Farewell to the Mountains
Friday, November 29th, 2024: 2019 Trips, 2024 Trips, Gila, Regions, Road Trips.
I found myself alone again on Thanksgiving. Last year I was lucky enough to be invited over by neighbors. But it’s been eight years since I was able to spend the holiday with family, and 16 years since I was last invited to spend it with friends. So despite many memories of convivial Thanksgivings in the past, it’s become a lonely day I no longer look forward to.
But I’d been shut up in the house, sick, for the past ten days, and I just had to get away. In a few days, I expected to be moving back east, for weeks or even months. Saying goodbye to my beloved wild mountains, to live in a place that’s flat as far as the eye can see, in the midst of a vast city surrounded by plowed fields.
So I headed north, hoping to find access to a couple of hikes I’ve been dreaming about. I can no longer hike, and travel means I can’t recover from my knee injury, but at least I can dream.
The next couple of days were forecast to be cool and cloudy, and clouds gathered and dissipated above me as I drove north.
The first hike I wanted to check out climbs a 9,800 foot peak 14 miles east of the village where I was staying. This is one of many peaks of roughly 10,000 foot elevation that rise at random from the very remote high country at the north end of our national forest. This peak features a fire lookout accessible from the north via a long and winding dirt road, but the ascent via trail, from the west, would total 15.4 miles out-and-back, with 4,000 feet of elevation gain. If I ever recover from my knee injury, that would be perfect.
I’d tried to reach the trailhead last winter, but was stopped by an icy road. The backcountry dirt road, serving remote ranches, descends into a broad sandy wash, then climbs steeply over a low saddle forested with juniper and pinyon. Today the surfaces were dry and cold, and on the other side of the saddle, I discovered a spectacular new world.
This new world is the canyon of a tiny river with a romantic name. The map had made me curious, but the reality exceeded expectations. This turned out to be one of the prettiest river canyons in our area – adding to the myriad reasons why I love living where I do. Even after 18 years, I can still drive a couple hours and be surprised, and I’ve only scratched the surface.
After continuing up the canyon and across the river, the road climbs more than a thousand feet up the opposite side, to a beautiful plateau forested with ponderosa pine. Driving up the plateau, I got occasional glimpses through the trees of the mountain above with its dusting of snow. This is a classic conical mountain with ridges and canyons fanning out on all sides. Eventually the road dropped into a shallow canyon that separated the plateau from the slopes of the mountain. According to my map, I would soon hit a side road leading to the trailhead.
The side road I found had a barbed wire gate made with tree branches and was clearly seldom used. The map gives this trail a number, and an online search leads to a Forest Service trailhead page, but there’s absolutely no other information online, which is what I prefer. Closing the gate behind me, I drove across a steep slope into a narrow canyon under big ponderosas, reaching the next turnoff in a few hundred yards. This led up a steep grade on a very rough and rocky track. The track continued over the crest of a ridge, but I parked at the top, figuring the trailhead was only a few hundred yards farther.
I was wrong. I ended up walking almost a half mile down into a canyon in near-freezing temperatures, wearing only a light sweater, while still trying to get over my lingering cold. The road was so rocky it was questionable if I could have driven it, and I never did reach the trailhead. The walk out and back, less than a mile, hurt my knee so bad that I would have trouble standing, sitting, or using stairs for days. But at least I got a feel for the country – as wild as I’ve ever seen.
That river canyon was definitely the highlight of my morning exploration, and the clouds and shadows made it even more beautiful on the drive back. I will return!
After lunch in my room, I set out to find another trail I’d been unable to reach last winter – this time, about ten miles west of the village. This is a trail that forms the top bar of a “T”, with another trail I hiked a couple years ago coming up from the south to form the stem. That earlier hike was 15.5 miles out-and-back, and the stem of the T had been abandoned for so long it became my greatest routefinding challenge ever.
But the landscape around the remote junction had been really pretty, so I’d always dreamed about hiking the bar of the T. It’s an east-to-west traverse across the southern slope of another 9,800 foot peak that has dense fir-and-aspen forest on top. The trail starts at 6,600 feet in the east and ends at 8,000 feet on the peak road in the west, traversing 11.2 miles with almost 5,000 feet of elevation gain in the process, so it’s a little too far for an out-and-back day hike.
But today’s challenge turned out to be the approach road. This is a dirt road that gets very muddy after any precipitation. There are actually two parallel roads that start at the same place on the highway, separate, then rejoin 3 miles later. I took the left-hand road that climbs a low ridge, figuring I might return on the other road. The left-hand road turned out to be one of the two gnarliest back roads I’ve ever driven in this area, at the very limit of what my 4wd Sidekick can currently handle. Big trucks had driven it in the mud, digging holes up to a foot deep, and the rocky part really had me worried since my tires are nearly bald.
On my way up the ridge, I spooked a half dozen deer, then immediately after that, 8 or 10 elk crossed in the opposite direction, and finally, another half dozen deer crossed back, farther ahead. It was like one of those documentaries about the Serengeti!
But I made it to the trailhead, such as it was (no sign or kiosk), and now I know it’s reachable. It just takes forever to get there – 45 minutes to go 4.5 miles on that dirt road.
The old road continued past the clearing where I parked, but had been thoroughly washed out. I climbed across the washout and continued on the old road, a few hundred yards to where the trail proper starts. I still want to hike it some day.
I can’t overemphasize how remote this country is. It’s all cattle country, but it shows how much natural beauty and ecological diversity can survive when the cattle outnumber the human visitors. That’s why I ended up in this area instead of other places I looked at, like the Eastern Sierra, Flagstaff, Prescott, or Santa Fe. Wild habitat is far more important to me than urban amenities, but I seem to have found the best mix of both available anywhere in the Southwestern U.S.
I tried the other road on the way back, and barely made it. At the halfway point, the other road plunges down the bank of a 20-foot-deep creekbed, which would definitely wash out in our monsoon. Just as I prepared to drive down that bank, a big redtail hawk launched off a branch at my right and flew left down the creekbed carrying an adult Abert’s squirrel suspended from its claws. Second time I’ve come upon a hawk carrying a squirrel.
And on the drive back to the village, the sky created the perfect ending for my day of exploration!
Nice pics -new car?
That’s my old Suzuki Sidekick 4wd – I use it for camping and hiking trips