High on the Crest
Thursday, July 18th, 2024: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Rustler, Southeast Arizona.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they often suck at expressing the feelings inspired in nature. My current series of Dispatches reports on hikes or drives to the 9,000 foot crest of various Southwestern mountain ranges, but I’ve gradually realized that neither the pictures nor my reports have conveyed the feelings these places inspire.
I literally become ecstatic when I reach the crest of a mountain range, especially if it includes an unobstructed view to one or both sides, across the landscape thousands of feet below. That experience is the goal of my favorite hikes. In the major ranges of the Southwest, the crest averages 9,000 feet in elevation, 4,000 feet above the alluvial fans at their feet. In the Mojave Desert, the crests are much lower, as are the surrounding basins – the ridgelines of my favorite desert range seldom reach 5,000 feet, whereas the alluvial fans lie 1,000 to 2,000 feet below. But the feeling I get is the same regardless of the numbers.
Why? What is a crest, and why is it special?
Of course there’s the view – climbing from one side, when you reach the crest, you discover a whole new world, as far as the eye can see. The crest is where the weather happens – air is squeezed, wind funnels across, clouds form, rain or snow falls. A crest defines watersheds – the high line that diverts creeks to one side or the other. Reaching the crest fills my heart to bursting.
On the way to a doctor’s appointment in Tucson, I noticed the eastbound lanes of the interstate were under construction. With all that driving, I wondered if there was a chance of getting a short hike in. So on my return, I took a detour off the backed-up interstate. I knew there was a forest road that crossed the crest of one of my favorite ranges, and I’d seen it from far away, snaking up the mountain, but I’d never driven it. If I could drive up there, I might be able to hike the crest trail for a mile or two without taxing my knee.
It was a beautiful drive on a spine-hammering road starting out as deeply washboarded gravel, rising in single-lane hairpin turns on hard-packed dirt, rocks up to two feet in diameter embedded in hard-packed dirt, and ledges of solid bedrock. It took forty-five minutes to drive the ten miles to the crest. I passed several deer, and in a shady grove in the foothillls, a group of kids on an outing supervised by two women. But I didn’t pass another vehicle all morning on that narrow, twisting road.
I was thrilled to reach the crest, to cross the watershed and glimpse the eastern landscape, the mountains I was familiar with from many previous trips. Here a side road continues a thousand feet higher to a campground in the sky. I drove below tall firs that emphasized the altitude – everywhere there was a feeling of being on top of the world. I passed some kind of official crew camping at a dispersed site in a grove of giants below the road – they were gone when I returned in the afternoon. At the 8,400-foot campground I saw one RV, but apart from me and these there wasn’t another vehicle on the mountain. I parked, breathed the clean high-elevation air, and ate the tacos I’d picked up on the way.
The crest trail starts at the parking area outside the campground, and climbs through a fern-covered burn scar. It was hot out in the open – probably in the mid-80s. The trail traversed above and around the campground, and nearing the actual crest I came to a side trail, and followed it to a small saddle where I got my first view west. Clouds were building over the mountains south of me, and the west looked stormy.
I rejoined the main trail, which continues traversing across the east side of the crest, through patches of shade and thickets of thorny locust, and onto a narrow ledge below a sheer cliff. Past the cliff, the trail curves back into a hollow where I came upon an older couple struggling to control two big dogs – the people from the RV. Patches of forest and burn scar alternated across the slopes, jays and woodpeckers flitted through the trees and snags above me. Eventually the trail reached a saddle on the crest. I’d intended to turn back here, but there wasn’t much of a view, so I kept climbing.
Past the saddle, the trial climbs steeply through more burn scar, to a sort of barren hump with an expansive view west. I made my way to a rock outcrop, from which I could see rain falling out in the plain. But an outlying ridge blocked my view south, so I decided to climb even higher.
I reached a small hollow that was choked with ferns, charred logs, and thickets of locust. I tried going off-trail, hoping to get a view, but found myself blocked by forest. So I returned to the trail and continued still higher, out of the jungle and around the shoulder of the outlying ridge, and here I found my view to the south, at an elevation of 9,100 feet.
I was just shedding my pack and digging for my water bottle when I heard the sound of jets. It was two A-10 Warthogs, a fearsome machine designed to fly low and obliterate people and vehicles on the ground. They were flying up the canyon below me, just above the trees, and I watched them cross the crest in front of me.
On the way back, I detoured off the crest trail and down onto a very primitive forest road, hoping it would be easier on my knee and give me better views to the east. But it was so rocky I had to walk very slow – tottering between a problem foot on one side and a problem knee on the other.
At one point I heard screeching high above, and turned to see two golden eagles circling each other. Later, in a shady grove of tall firs, I came upon an empty Forest Service “Guard Station” – rustic cabins used periodically by work crews. Everything here felt high, remote, and lonely. Far from the world of screens, cities, celebrities, the rich and powerful and their advanced technologies – except that killer jets could thunder past at any moment.
Driving back down the crest road I passed a side road to another “park” – rural vernacular for a level place on top of a mountain. As I was checking my map, an old guy on a motorcycle approached and passed me.
I got turned around and climbed the side road, over a ridge and down into a densely forested basin, where I noticed the motorcyclist on the road below me. I finally emerged in the “park” – a grassy meadow surrounded by fir forest, with informal dispersed campsites, all empty. The motorcyclist passed me again and returned up the road without stopping – apparently just out for a ride in the sky, no need to get off the bike.
Shortly after I started back up the road, I encountered a big pickup pulling a loaded horse trailer down that steep, rocky trail. There was barely enough room for me to pull over, and the driver was staring straight ahead with his jaw clenched.
I began thinking about the RV at the campground. Most of these roads are single-width, and trees often fall across them. Rigs like that sure couldn’t back up in an emergency, and there’s absolutely no space for them to turn around. I guess they just count on other people to come by and save them if anything goes wrong.
Now I would continue down the main road off the crest to the east, and I immediately found that it’s just as bad as its western counterpart, and I could go no faster. But now it was like rush hour, one vehicle after the other passing me on their way up the hairpin turns. I had to pull over and stop to let the motorcycle guy past for the third time – he was going twice as fast as me, bouncing over all those rocks.
Halfway down I was approaching another blind turn when out shot a late-model minivan. The driver saw me and slammed on the brakes, going into a slide toward the sheer drop-off, his tires catching at the last minute. I pulled over, stopped, and rolled down my window, shouting “Slow down!” as he pulled alongside. It was a vanload of students on a field trip with their bearded, conservatively-dressed professor driving. He responded with a big smile, saying “How ya doin?”
I understood the rancher types with their pickups and trailers – they’ll drive anywhere. But I couldn’t fathom people who would drive minivans – let alone big RVs – up a rocky, narrow, seemingly high-clearance road like this.
Again, I passed lots of deer – mule deer, all very small. When I finally reached the oak-studded foothills, I came upon another big truck towing an even bigger horse trailer, the animals all sticking their heads out the side to watch me pass. This truck had broken down on the road, and its young cowboy driver was sitting in a folding chair behind the trailer. He said a hose had burst and his wife was on her way to get a replacement. Down here it was in the mid-90s.
After bouncing over rocks for hours, never knowing who was going to show up around those hairpin curves, my nerves were completely shot by the time I reached the paved road in the canyon. I got dinner and beer at the cafe, and decided to grab a room for the night – the only other option was driving home in the dark. But my troubles didn’t end there – it was over 90 degrees in the room and took three hours for the window air conditioner to cool it down. Makes a better story that way, right?
Sounds like a great adventure and crazy differences of nobody on the roads to rush hour… Love the insects, were those ladybug larvae on the white matilija looking flower? Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for making me look closer at that flower, Kushy! Fortunately I had 3 different pics so I could find the best and zoom in. Turns out those are some kind of true bug, with wings.