Monday, February 10th, 2025
Sunday, June 22nd, 2025: 2025 Trips, Gila, Nature, Regions, Road Trips, Wildfire.
Yes, I realize that on the national and global scale, the news is terrifying. But in remote southwest New Mexico, we have worries that may never make the national, let alone the global, news – and we hope to keep it that way.
During the nineteen years I’ve lived here, we’ve had three large wildfires in the mountains just north of town, which rise to 9,000 feet in elevation and are covered with mixed conifer forest dominated by ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. Strangely, the fires have been separated by exactly five years: in 2015, 2020, and now 2025. Each fire has started within fifteen miles of my home, growing to consume habitat I hike regularly, destroying places that are special to me.
But the fire that started just over a week ago has become by far the biggest – and in fact, the most dangerous in the entire country during this period. Firefighters and equipment have been moved in from all over the U.S. Thousands of people have been evacuated from nearby rural communities. In town, we’ve watched the apocalyptic smoke column towering above our skyline, the helicopters and jet tankers shuttling back and forth from the Forest Service fire station at our county airport. Our phones have buzzed with evacuation alerts, and the latest evacuation zone was created only two miles from my mom’s assisted living facility. The fire’s most active front is burning toward town in fire-adapted forest that has never burned within historic times, and is currently the driest vegetation in the U.S.
Calling my mom’s privately-owned facility to ask about their evacuation plan, I was told by the owner that they don’t have one – families are responsible for moving their loved ones to safety. Slowed by my knee-immobilizer brace, I made a rough inventory of valuables in my house, and shifted empty boxes up from the basement to carry irreplaceable documents and artwork.
With the “incident team” growing to over 1,400 people, the fire still showed zero containment after the first week. But on Friday, they finally claimed 11 percent containment, and the incident commander said that they’d bulldozed lines around the entire perimeter and were planning to restore power and begin allowing some of the evacuated back to their homes. They described a huge effort to protect structures throughout the vast area, and continued to claim that no structures had been damaged.
Friday afternoon, I drove my mom to the edge of town to see the smoke column. I figured, and hoped, that she might never have the chance to see something like this again. I wouldn’t have considered showing it to her a few weeks earlier, but her chronic anxiety has subsided, and she appreciated the opportunity to experience this awesome vision of nature’s power.
Throughout the week, I followed the fire’s advance online – hour by hour – via several apps, discussed it with neighbors, and attended community meetings. By the following weekend, the danger was reduced, but the fire was now burning through some of my favorite places, destroying more of our last remaining old-growth alpine habitat. I was a wreck.
There was a place northwest of town where I’d always wanted to picnic or camp, a ledge in ponderosa forest atop a ridge a thousand feet tall, overlooking the north end of our wilderness. I’d just learned that a brew pub had recently opened in the village nearby. Unlike the two existing restaurants, it stayed open Sunday evenings, and I wanted to check it out.
I arrived at noon and was the third customer. The owner, a big bearded guy, latched on to me and told me his story. I was shocked to discover he had ten beers on tap, but only one was an ale. Every other craft beer joint – and I’ve been in hundreds – carries an equal number of ales and lagers. His explanation was that he’s burnt out on ales, implying that what the customers want is irrelevant.
But it got worse. He said his menu consists of Italian dishes – rather than pub favorites or Mexican food (which the village lacks and needs). Not because he’s Italian (he’s not), but because nobody else here serves Italian food. Such is colonial culture on Turtle Island.
I had a salad, it was bland, and with no ales on offer, I won’t be returning.
My destination is a short drive up a dirt forest road from a pass on a remote stretch of highway – there’s no signage, and even after studying the map you’d never know it was there. With a high of 85 in town, up there at 8,300 feet it was in the 70s and breezy.
I unfolded my camp chair in a patch of shade on the rim and drank ice water out of my mini-cooler for a couple of hours. With the aid of field glasses and a BLM topo map, I challenged myself to identify all the peaks on the horizon, while admiring the occasional passing butterfly.
On the drive back, I mentally compared the pub owner with a motel owner in an alpine resort an hour further northwest. She runs scent diffusers in all the rooms, despite visitor complaints, because she likes the smell and doesn’t care what customers want. This is what you get off the beaten path – eccentrically selfish business owners.
I wasn’t looking forward to the return to town, where I would get the day’s first view of the current fire. It’s burning down an outlying finger of the crest of the range, about nine miles from the center of town now and still approaching. The forest ahead of it is what I was describing earlier – unburned in historical memory, and drier than anyplace else in the U.S. It’s also roadless, so it can only be fought with air drops, which are only marginally effective.
We’re expecting monsoon rain this week, but thunderstorms include outflow winds which could push the fire in new directions.
Monday, July 7th, 2025: 2025 Trips, Nature, Regions, Road Trips, Rocks, Sky Islands.
Two months ago I visited this national monument to hike. Today I came just to drive around and look, and hopefully find someplace in the shade to string my hammock. Our monsoon started early, a couple of weeks ago, but as the old timers predict, a monsoon that starts early is likely to fizzle out. So we’re back to scattered, teasing clouds and hot days.
The high was forecast to be 90 at home, and the monument ranges from nearly a thousand feet lower to nearly a thousand feet higher. In my experience, public lands include lots of informal places to pull off the road and hang out, and the official map shows three picnic areas at the monument’s highest elevations, where I would surely find trees and shade.
The paved highway to the monument sees only sparse traffic, is laid out like a rollercoaster, and is minimally maintained, so that if you drive at the posted speed limit of 65 mph, you’re likely to be pitched off violently by one of many crudely patched potholes. Fine with me – helps to keep the riffraff out of this beautiful landscape.
As before, the gatehouse at the monument’s entrance was unoccupied, so admission was free. This is one of the smaller holdings in the National Park Service empire, encompassing two short canyons lined with a bewildering, seemingly infinite profusion of rock cliffs and towers. From the old stone Visitor Center at the confluence of the canyons, the narrow paved road leads up the northern canyon under some of the most spectacular rock formations on earth.
Surprisingly, there are only three or four widely-separated turnoffs, each is only big enough for one vehicle, and all are overhung by sycamores or Arizona cypress, so none of them offers a view of the rock formations. But I did enjoy the familiar dark, somber quality of dense, pure cypress stands in the upper canyon.
After less than three miles of this, the road suddenly crosses into the next watershed, and begins climbing to the crest through an old, high-intensity burn scar with expansive views east – which you can’t really enjoy because there’s a sheer drop-off and no places to pull off the road.
And suddenly you’re at the monument’s 6,900-foot crest – which itself tops out 3,000 feet below the crest of the range, which you can barely glimpse, five miles away to the south. From here, a small network of crest roads leads to the three picnic areas. Each features a single picnic table, surrounded by parking for up to twenty vehicles. Strange.
There are wind-stunted trees, but virtually no level ground. No one was using the single picnic tables, but I could find no secluded place to string my hammock. I stopped first at the famous canyon overlook, but there were no immediate views – you had to hike down a trail. People would drive up, park, get out, glance around in frustration, get back in, and drive away.
Wearing my knee immobilizer, I carefully lowered myself down a series of rock ledges to get a view over the big southern canyon and its maze of rock formations. It was even more pleasant up here than I’d expected – barely 80 degrees and breezy – and the clouds were glorious. That plus the relative solitude made up for the monumental effort of clambering around with one leg rigid.
From there, I drove to the other two picnic sites, both empty. Beautiful up here, and with elaborate hiking trails constructed with monumental effort by the long-lost Civilian Conservation Corps. Trails that were empty on this summer weekend. And no place for me to hang out.
As I drove back down the northern canyon, passing no other traffic, I realized I’d seen only about a dozen visiting vehicles during the two hours I’d been inside the monument. Sure, it was a hot summer day – peak season is probably spring and fall. But even stranger, I’d seen no park staff – not even a single official vehicle. Everything within the monument boundaries was spotlessly clean and well-maintained – where was the staff on this weekend day?
A now-unfathomable level of effort was put into building recreational facilities here, nearly a century ago. It remains a spectacular place for short hikes on high-traffic trails, if that’s your thing. But it’s no place for a picnic, and there’s only one small campground in the canyon bottom. Maybe the lack of places to hang out reduces the need for staffing and maintenance.
On the drive back to town, clouds all over the landscape were trying to become storms, and mostly failing. I did get a few drops on the windshield once.
Sunday, July 13th, 2025: 2025 Trips, Gila, Nature, Regions, Road Trips, Wildfire.
So far, our monsoon has brought more lightning than rain – starting new fires, including a big one at the north edge of the wilderness.
I wanted to explore the little-known mountain range, a couple hours north, that I’ve become obsessed with. But the smoke from the fire, blowing west, monopolized my attention on the way up.
By the time I’d finished lunch in the village, the northern sky was darkened by a storm cloud.
At the turnoff in the high pass, I checked my tire pressure and found that warm weather had added ten pounds, so I deflated them to 18 psi for the drive up the rocky road to the forested crest. That made the ride much more pleasant.
At the crest, there’s a fork leading west across the mesa. Since it’s forested, I’d never been able to visualize the landscape, which ranges between 8,200 and 8,700 feet elevation. The topo map showed something called “Dave Lee Lake” just off the road, less than a half mile from the junction. But I’d checked the satellite view at home, and the “lake” appeared to be a typically-dry stock pond.
The storm clouds alternating with patches of blue sky turned this forested mesa into a dreamlike landscape. The high was forecast to reach 90 at 6,000 feet, but here, almost 3,000 feet higher, it was in the 70s. And as on previous visits, I had this small mountain range all to myself.
The road began to climb, as I kept watching for the lake to my left. There appeared to be an opening in the trees down there, so I turned back and followed a meandering track through the forest, past several empty campsites, until a broad meadow appeared ahead, blocked by a fallen tree trunk. The lake turned out to be a natural alpine meadow – one of many on the crest of this range – which would’ve originally featured a vernal pool, but had been dammed at some point to create a stock pond.
Despite the low dam and dry pond lined with cracked mud, it was a magical place, especially under those brooding clouds. I couldn’t believe I had it to myself on a weekend afternoon, only a couple miles off the highway.
I could’ve hung out there, but I’d only scratched the surface of this mesa and wanted to follow the road farther west. Many of the trees bore red blazes or ribbons, apparently part of a Forest Service survey, but other than that, I saw no traces of other visitors. The farther I went, the more tracks I found branching off into the forest. The north slope was dark and dense with Douglas fir. I followed what seemed to be the main track for a couple miles, driving down, up, and around, glimpsing what appeared to be a vast canyon off to the west. I still couldn’t get a sense of the landscape, but these branching, meandering forest tracks could become really confusing. The tracks became rougher and rougher, with deep pools of muddy water I preferred to bypass, and eventually I turned back.
On the north slope among the firs, I’d passed a turnoff to what I assumed was more empty campsites. But when I returned and tried it, I found another track, overgrown and seemingly abandoned, leading steeply down through the forest. I drove down it, and eventually came out in a saddle. From there, the road climbed steeply up onto a ridge, but there were big boulders embedded in the slope, so I stopped and got out to lurch up there in my knee brace and scout the way forward. The track clearly continued out the ridge, but my time was running out. I decided to return to the turnoff and hang out there in the shade.
I strung my hammock between a couple of firs and laid there listening to the wind in the trees – the only sound up here on this mesa, 45 minutes from the nearest human settlement, an hour from the nearest town, four hours from the nearest city. The wind pushes into the forest, the trees dance with the wind.
It took me more than fifteen years to discover this place, two hours from my home. Despite the old dam, I’d seen no sign of cattle anywhere on the mesa. Old topo maps show that despite the maze of forest tracks, most of the mesa is roadless, including the entire western half leading down to the river. There are no hiking trails, but in the parklike forest, devoid of undergrowth, you could hike all over without running into any sign of human life.
Along the forest road and backcountry tracks, there are dozens of beautiful, secluded campsites with fire rings, informal and unmarked. But in a half dozen trips over the past few years, I’ve never seen anyone camping here. It’s like a dream come true, but there are dangers – trees often fall across these forest roads and tracks, so it’s possible to get blocked or even trapped.
From the drive back, I could see it was raining over our high mountains, and presumably over the big wildfire. But I only got a few drops along the way.
Monday, July 21st, 2025: 2025 Trips, Gila, Regions, Road Trips.
For months, I’d been studying topo maps of mid-elevation mountains straddling our border with Arizona. One of my most memorable hikes had ascended a dramatic rock spire at the edge of that range. I approach it from the south, where it begins in low hills beside our famous river. Trending north, these hills get higher and rockier, peaking at 6,555 feet. Then, with no topographical interruption, the mountains get a new name, continuing north, gaining another 500 feet in peak elevation, until the mountainous area spreads and eventually acquires two or three other names.
The southern part is all cattle range and can only be accessed by long gravel roads up a vast alluvial bench lined with creosote bush. The maps show that the mountains themselves were mined extensively in the past, resulting in a bewildering maze of mine roads and 4wd tracks. Where the southern mountains transition into the higher northern mountains, there’s a small wilderness area containing a box canyon with cliffs nearly a thousand feet tall. This area is so far off the radar of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts that the only info I could find online was from the 2009 trip report of a prolific hiker from Phoenix, more than 200 miles away. His photos were spectacular.
But he didn’t provide clear directions on how to get there. My mapping platform suggests that you can drive over the range from south to north, but doesn’t show any side roads leading to the box canyon. Older topo maps show 4wd tracks approaching the mouth of the canyon from two directions, but I suspected all those old roads and tracks, built decades ago for now-abandoned mines, would be sketchy at best. There was only one way to find out.
The high temp at home was forecast to be in the mid-80s, but in monsoon season clouds or even rain can cool things off quickly. Not knowing the quality of those roads, I had some concern about clay turning to deep, sticky mud. The ranch road up the alluvial bench leaves the paved highway at an elevation of 3,700 feet, where the high would approach 100 degrees, but the road across the mountains tops out closer to 6,000 feet, where afternoon temps should be comfortable, and hopefully I would find a shady spot to hang out.
The road up the bench was well-graded and the gravel fine enough that I didn’t even have to deflate my tires, until it entered the foothills and became rockier.
The line of outlying peaks, all of which I dream of climbing, features spires of solid rock at their crests, and with the growing monsoon clouds behind them they looked even taller and more dramatic. The slopes here are dotted with small junipers and honey mesquite. The road got rockier, and I deflated my tires for a softer ride, but I was surprised to find that the surface remained well-maintained and wide enough for two vehicles in most places, looking more like one of those touristy “backcountry scenic drives”.
As I approached a blind rise, a 2-person UTV suddenly shot over the rise toward me, going so fast it almost left the ground, then corrected at the last minute to miss me by inches. I waved to the driver and passenger, but they had their hands full avoiding a wreck. That turned out to be the only other vehicle I passed in two hours of traversing the range.
The views got better the farther I went. After winding past the first line of rocky peaks, I entered an area of interior basins lined with colorful rock and lusher vegetation. The washes hosted coyote willows and even small stands of narrowleaf cottonwoods. I could see a lone ranch back up the nicest-looking side canyon. You could see the potential for washouts whenever the road crossed a wash, but, again to my surprise, the county was clearly maintaining this as an essential right of way.
Based on the topo map, I’d expected to have difficulty sorting out a maze of roads, but on the ground, there was only one through road showing the lion’s share of vehicle tracks, with only an occasional little-used side road. And the main road eventually began climbing toward the peak, where I encountered a shocking spread of mining facilities, installations, equipment, ruins, and debris from several generations going back to the nineteenth century, and apparently still in use.
Minimal online research led me to a 2021 article reporting that the mine, previously worked for gold and silver, had been sold to a gold-mining company active in South Africa and Botswana, but that company’s website no longer exists, and the sign on the gate still says “Pyramid Peak Mining”, which also appears to be defunct. All good news, except as usual, there’s no evidence that anyone plans to clean up the site.
Past here is where the next named mountain range began. The north slope of the peak was lined with pinyon pine, the mountains ahead were both higher and more forested, and the views even more spectacular. I had stumbled upon hidden treasure, a beautiful, unexpected, remote landscape almost in my backyard.
Beside precipitous drop-offs, the road descended steeply from the peak into a hidden valley lined with rocky ridges, with monsoon clouds still building to the east and south.
At the bottom of that hidden valley, a lush basin appeared on my right, stretching back to the base of the taller mountains. I passed a ranch road blocked by a tall, fancy gate, then the road plunged across a wide, deep wash, with the ruins of another ranch on the opposite bank.
The road continued west on the bank of that big wash, which hosted a canopy of tall sycamores and narrowleaf cottonwoods. Rounding the foot of an outlying ridge, I came to another ranch road blocked by a gate with an even fancier and more unlikely arch. I began to suspect the hidden area had actually been discovered and colonized by rich folks, but when I looked it up later, I learned this is a Buddhist retreat center. And according to the old topo maps, it’s also the route to the box canyon – now blocked by monks?
Throughout this stretch of road, I had been expecting to find a turnoff for the box canyon, and I had stopped repeatedly to study my topo maps, but they only left me more confused. On the entire drive, I hadn’t found anyplace shady to pull over and hang out, so all I could do was keep going. It was such beautiful country, I could hardly complain.
Eventually the road left the mountains and, flanked by ocotillo and prickly pear, began crossing the alluvial bench back toward the river valley, upstream of where it had started. I returned to the Mormon farming village and had a late enchilada lunch, then decided to continue east to spend the night in the railroad town on the interstate.
The next phase of the drive took me past more favorite high-desert hiking areas, down into the low-desert river basin at under 3,000 feet, and finally back up through foothills of the tallest sky island, to arrive at 4,200 feet in the railroad town. A big loop, a lot of driving on a hot day, but rewarding. I feel like I’ve still only scratched the surface of those hidden mountains, and will be back for more.
