Sky Island Trees
Monday, May 19th, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Nature, Plants, Snowshed, Southeast Arizona.
Gradually increasing my distance and elevation, the challenge was finding a hike with the right combination, plus a destination that made it interesting. For this Sunday, I picked a steep hike to a “pine park” – a shallow, grassy basin in the sky surrounded by tall ponderosa pines. This destination had the added bonus of a short extension into the next watershed, overlooking a spectacular canyon.
It’s a two-hour drive, and along the way, I found the desert willows were blooming beside the big arroyos.
Over the years, I’ve gradually become more sensitive to species differences in the trees I hike past, and curious about their names. I’d picked up a field guide to trees a few weeks ago, and brought it along. It turns out I didn’t have the time to stop and identify trees along the trail, so I photographed their identifying features, and made the identifications from the photos later, at home.
Dangerous winds had been forecast all over the region, and my hat blew off as soon as I got out of the vehicle. The trail begins in a sycamore-shaded canyon bottom, bores through a long tunnel of scrub, then climbs steep switchbacks on loose rocks past alligator junipers and various oaks and pines.
At the base of a talus slope. the switchbacks end and the trail begins a steep traverse across the upper slopes of the watershed, through mixed conifer forest that now includes Douglas-fir. Eventually it joins another trail that leads through giant boulders to the pine park. Considering how parched the land is now, I was surprised to find wildflowers at the entrance to the park, in a narrow corridor lined with aspen seedlings.
I continued into the next watershed for the big view. Wind was howling through, so this lofty perch was no place to linger.
I rested in the relatively protected pine park for a half hour or so. But I was hungry, the hike was taking longer than expected due to the steep climb, and my lunch was waiting at the cafe below.
On the way up, I’d been surprised to see no tracks – either of humans or animals – on this well-known trail. But I had seen horse sign from last year, and on the way down, I noticed how the horses had damaged the trail, destroying tread on traverses of steep slopes.
