dry, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Again I had trouble choosing a Sunday hike – my first choice, on the east side, turned out to still be inaccessible due to road closure. Then I drove west planning to try an alternate route to another trail that had been inaccessible since last fall, but at the last minute decided that was too risky, too. So I continued to the turnoff for a trail that had been wiped out last September by a big flood, because I’d seen some notes online that indicated someone had been using it recently – maybe they’d cleared a path through the damage.
This is one of those few trails leading to the crest of the range that are precious to me. So imagine my delight when I found that someone had cleared a path and laid down good tread through last year’s flood damage!
It had rained yesterday, the temperature was in the low 70s, and as soon as I reached the canyon bottom a rich cocktail of plant perfumes hit my nostrils. Spring flowers were out, and my boots and pants were soon soaked with dew.
But after I reached the abandoned cabin, the trail work ended. Distances on this trail are confounding. The cabin doesn’t show up on any maps – I’ve always assumed it’s two miles in from the trailhead. I’ve hiked this trail often enough that I was easily able to find my route through flood debris, blowdown, and overgrowth beyond the cabin, but two things soon became obvious: big floods like this renew habitat, and the equestrian trail crew had been here, because the trail was now lined with invasive dandelions.
Despite the online notes, and invasives spread by horses, I found no tracks anywhere. It looked like I was on virgin trail, especially as I began climbing the traverse to the first saddle. Birdsong surrounded me everywhere, and the traverse was more choked than ever by scrub oak, manzanita, and the thorny shrub I have yet to identify. I literally had to force my way through dense thickets in addition to climbing over occasional blowdown, all the way up to the saddle. Most hikers would’ve simply turned back, assuming the trail no longer exists, but I’ve gotten used to conditions like this and can follow even the most subtle indicators of a route.
Storm clouds had started peeking over the crest even before I left the canyon bottom, and now towered over the ridge to the east.
It took me over three hours from the trailhead to reach the saddle, which is shown on maps as a distance of less than four miles. This never fails to amaze me, because I’m good at estimating distances, and this part of the trail always feels closer to six miles. And I hadn’t been moving slow – the trail in the canyon had felt easier than usual to follow.
Past the saddle, the trail climbs steeply in a series of switchbacks, which are not shown on any maps. A hiker who had left a recent note online said the trail simply stops here, but of course I know the route well and had no problem continuing. But the shrubby overgrowth was so bad on this next ascent that I fell once, tripping over a low branch that had been hidden by the plants I was pushing through.
Beyond the switchback, there’s a traverse that rounds the base of a white comglomerate cliff and enters the head of the main drainage, revealing the arc formed above by the crest. As before, there were no human tracks anywhere, but elk love this area and are the only thing maintaining tread at this point. I suddenly realized that I so seldom find footprints on these wilderness trails because backpackers are the only people who penetrate as deeply as I do, and backpackers in this part of the range are few and far between.
The trail traverses toward a second set of switchbacks that lead to a second saddle. But these switchbacks are faint and easily confused with numerous game trails left by elk, so I usually end up finding different routes going up vs. coming back down. At the saddle, the little cairn I’d made a couple of years ago was still waiting for me.
Past the second saddle, there are only faint, occasional traces of a trail, but again, I know the route well. After entering intact forest, it climbs in several switchbacks – also omitted from the maps – and passes an old junction before beginning another long traverse toward the crest.
This traverse looks exactly like a game trail. If you can follow it, it leads across a series of narrow talus falls, through thickets of thorny locust, to more switchbacks that climb the back side of a sharp rock outcrop. The air was muggy and I’d been getting pretty hot climbing thousands of feet, but as I continued up this traverse the clouds had been spreading, it had been getting darker, and a cold wind had dropped the temperature to the 50s.
Stopping before a switchback that’s blocked by deadfall, I noticed a tick on my sleeve, and after brushing that one off, saw one climbing my pant leg.
It’d been a hard climb and I was really beat. And my time was running short, so I stopped at the top of the switchbacks, next to the upper part of the rock outcrop, instead of continuing a couple hundred feet higher to the ghost grove of burned aspens below the crestline, as before. I figured I’d gone almost seven miles and climbed 4,000′, although the map would show less than six miles and 3,600 feet.
On the way down, the leg cramps began, and continued for the next three miles. I always get leg cramps on this descent, and this is the only hike where I get them – despite other hikes being much longer and harder. I drink plenty of water, with added electrolytes, and stretch regularly, but it makes no difference. Something about this hike just triggers cramps.
I’d only felt one tiny raindrop, and now the clouds were moving off and the air was quickly warming. When I reached the first saddle, I stopped to do a complete series of lower-body stretches, and drank a bunch more water.
Despite all the precautions, I still fought cramps all the way to the canyon bottom. And when I reached the bottom and began seeing dandelions again, I slipped and fell a second time, at a debris-choked creek crossing, and thought more about trails, condition and maintenance, and the larger issue of wilderness access.
Although I usually give up when confronted with hundreds of fallen logs per mile, I figured I’d climbed over at least a hundred today, spread out over a distance of six or seven miles. And I’ve long been perfectly content with trails that are faint or overgrown by thickets. But the vast majority of hikers seem to expect trails that are clear and meticulously maintained – probably because most of their hiking occurs in crowded urban parks and popular national parks, where the effort and cost of trail maintenance is justified by the level of traffic.
I only recently had the revelation that trails themselves, as we know them, are a product of wildfire suppression. The trail networks in our national forests and parks would never have been sustainable before, in natural wildfire regimes, which regularly rearrange the landscape.
But very few hikers, even backpackers, will attempt to penetrate wilderness areas without trails. So the whole idea of “wilderness access” ultimately depends, to some degree, on wildfire suppression.
And the demand for wilderness access has led, since COVID, to some troubling trends in my region. Just over the border in Arizona, a coalition of urban mountain bikers has been granted a permit by the Forest Service to do all trail maintenance, and the mountain bikers have accompanied their work by a slick online propaganda campaign, in which they conceal or downplay their agenda as bikers, promoting their selfless work “for the benefit of all trail users”.
Equestrians are doing the same thing in my local forest. They got an exclusive permit to do trail work, and they’ve established a slick, authoritative website on trail conditions which likewise hides their agenda as equestrians, claiming to be selflessly improving trails “for the benefit of all trail users”.
It’s clear to me that both these special-interest groups are working proactively and effectively to assure themselves access to public lands. Equestrians know they’re accused of damaging trails and spreading invasive plants, and afraid of losing access, they’re positioning themselves so nobody can exclude them from wilderness.
Likewise, mountain bikers have been fighting for decades to get access to wilderness, and by making themselves indispensable to all trail users, they may finally succeed.
My question is, does anybody actually deserve good trails, and “access to wilderness”, at the cost of habitat degradation?
Saturday, May 27th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Regions, Road Trips.
After making a solitary trip to my desert land last fall, I told everyone I would return for a more social visit in the spring. But over the winter I became immersed in finishing my book project, and as it got better and closer to being finished, the desert trip got pushed back.
The book was essentially completed a couple of days ago – I ordered a one-off print copy for my mom, who will be my first reader – so I was finally free to travel, just in time for my birthday.
On the planned day of departure – to my amazement – I was fully packed with a full gas tank, and left precisely on time, at a reasonable hour in the morning but with plenty of time to reach my first day’s destination long before sunset. For some reason, for the first time in my life, I was starting a trip not frantic and beside myself with stress, but fully prepared, having checked and double-checked my packing list. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was starting a trip in a state of perfect calm.
My little Sidekick was packed with everything I would need for a ten-day backcountry trip, yet it looked nothing like the humongous “overlanding” rigs every yuppie is now expected to have for expeditions like this. One reason I chose and keep this vehicle is that you don’t have to climb up or bend over to reach any of the cargo, and the rear passenger doors provide easy access to stuff packed in the middle. There was even plenty of headroom left to see out the back.
My usual starting point for this trip is a small town in southeast Utah. But it’s seven and a half hours from home, and years ago I vowed never to drive more than six hours in a day. In the past, I’ve started later and made an intermediate overnight stop. With a stop to make lunch, today’s drive would last more than eight hours, and by the time I reached the north end of the Navajo Reservation my calm was gone, I was thoroughly frazzled, and both my hip and shoulder were in pain. I did arrive long before sunset, but I still had to shop for supplies before dinner and a shower.
I’d booked a room in the motel Katie and I had discovered on our “rock art expedition” in April 1987. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s a small, modest structure that nevertheless won our admiration with its clever adaptation to its high-elevation Southwestern habitat.
I’d stayed there once since, a few months before COVID, and found it in harsh decline. The original clerestory windows that you opened with a long-handled crank had been replaced by fixed windows, the beautiful built-in hardwood furnishings hadn’t been maintained, and the place had been clumsily rewired so that my neighbor woke me up in the night because his TV was plugged in to my room through a ragged hole punched in the wall between us.
After COVID, two local women bought and refurbished the place. Now, it’s modern and fairly comfortable, but it’s lost much of the old “Wright” feel.
Saturday, May 27th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Regions, Road Trips.
My next destination was a motel in a town four hours west. On the way, I would attempt a side trip into some forbidding back country, hoping to explore a remote canyon where others had found rock writings and paintings.
I headed west on what may be the world’s most beautiful highway, frustrated that I couldn’t stay in this area for months instead of days. In the past, I’d dreamed of exploring the sprawling, red sandstone plateau that loomed 1,600 feet above on my right. But it features forested habitat similar to our high mountains back home, and my vague goal for this trip was to find unfamiliar pictographs, not familiar habitat. So I kept driving past one of my favorite landscapes and reminiscing about past visits.
Past the alpine plateau, the road enters a land of red-and-white sandstone, following ledges between high mesas on your left and deep, sheer-walled canyons that are mostly hidden at right. It gets drier and more stark as you approach the River, and finally the peaks of one of my favorite mountain ranges emerge from behind the mesas to the west. They were still carrying a lot of snow, and while I was getting sick of snow at home a few months ago, I always thrill to see snowy mountains in the midst of desert at this hot time of year.
The River crossing is a truly awesome, heart-in-throat place which is normally passed too quickly on the highway. But my turnoff was just past the bridge on the right – an unmarked dirt road.
This is one of the few routes into the most inaccessible parts of the canyonlands – the terrain in which Jeep commercials are filmed. I’ve driven shorter, less rugged roads on similar terrain in nearby areas, but I expected this road to be a harsh test of my vehicle. Driving here comes with all kinds of warnings – if it rains, you’ll be stuck in cement-like clay, and if you break down and need a tow, it will cost a minimum of $1,500. Of course there’s no chance of cell phone service anywhere nearby.
I pulled over just past the turnoff to review my maps. And just as I finished, a convoy passed me: a late-model 4-door Jeep Wrangler and a Toyota FJ, both kitted out in full expedition gear. I pulled in behind them, and to my surprise and probably theirs, it soon became obvious I was faster than them. They stopped to take pictures, pulling over so I could pass.
This was completely new country for me. Like the highway, this back road follows ledges around the base of mesas, with a maze of canyons below on your right. My destination was only about nine miles away as the crow flies, but it takes over twenty miles of driving to get there because the road repeatedly winds back into deep coves then leads out around sharp points, following the ledges to skirt the network of canyons below.
Soil is very thin in this country, and like most, this road was built on bedrock, so I soon encountered what I’d expected: stretches of rumpled sandstone that you have to cross very slowly, rocking back and forth, if you can – there are always transverse ledges and spines that require high clearance. And then, when the road crosses a wash that forms the head of one of the lower canyons, there are sections blocked by boulders and ledges you have to carefully drive over so as not to break an axle, or a differential, or get stuck with a wheel in the air.
But at least this road is maintained, unlike the abandoned mine roads I drive in the Mojave. I hadn’t even needed my 4wd yet, and I got farther and farther ahead of the Jeep and Toyota, but it still seemed to take forever. Each point I rounded revealed a whole new landscape.
Despite the dozens of very slow bedrock sections and boulder-lined washes, I was pushing my little vehicle everywhere else, for an overall average of at least 15 mph. Finally I crested a rise and saw what I believed to be my canyon down in the bottom of a broad valley. Again I stopped to review the maps, and before I could get going again, the Jeep and Toyota overtook me for the second time, all waving and smiling.
But when I reached the bottom of the valley, I ended up passing the Toyota yet again – while all I was using were paper maps, this driver was checking GPS on his phone. Here, the road forked – I was taking the dead-end left fork up the canyon, thinking I would eventually encounter the Jeep, but I eventually realized that the others had taken the right fork farther into the backcountry.
I was here because an online trip report by “rock art nuts” said they’d found both petroglyphs and pictographs up the canyon. The road just followed the dry wash, which, since there had been rains a while back, was now hard-packed red clay. The surrounding valley started out open, but after a mile the cliffs closed in on both sides and I came to an old corral – the only human structures in this region are corrals. Beyond that point the wash was only wide enough for my vehicle, and I soon came to bouldery stretches that required all my ground clearance and concentration. Too late, I realized I should’ve parked at the corral and walked in, but fortunately I soon came to a campsite where I pulled up and parked. Time for lunch! And someone had long ago left a much-corroded chrome dinette standing here among the junipers, which I hauled into the shade.
Despite the spectacular surroundings, the long, strenuous, rough ride had left me in a strange mental and emotional state. I found I was suddenly severely absent-minded, with virtually no short-term memory. Powerful gusts blew down the canyon, knocking things over and sending me chasing after them.
After lunch, I packed for a hike up-canyon, but I kept locking the vehicle only to have to unlock it and unpack it again to find something I’d forgotten. I couldn’t get anything right the first time.
As soon as I started walking I discovered I was the first person to drive up here in a long time. The only remains of tracks were from a UTV.
The road, such as it was, veered out of the main canyon into a side canyon, and the main canyon became impassable to vehicles. And past that point I found a simple petroglyph panel.
To my chagrin those were the only prehistoric markings I found in that canyon.
I returned and followed the road into the side canyon. All I found there was an old print of a cowboy boot, and some ranching debris.
So I returned to the Sidekick and drove back to the corral, where I saw another side canyon, and found an old road leading to a campsite in its mouth. I explored that canyon on a cattle trail, and found it was a box canyon, headed by cliffs with a dry pour-off high above, and with an old earthen dam below which had been breached by flood. As I approached, a great horned owl flew out of a juniper in front of me. It went left out of sight behind vegetation. And then as I proceeded toward the cliffs, I thought I saw something flying to a crack up there, so I snapped a quick picture. In my room that night, I zoomed in on the pic and sure enough, there was the owl, huddling under a small bush.
Like I said, I was in a weird state. I felt really disappointed at finding only one little petroglyph panel after such an arduous drive. I was perfectly aware I should be thrilled by the natural beauty surrounding me, as I would’ve been in the past, but I simply wasn’t, and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was some kind of physical depression.
On the drive back to the highway I took it slow, stopping frequently for water and pics. My clutch is wearing out so that it needs annual adjustment, and it was becoming almost impossible to shift gears without stopping and turning off the engine first. That’s something I can fix and will probably have to in the next few days.
The day had felt either hot or cool when I was out of the vehicle, depending on whether I had shade from cliffs or clouds. But in the vehicle it was always hot – big windows all around – and I soon turned the A/C on high. The highway drive up the long wash from the river went smoothly, and went even faster once I emerged onto the rolling country below the snowy mountains.
When returning on the back road along those ledges I’d been hearing a strange squeaking noise from the back, and about ten miles from town I suddenly remembered that when I stopped in that canyon for lunch, I’d taken two bundles of firewood out of the vehicle so I could reach my clothes bag underneath, and set them loosely on top, so they hung out over the edge of the roof rack and would be easy to notice so I wouldn’t forget to put them back in afterward.
But in my absent-minded state I’d forgotten them completely, and in all the bouncing and shaking and rocking over twenty miles of that bad road they’d certainly bounced off, probably before I even left the canyon. And even if they’d survived that, driving 65 mph on the highway would’ve definitely blown them off.
But I watched for several more miles until I saw a turnoff. And once stopped, I found that the firewood bundles had settled into the space between crossbars of the roof rack, miraculously surviving all that rough ride and highway speed. Something good was finally happening!
As I drove north to town, I passed a continuous parade of big southbound pickup trucks hauling powerboats that were twice their size, heading south to Lake Powell. It was Friday evening, and dozens and dozens of Mormon families from the tiny hamlets of the remote interior were driving hours to spend their national holiday on the doomed reservoir.
