Monday, July 13th, 2026
Wednesday, July 1st, 2026: Hikes, Santa Ritas, Southeast Arizona.
After my ordeal back east, I was in a big Southwestern city letting other people cook and clean for me. I’d gone two weeks without a hike, but it was the hottest time of the year, and the only truly high-elevation hikes – 8,000 feet and above – were concentrated in a small area directly accessible from the vast metro area. I’d waited for a weekday, but online trip reports for weekdays mentioned overflowing trailhead parking, crowds at saddles, and climbers using power drills to drive bolts inside wilderness areas. Of course you have to buy a permit to park anywhere on the mountain, but it’s not like that solves the problem. This is what cities do to both nature and society – overwhelm natural habitats with their insatiable demand, while exacerbating the social cost.
A server in the restaurant mentioned the famous canyon in the slightly more remote mountain range to the south. She said it was less crowded, but I’d been there, and a map check showed all the trails starting in the tourist village at the end of the paved road, below 5,500 feet. I guess people who live below 2,500 feet consider that high-elevation, but it was still going to end up subjecting me to afternoon temps in the 90s, on heavily-used trails with western exposure.
I kept studying the maps, and finally found a trail on the much more remote eastern side – accessed by a rough dirt road – that appeared to get me to the 8,000 foot crest with just the right distance and elevation gain. According to Google Maps, the driving time would be only 15 minutes more than the crowded options. And according to the Arizona hiking website, nobody had reported hiking it in June since 2008.
I’d only seen the eastern side of the range once before, in winter 2002 on my first trip scouting for a community to relocate to from the Bay Area. A friend in the nearby city had taken me to see a quaint village southeast of the range, and on the way, pointed out some special high-desert native grasslands.
Now, as a twenty-year native of the region, I saw more. Where the highway south left the Interstate, I saw a vast, fairly recent suburb climbing to the foothills of a small but scenic range that topped out just over 6,000 feet. Pulling over and getting out to access something in back, I found that here, only 1,500 feet higher than the city, it was significantly cooler, with a sweeping view and only a half-hour commute. The wonders and blessings of suburban sprawl.
In a high-speed train of tailgaters, the highway looped through grassy hills over a low pass where I got my first view of the crest I was hoping to reach. Down into a valley where I found and turned west on the canyon road, dotted with dispersed campsites, and eventually to a huge ranch with expensive infrastructure and different breeds of cattle and horses in different pastures, and seemingly embedded in the ranch, something called “Boulder Crest Foundation” with a fancy iron gate and new, imposing residential buildings.
Past there, the graded gravel road became rough and rocky. The maps and other info I’d studied all disagreed on where the road ended and the trail began – apparently a road used to continue up the canyon to an abandoned mine – so I was surprised to find the road suddenly dead-ending at a dry creek crossing, with a definitively signed trailhead and gate.
At 9:30 am, despite the remoteness, a well-maintained late-model 4Runner had beaten me to the trailhead. The elevation here is just below 5,800 feet, nearly as high as my home, and the ambient temperature felt like the 70s, with a cool breeze pouring down the canyon. Heading up the south bank of the dry creek, I could barely tell the creekside trail used to be a road, as it is still shown on my GPS mapping platform.
A trail description from last fall mentioned a “link” trail connecting this with the next canyon south, and I soon came to that junction. There are few flowers in this habitat at this time of year, but I was surprised to encounter big Apache pines at only about 6,000 feet – their elevation range is lower than the more familiar ponderosas, which they can be confused with at a glance. That encouraged me to focus on trees for the rest of the hike. Ponderosas were missing here, but two different species of pine with medium-length needles left me puzzled.
I never saw evidence of the old mines, but about midway up the very well-maintained trail I came to a boulder-choked convergence of side canyons where the trail began switchbacking up the north slope toward the crest. Although the entire canyon was forested, openings in the canopy subjected me to what was going to be a hot day, so the recurring breeze from above was more than welcome.
My forays across the state line have taught me to respect this Sky Island habitat. From 6,000 feet upwards I was surrounded by Douglas-fir, Apache pine, pinyon pine, the two species of mid-length-needled pines I mentioned, alligator juniper, four species of oak, madrone, manzanita, yucca and agave, and a half-dozen prominent species of arid-habitat shrubs. The lower canyon had featured abundant sycamores and willows and one Fremont cottonwood.
Nearing the crest on nearly 20 switchbacks, I entered the first obvious burn scar, where I found two flowering shrubs I recognized from the crest I’d hiked in New Mexico three weeks ago, almost 200 miles to the northeast. The wind blew stronger and stronger from the saddle above, until it whipped the big pines and thundered like a freight train.
I’d been planning to stop, hang out, then turn back at the saddle. It faced north, and would’ve had a great view if it weren’t for the standing snags. But in an old burn scar, it was no place to dawdle. I could turn right and climb to what appeared to be a shady pine grove a few hundred feet higher. Or I could turn left onto the crest trail. That was a no-brainer.
A short distance up the crest trail I encountered a guy about my age heading down – the 4Runner driver. He was doing a loop, which he said was probably ten miles total, using the link trail to climb the next canyon south, then across the crest to return down the trail I’d just climbed. That would’ve been an easy hike for me two years ago, before my knee injury, but I’d recently learned I wasn’t ready for ten miles quite yet.
I studied some new trailside trees – which now included Gambel oak – and soon arrived at a higher saddle, which was likewise fairly bleak. But a sign pointed right toward a side trail that looked like it might lead me across the crest to the west, where I hoped to look down the popular northwestern canyon and across the desert beyond.
The new trail traversed a steep, rocky slope which had burned at high intensity. Less traveled and less well-maintained, it was often slippery with loose rock, and the farther I went, the less hopeful I was of getting over the crest. Finally the trail began to switchback downwards and I gave up and turned back.
Back at the saddle, I decided to continue up the crest trail, which traversed above the canyon I’d already climbed, for a more expansive view east. Maybe I could reach another saddle with the longed-for view west.
But I figured I’d already done more than four miles, which would yield a total of eight for the day, and having taken a couple weeks off, I didn’t want to abuse my lower body.
The morning wind from the crest was fading as I headed down in early afternoon. Those switchbacks were steep, and my lower legs were burning and my ankles crying by the time I reached the gentler grades along the dry creek.
It was also much hotter down there now. I’d filled my plastic water reservoir with ice before leaving, and it was still cool, but I discovered a slow leak, so I began transferring the remainder to my hard plastic bottle and drinking it faster.
After hiking those burn scars on the crest, which remained unforested, I was paying more attention to the low outlying ridges. I could now see they’d all originally carried pine forest, which had been completely burned off and replaced by oaks and junipers.
In the last couple of miles the heat was hard to bear, my lower legs were worn out, my chronic foot injury had been triggered, and I was repeatedly stubbing my toe on rocks, tripping, and stumbling.
Back in my room, I found I’d actually gone only 7.4 miles total, with 2,500 feet of elevation gain, topping out below 8,200 feet, in 6.5 hours. None of the maps had correctly shown the access roads or the link trail. In all, I considered the hike a bust, offering noplace where I could hang out and enjoy the habitat or views, and taking a painful toll on my lower body.
Boulder Crest Foundation, on that big ranch in the lower canyon, appears to be a get-rich scheme for evangelical Christians exploiting “warrior heroes” with PTSD. They use a patented “science-based” therapy validated by a board of psychologists at obscure Christian colleges and universities nationwide.
The low pass on the highway south is the home of Empire Ranch, established by young East Coast entrepreneurs during the trendy late 19th-century cattle boom and now romanticized by the BLM as a tourist showplace of the “ranching lifestyle”. More recently it was the site of a massive wildfire started by fireworks at a gender-reveal party on public land. Welcome to Arizona.
Monday, July 13th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
By June, I’d increased my hikes to 6 miles, even accumulating up to 1,800 vertical feet, without triggering foot pain. But when I tried the next step up, I ended up limping back.
After months of false recoveries, I really, really hated to take a step back. And as usual, finding the right hike was a challenge. In summer, it needed to be shaded and/or high-elevation. I was tired of long drives, but most of our nearby high-elevation trails remain closed due to wildfire.
There’s a network of mostly abandoned and very seldom-used trails northeast of here along a famous backcountry road. It’s a pretty long drive – 1:30 to 1:45 from home – but it’s a fun drive with light traffic. I often overlook it when planning hikes, but the farthest trailhead is nearly 8,000 feet, with a mostly forested trail that climbs to almost 9,000 feet. It’s too short for me when I’m in top condition, but now, it might be just right.
Our monsoon had started with a bang and we were getting thunderstorms and rain almost every day. Even if I didn’t get rained or hailed on, I expected temps up there to stay well below 80 degrees.
The backcountry road climbs to the mesa and spends about ten miles up there. Halfway up the mesa I reached the first tree blown down across the road. Keeps the riffraff out – it would’ve stopped a car or a city SUV, and the deep, rocky roadside ditch gave my high ground clearance and all-terrain tires their first workout of the day.
I had to slow for a couple more downed trees before dropping into the fun part, a dark, narrow, and rocky canyon. It’s always rough and bumpy down there, in and out of the creek for two miles between low walls of flood-debris boulders. All two dozen of the creek crossings were flooded, and the hairpin turns in and out of the canyon were already badly eroded. Fun!
I’ve only visited the trailhead, just below 8,000 feet, three times before. Today I noticed a classic, conical Rocky Mountain juniper near my parking spot – a tree I’ve certainly passed but never identified in this area.
Today’s trail is one I hiked three years ago, aiming for a 9,600-foot peak about eleven miles in. I lost all sign of the abandoned trail at the halfway point and returned, disappointed. Today I was planning to stop after about three miles, on the traverse of the west slope of a peak called Rocky Point. I remembered some cool rocky slopes and vestiges of Herculean trail-building efforts, probably in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
I did the first segment, a gentle traverse of a west-facing slope to the first ridgetop, in the shade of isolated cumulus clouds that gave every sign of developing into a storm later. And I soon encountered more blowdown that got harder and harder to cross or circumvent on foot. I ended up working past dozens by the end of the day, but that’s still better than the thousands of logs blocking our crest trails after big wildfires.
At the ridgetop, the trail continues east to the next low rise, with more blowdown and only the faintest tread in places. I found some old horse poop but no human tracks anywhere.
Reaching the east end of that ridge, I got my first view south across the canyon below. And rounding a corner, the trail traverses across and switchbacks up the canyon’s head.
The trail gets very rocky in the head of that canyon – trailbuilders had shifted hundreds of boulders to create terraces and retaining walls, and now, sheet flows down the gravel slopes above were burying the terraces, and runoff was undermining the retaining walls. Not the most sustainable place for a trail in fire habitat and monsoon climate, but those concerns were off the radar for most white folks in the 1930s.
At the top of the switchbacks across the canyon, you reach a rocky point where you cross into a new watershed – always an exciting moment for me.
From the rocky point, overlooking the new watershed, I got my first view of the real Rocky Point, whose west slope would be my destination. This is the start of the rockiest and most fun part of the trail, switchbacks descending an area of exposed, tortured bedrock.
Crossing the saddle below, I moved into the head of yet another watershed, this one draining east to a long north-flowing creek. A gentle climb through tall pines and firs finally gave me a view of the crest of the range, eight miles east. And then I was at the saddle below Rocky Point.
Most of the west slope is burn scar, and I hiked in sunlight all the way. Mild temps, intermittent breezes, and lots of stops for plants, pollinators, and photos. Toward the south end of this traverse the trail crosses narrow talus slopes with loose rocks up to twelve feet long. I’d planned to turn back before that point, but of course, since I was feeling good, I continued into forest and up to the saddle in the ridge south of the peak.
In that high saddle – 8,779 feet – I got a view of the 10,165-foot summit of this big range, which I climbed three years ago. In good weather with high clearance and 4wd, you can actually drive to within two miles of it.
I wanted to bushwhack up Rocky Point – only another third of a mile and two hundred vertical feet – but I soon ran into a thicket of thorny locust, saw a rocky ridge ahead, and realized it would be too hard on my foot.
On the way back down the west slope, through the burn scar, with one of those top-of-the-world views across our vast wilderness, I realized I really didn’t want to go home. I wanted to live up here. This hike had frustrated me three years ago, and now I was in love with it.
To slow my return, I began studying the trees, and the rocks.
On the switchbacks up that slope of exposed bedrock, I noticed bands that could not be sedimentary. I’d always believed most of the rock in this region is volcanic, but my geologist friend tells me this is gneiss – and may have metamorphosed from sedimentary rock.
Turning back into the next watershed, I began to notice two or three different pines in among the familiar ponderosas. One appeared to be a pinyon, but at 8,600 feet, was much higher than they’re expected at this latitude.
I traversed the head of the west-draining canyon on the eroding reinforced trail, reached the last ridge, and was in the home stretch. I’d been paying a lot of attention to my left foot, and it was fine all the way down to the vehicle. I’d taken 5-3/4 hours to go 7-1/2 miles and 1,226 vertical feet. That seems to be the magic combination right now.
It hadn’t rained on me after all, although from up on the ridges I’d seen rainfall far to the west. In the morning, I’d passed one truck-type SUV on the way out. And now, near the mouth of the backcountry road, I passed a new Bronco that appeared to be sightseeing. Two other vehicles on a mild Sunday, on almost 30 miles of our famous back road – and the campground in the canyon had been empty. I definitely picked the right place to move to.
