Monday, November 9th, 2026
Monday, November 9th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Shaw, Southeast Arizona.
I’d taken a break from hiking for eight weeks, hoping it would allow the inflammation in my problem foot to subside. After that, I was planning to gradually resume over a period of months, starting with short, level, easy hikes.
But of course, the only hikes we have in this region that are both level and easy are also popular and overused. I knew those were the hikes I should be doing, but I couldn’t force myself to do them.
So for the past few weeks, I’ve been doing 4-5 mile hikes with up to 1,000 feet of elevation gain, and the foot seems to be handling it.
This weekend, I found myself dreaming about a return to the west side of the range over in Arizona that I’ve been exploring during the past year. It’s a two-hour drive…but I was desperate.
The trail I was targeting climbs from the bottom of one canyon, at about 6,000 feet elevation, to the saddle at the top of the next canyon over, with a little over 1,000 feet of vertical and roughly five miles out-and-back. Temps might range from the 40s to the 50s, and while the sky outside the mountains was mostly clear, the crest was draped with low storm clouds.
It’s a long drive on lonely roads, from paved but poorly maintained, to seldom-graded gravel, then dirt. Big puddles beside the highway indicated recent rain, and I was a little concerned about reaching the trailhead in my 2wd low-clearance pickup. The road changes from gravel to dirt at the mouth of the canyon, and I immediately encountered potholes that would blow a tire or break a suspension, followed by patches of road that were deeply flooded from side to side. Slow, careful going.
Driving over a pass to get here I’d passed a group camp of hunters – identified by a mix of huge pickups, flatbed trailers, fifth-wheel trailers, side-by-sides, and canvas wall tents. The canyon road is lined with informal campsites, and those had also been claimed by hunters.
The trail starts out along a rocky creek where the sycamores were shining gold in midday sun. A big pickup with Idaho plates was parked to block the trailhead. After a half mile or so, the trail begins a steep grade to the saddle between this and the next canyon. Halfway up this I met a man and woman coming down in camouflage outfits, a rifle sticking out of the man’s pack. We stopped to chat. He was in his 60s, but the woman looked 20 years younger – a daughter? He said they hadn’t seen anything but does up there, and told me a story he said he’d heard from locals: acorns had all fallen from the trees at the same time, followed by heavy rains that washed all the acorns off the mountains, hence the deer are all down in the canyons now.
He said they’d started out planning to hike five miles, but had ended up going eight. I knew it was only 2-1/2 miles to the saddle, so asked where they’d gone from there. No, he said, they’d turned back at the spring in the next canyon, “where somebody made a concrete tank”. Bad GPS, or sense of distance a bit rusty…
As I climbed, the clouds drifted over, and the views across and down the canyon were glorious. For the rest of the day, I was either in bright sun or dark shadow. And it got windier and colder the higher I climbed, until I was bundled tightly inside all the outerwear I’d packed.
The next canyon turned out to be much shallower, so that I didn’t have to lose much elevation reaching the bottom. The fall colors over here were just as dramatic, but with less sun to brighten them. This trail appears little-used, and is often overgrown with bunchgrasses and blocked by deadfall.
After another half mile in the forested canyon bottom, the trail began traversing toward the saddle, and before I knew it, I was there.
Last spring, I’d hiked the crest to a point a few hundred feet above this saddle. It’s a four-way junction – straight ahead is an abandoned trail leading down the canyon to the east, while to my left the crest trail climbs north past the next peak. This section of the crest trail is unmaintained, and according to the trail guide is in “bad condition”.
I knew I should probably end my hike there, but I felt good and decided to explore northward.
Unfortunately the trail isn’t just in bad condition – it simply doesn’t exist in most places, either eroded away or blocked by scrub oak and manzanita. In a few yards I went from trying to protect my foot on a well-maintained trail, to routefinding and bushwhacking on a steep slope frequently interrupted by erosional gullies.
But short stretches of narrow tread, hiding beneath the overgrowth, kept drawing me forward. I sensed another saddle somewhere above, and was hoping that would give me a view over new, previously unseen terrain.
Meanwhile the clouds were getting darker, the wind stronger, and the air colder.
After several unpromising detours, I finally climbed straight up a gully and reached the saddle – where I was met by a barbed-wire fence embedded in a dense thicket – no view!
On the way back to the first saddle, I got lost three times – but each time, landscape memory eventually saved me, despite the convoluted route through dense scrub and forest and across a series of steep ravines.
Back at the first saddle, I was determined to return slowly. But the time had gotten away from me, and it looked like I would be returning home after dark on the same highway where I hit a deer four years ago, and had nearly hit another this morning.
When I reached the last saddle before the final canyon, the sun was low enough for some really dramatic, high-contrast landscapes and vegetation. The final grade is steep and I was worried about both my foot and the coming darkness.
The canyon bottom was in full shadow as I drove out, and I had to be really careful with the potholes. The sun was setting as I emerged from the mouth of the canyon onto the gravel road, and I was a nervous wreck.
Rounding a bend near where the gravel meets the paved road, I found my way blocked and skidded to a stop.
A big old RV was parked half across the road and half up the bank at right, and behind it on my side, a big pickup truck was blocking the other side of the road, with some heavy nylon straps connecting the front of it to the back of the RV. I could see people milling about on the far side of the vehicles.
Suddenly a woman appeared beside my window and I rolled it down. “I’m with the rescuers,” she said.
“I’m in a hurry, can’t I get past?”
She yelled, and another woman appeared beside the truck, beckoning me forward. I had to drive into the ditch to get past. A man in his 70s or 80s, wearing shorts, watched me pass, along with the second woman, both giving me looks which seemed both flustered and judgemental. It was only then that I realized I should’ve probably asked if they needed help.
But there was nothing I could’ve done. My little 2wd truck would’ve contributed nothing to shift that big RV. The driver had obviously been going too fast in gravel, had lost control, and was lucky he hadn’t rolled it. Their first act should’ve been to call AAA or the towing service in the town nearby.
Still, I would’ve stopped if I hadn’t been so stressed out by the drive, and so desperate to get home before dark.
