Trashy Beauty
Monday, March 27th, 2023: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Indian, Southeast Arizona.
Still looking for lower-elevation trails, I wanted to try a new one over in Arizona this Sunday. But surprisingly, there was no room at the nearby inn. My second choice was the abandoned, flood-damaged, overgrown trail farther south that had defeated me in early February. I wasn’t really looking forward to the bushwhack, but it’s a pretty canyon and I was still hoping to reach the “Indian cave” and the prominent rock formation at the head of the canyon.
Whereas on my previous visit, I’d been alone in the valley of the remote “ghost town” that leads to the trail, this time I passed two vehicles and a jogger on the road in. And as I approached the sycamore-shaded creek crossing, the water level seemed surprisingly higher.
The creek was higher, but forgetting about all the crossings, I’d brought my non-waterproof boots. Since all the snow was long melted off this low part of the range, I’d expected less water in the creek, but it was just the opposite. In fact, as I made my way upstream and more bedrock was exposed on the surrounding slopes, water was streaming down the surface in glistening sheets. Apparently the peaks and ridges above are porous, collecting and storing snowmelt all winter and releasing it slowly in spring.
The sky was clear, the air temperature was mild, and I was under riparian canopy in the bottom of a narrow canyon, but when I stepped out of my vehicle I was hit by a bitterly cold wind, which whipped at my hat and sucked at my body heat the whole day long.
As before, I found no other human tracks as I scrambled up the first mile-and-a-third of catastrophically washed-out forest road, climbing up and down sheer drop-offs, crossing and re-crossing the rushing creek. But I did find recent tracks and scat from both cattle and what seemed to be wild burros or horses.
The road ends at the abandoned cabin, where two creeks come together, and my trail leads up the right-hand creek. But before the catastrophic floods, the road continued up the left-hand creek, and I suspect that road is still mostly intact above the canyon bottom. Heading up my trail, I immediately found the tracks of three recent hikers, who I assumed came down from above on the upper road, which can be reached from the opposite, west side of the mountain range. When I checked the map that night, I saw they could actually do a 12-mile loop from the paved road in the national monument on the west side, using a combination of trails and forest roads, with presumably the hardest part being the canyon trail I was taking.
I’d expected my previous experience to result in an easier hike than before, but it actually felt even harder this time. Harder to distinguish remnants of the hiking trail from cattle trails, harder to relocate the trail after long scrambles up debris flows in the creek bed, harder to avoid the thorny shrubs on the banks, harder to get around log jams and thickets. I was already discouraged by the time I reached the first washed-out tributary, where I’d mistakenly looked for the cave last time.
And at one creek crossing, I found a rolled-up blanket up on the bank. One of those cheap, lightweight, synthetic fleece things that you’d pull over yourself to take a nap on the sofa – not something a sensible person would take outdoors. I assumed it had fallen off the pack of one of those three recent hikers, and they hadn’t missed it until it was too late to go back. But it set the tone for the rest of the day.
Past that tributary, more bedrock is exposed in the canyon bottom, and if anything, the way gets even harder. But I still hadn’t come to the “narrows” which the trail guide mentions – based on second-hand historical sources, because nobody’s actually surveyed this trail since the 2011 wildfire.
Passing the point where I’d turned back in February, I came to a massive log jam across the canyon, and climbing around it, reached a sandy ledge with an old fire ring. The previous hikers had tramped around here before continuing up canyon.
Finally I reached the “narrows”, where the canyon forms a “V” of stone, and the creek has cut a sinuous channel with many semi-circular hollows, deep pools, and small waterfalls. Here, I found a few decades-old trail improvements – including one walkway across a steep rock face, reinforced by half-rotted logs anchored by rebar sunk into holes drilled through the rock.
It was really tricky walking in the bottom of the V, climbing past the waterfalls, trying to avoid slipping into the three-foot-deep pools of cold water. I fell twice, each time barely avoiding injury. But it was a beautiful stretch of canyon, full of sound from the roaring creek and full of light from the glistening sheets of water flowing down the bare rock sides. And I occasionally got glimpes of the cliffs I was headed for, far upstream.
Finally I reached the junction with a smaller creek on my right, coming down from the cave. The bank was completely trashed by cattle.
The side creek drains a hidden basin, which opened before me as I walked up the creek. The water soon receded underground and I was making my way up a dry wash, surrounded by the eerie white skeletons of trees burned in the 2011 wildfire and green thickets of oak and juniper that had filled in afterward. And ahead, the cliffs, over 200 feet tall, under which I expected to find the cave.
Eventually my way up the wash was blocked by deadfall. The head of this basin consists of nothing but spectacular cliffs and rock formations, and would be a wonderful place to explore if it wasn’t so choked by fire debris and regrowth. But I noticed a narrow track – another cattle trail – up the bank to my right, heading toward the base of the cliff. And following it, I began finding the trash.
It was really old trash – the recent hikers hadn’t come this way, and nobody else but cows had been up here in many years, perhaps not since the 2011 wildfire. But there was literally a trail of trash leading through the brush to the cave itself, where faint prehistoric pictographs had been covered by someone’s huge red initials.
The ceiling was heavily blackened with soot – people had obviously camped in this cave for centuries, if not millenia. And some old hermit had lived here at one point – the rusted top of his cast-iron wood stove lay half-buried just outside.
I wasn’t up for a thorough search among the dense shrubbery and sediment, but what I encountered right on the trail and on the floor of the cave included: a black plastic garbage bag, three decomposed nylon day packs, a decomposed nylon fanny pack, various other decomposed nylon items that may have been gloves or climbing accessories, two small decomposed hiking boots, a cooking grille, a bunch of tuna cans, and a pop bottle. Cheap and shabby stuff like you’d find around an abandoned homeless camp, but some of it was presumably essential for whoever wore it here. Why had they walked a long and difficult trail to this remote location and left it behind?
And of course, there was a deep layer of cowshit across the entrance.
It’s only a four mile hike to the cave, but it’d taken me four hours – half my day. So I knew I wouldn’t reach the rock formation above the main creek. But I should have enough time to explore a little farther up the main creek, to see how far I could get in a half hour.
The answer was, not far. I did reach the next tributary gulch, where I encountered a solitary bull. I didn’t want to risk irritating him, and it was time to turn back anyway.
On my difficult, dangerous way back, I wondered whether it would ever be possible to improve this trail and clean up all that trash. It’s far outside the designated federal wilderness – hence the cattle – so this area was obviously sacrificed in a compromise with the ranching and mining industries, decades ago. And now, limited trail maintenance efforts prioritize trails within the wilderness.
It’s only one beautiful canyon in a range of beautiful canyons. But cleaning up the trash wouldn’t be that hard. There was far too much for me to carry out that day, but three people could do it if prepared.
Logs and brush can always be cut, and tread could be improved, on the creek bank and upper slopes, but big obstacles in the creek bottom will always exist due to flooding. And hikers will always have to carefully pick their way up the narrows. But on my way back, I discovered historical bypasses that climb above the narrows – these could definitely be restored.
There will always be stretches where no trail is possible, where the route leads up long debris flows that get rearranged in floods. But the whole cairn situation could really be improved. Many existing cairns are decorative – something special to this canyon that I haven’t seen much elsewhere. But cairns exist in only about half the places where they’re most needed – at creek crossings, places where the route leaves a debris flow and climbs up a bank, and around major obstacles. That’s another easily solved problem.
A hiker could probably move 50% faster with those improvements, and be rewarded with the prehistoric cave and the spectacular cliffs and rock formations.
I was a little sorry to leave the narrows behind, and my way did get harder in the lower canyon. But I had plenty of time and was able to focus more on my surroundings.
Once past the cabin, I saw a couple of whitetail deer. Before that, I’d seen many, many birds and butterflies throughout the day, but they’d been too skittish to photograph.
Driving under the sycamores across the creek to the valley road, I stopped for a drink of water, and as I was sitting in the vehicle, an old bearded man came out to his gate across the road and stared at me. I waved, he waved and kept staring. It was the gate to what was apparently a big family compound with at least two houses, one of them huge. I was in kind of a hurry, so I just waved again, and drove off. But I regretted not being able to question him about his community. Of course, he just wanted to know what I’d been up to back there – hopefully not vandalizing his neighbors’ properties in this extremely remote, hidden valley.
