Hot, Slow Climb Into the Sky
Monday, July 18th, 2022: Chiricahuas, Greenhouse, Hikes, Southeast Arizona.
I was half inclined not to hike this Sunday. I hadn’t felt good on Saturday, and Sunday was forecast to be hot, reaching the low 90s in town.
I’d just finished repairing my deer-damaged 4wd Sidekick the day before. It seemed okay, but most of my favorite hikes involve long drives without a cell phone connection, and after an impact like that I wasn’t sure I wanted to immediately put it to the test.
There are typically two ways to get away from the heat: elevation and shade. But all the high-elevation hikes within an hour of town are either closed due to fire or involve long approaches through hot, overgrown low-elevation canyons.
Finally I realized that my best option actually involved the longest drive. One of the coolest places I know is a hanging canyon ranging from 8,500′-9,000′ down on the Arizona border, with a shady old-growth forest at its head. And most of the drive there retains full cell coverage and AAA road service would be available if the Sidekick broke down.
It was counterintuitive because if it was in the low 90s here, it would be 100 degrees at the entrance to that range, which is 1,000′ lower. But the trailhead is actually even higher than here – 6,500′ – and I would get there early enough so the climb to the canyon should be bearable.
The drive was a real leap of faith in my vehicle and my repair job. Not only did it start with 1-1/2 hours of high-speed, high-temperature driving, but it ended with a thousand-foot climb up the incredibly rough, rocky, high-clearance 4wd-only road to the trailhead, which few people besides me are willing to risk anymore. But the Sidekick performed perfectly.
I was drenched with sweat within the first half mile of the gradual climb up the first canyon. Our early monsoon rains had ensured that the trail was more overgrown by vegetation than ever, and I saw no evidence that anyone else had used it in the past month. Except bears! I found a continuous trail of fresh scat all the way up.
When I reached the switchbacks that take you to the high pass into the hanging canyon, I found a real puzzle. I was already fighting my way through thickets of thorny locust when I came upon big branches of elderberry that had been torn down, so that they blocked the trail and had to be climbed around. Dozens of mature branches, a dozen feet long and over 2″ thick, had been violently broken off, far back from the trail, requiring a long reach and a lot of strength. More strength in many cases than a human would have – and there was no sign humans had used this trail during the growing season, and why would a human pull down vegetation to block a trail anyway? It could only be bears, but bears don’t eat elderberries – all the berry clumps on the branches were intact.
Another surprise occurred when I reached out my thumb to touch a herbaceous leaf that reminded me of mint. I recoiled in pain at the lightest touch – it was stinging nettle! I’d never encountered stinging nettle in this region, but suddenly it seemed to be everywhere on this trail.
Wikipedia says stinging nettle is only native to the Old World, which is patently false. My aboriginal survival course in southeast Utah had included a lesson in how to cook and eat the native species. But in the more than 3 decades since then, I’d forgotten about them. On this trail, it was literally impossible to avoid touching them, so I was plagued by stings throughout the day. Why had they all sprung up suddenly this season, in this place, for the first time?
My lungs have turned out to be the slowest part of me to recover from their near-fatal crisis 2 months ago. Drenched with sweat, with little forest cover, I had to stop over, and over, and over again on the way up to the high pass, to catch my breath. When I finally crossed into the hanging canyon, and made the long traverse to the creek, it was loudly rushing, but it was no shadier and no cooler down there. The many crossings of the rocky, log-choked gully have always been a slow passage. As beautiful as it was, a riot of wildflower color, I found myself trudging and yearning to reach the upper end where the trail enters the shady forest.
I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to hike uphill. The slightest grade just wore me out. Would I ever recover the capacity I had before the illness?
I stopped at the Forest Service cabin, just below the crest, to rest in the shade of the big pines and firs. The trail to the crest is 4 miles, gaining 2,750 vertical feet. It’s always been a difficult, slow trail, but today it was taking me 3-1/2 hours to hike those 4 miles – painfully slow.
Somehow, leaving the cabin, I got a second wind. I couldn’t climb any faster, but I’d trained myself to walk at half my usual pace, which enabled me to go farther without stopping to rest. And the saddle at the crest trail junction, with its long view toward Mexico, was carpeted with yellow flowers. A young couple was coming back up the crest trail – like most people, they’d done the long, slow drive to the alpine campground several miles north, so they could do the easy crest hike, which involves little elevation change.
I’d started this hike not knowing how far I would get. But from the junction, it was an easy hike north through shady forest to the next saddle, so I continued that way.
I typically pick my turnaround point based on my planned end time minus my actual starting time, divided by two. Closer to home, I usually have 9 hours to hike in summer, but over here, 8 hours is usually the most I have, in order to reach the cafe before closing time.
But when I reached the saddle where I’d planned to end my hike, I realized that whereas the ascent was slow, the descent would be much quicker, because it was only climbing that was hard for me now. That might give me extra time to climb the 9,700′ peak above the saddle.
It’s not much of a peak – the original south side forest burned by the 2011 wildfire has been replaced by aspen thickets, so there’s barely a view. But the remaining forest makes for a nice shady spot to lie in the grass, and the minimal view of distant peaks peeking above the young aspens reminds you that you’re high in the sky.
A variety of birds were passing through, there was a nice breeze, and monsoon clouds were forming all around, occasionally drifting over the sun and providing even more cooling shade. My clothes were so drenched with sweat from the hot climb that they wouldn’t dry out until long after the hike, but I’d learned to ignore that minor discomfort, whenever my body had a chance to temporarily cool off.
In the past, I’d always tried to hike as far as possible, so I was left with no margin on the return and had to descend way too fast, which was hard on my joints. But today I felt I had enough time to return slower than usual. Hah! My joints still didn’t like it at all.
The flies had been with me all the way up, but on the return they became much more aggressive – maybe because of the rising heat – so I finally pulled on my head net. And the stinging nettles seemed to be jumping out at me at every turn.
But I got back to the vehicle with plenty of time to reach the cafe, for that beer, that burrito, and that room for the night. Amazingly, despite how hard and slow it had been, I’d hiked over 10 miles and climbed almost 3,300′, which represented a significant improvement from last weekend. Maybe I really was recovering!
