Max Carmichael's Blog, page 14

Lesson in Snow Hiking

I’m on a little road trip to this Arizona mountain range, for better access to trails that are just too far for a day’s drive. But it’s winter, we’ve had our first couple of regional snowstorms, and as usual I was targeting high-elevation trails. The crest of this range lies above 9,000′, topping out over 10,700′. I expected at least a foot of snow on the crest, but with little previous opportunity to test my winter boots and gaiters, I wasn’t sure how the snow would affect my hikes.

On the evening before my first hike, driving into the town that lies at the foot of the north wall of the mountains, I could see that the snowline was well below 7,000′ – on the shaded north side of the range. One of the hikes I was most interested in approached 10,000′ on that north slope.

The hike I really wanted to start with is on the south side, an hour’s drive from town. But in the morning, unforseen difficulties delayed me more than an hour, so I ended up stuck with a closer north slope hike, where I could expect the most snow.

That morning, I reconsidered my options on the north side. I couldn’t find any online trip reports for my first choice – the only info I could find was a reliable source saying the trail was long abandoned and likely impassable. Without snow, I’d be interested in trying it anyway – it climbed a canyon which was reported to be spectacular, very rocky with many waterfalls. But I couldn’t see myself routefinding, bushwhacking, and fighting my way past hundreds of obstacles in deep snow.

Of the remaining options, I ended up aiming for the “National Recreation Trail”, the most famous trail in the range, which starts in the northside canyon, just outside of town, where a terrifying, vertiginous paved road climbs all the way to the crest. The trail starts at a campground just below 6,700′ and switchbacks to a 9,400′ saddle, where it drops steeply towards one of the mountaintop campgrounds which are inaccessible in winter. Depending on my progress in the snow, I planned to turn off at the saddle and take a spur trail nearly a mile farther, to a 10,000′ peak bristling with communications towers and a fire lookout. I normally despise man-made structures on peaks, but at this point it seemed my best opportunity to reach that elevation, for one of the most spectacular views in the range.

On the way up the road, a couple of little Japanese sedans raced past me – the road is closed for winter at the crest, but is plowed to the 7,500′ level where there’s a cluster of vacation cabins. At 6,000′ I encountered solid patches of ice in shady stretches of road, and despite switching into 4WD, found my extreme all-terrain tires had almost no traction on this road with hairpin curves and 700′ dropoffs with no shoulders and no guard rails.

Before the recent era of mega-wildfires, this trail was likely popular and regularly used, despite its over 3,000′ of accumulated elevation gain. But a short distance from the lower trailhead, it dips into a narrow canyon which was washed out and filled with debris after a fire 18 years ago. Very few people made it past that obstacle until a few months ago when the trail was rebuilt by convict labor, and with the absence of a local hiking culture, I figured I would be one of the first up it in almost 20 years.

A few inches of snow covered the campground, which remained in shade, well below freezing. There was a Subaru already parked in what I assumed was the trailhead parking area, and walking back through the campground, I had to avoid vehicle tracks which were solid ice. There was no trailhead marker for this famous trail – I had to search and guess where it casually began, at the back of a group campsite – and as I stopped there to put on my gaiters, a young woman appeared with an off-leash dog, returning down the trail.

Their tracks ended after only a quarter mile, at the previously blocked creek crossing. I wondered if she’d driven all the way up that perilous road just to walk her dog for a few minutes in the snow?

Even before the crossing, I’d encountered snow up to 8 inches deep, and I was still below 7,000′. My chances of reaching 10,000′ didn’t look good. Past the creek I began climbing the switchbacks, where the only tracks were from deer.

I kept hoping for stretches of trail that got enough sunlight to melt the snow, and I did find occasional bare patches that enticed me to keep going. But they were few and far between, and I climbed about a mile and a half through snow that averaged six inches deep before I reached sunny slopes.

This area had been badly burned, and the ground consisted mostly of small boulders. The trail was a shallow trough that collected deeper snow than the surrounding ground, but the surrounding ground was too dense with obstacles to make it worthwhile to go off trail to avoid the snow. So I kept trudging, the snow getting gradually deeper the higher I climbed.

More than halfway up to the crest, the trail crosses out of the first canyon, makes another half dozen switchbacks, and finally begins a long traverse to the saddle at the crest. Up there the geology changes and you encounter spectacular rock formations, and get your first view of the peak with the towers. But virtually all that traverse is shaded north slope where the snow was now at least a foot deep. I’d always wondered what it would be like to walk a long distance in snow that deep. If I’d known what it was like, I wouldn’t have tried it!

I did reach the saddle – it took me more than four hours to go four miles. Now I know – it takes me more than twice as long to climb in snow.

At the saddle, I found the trail to the peak. It was really steep, and the snow was drifted up to 16″ deep. I followed it about 200 yards, to where it crossed a knife-edge ridge and began a short descent before the final climb. I could see that the rest of it was in shade and the snow would just get deeper, but at least I got a view across the crest to the highest peaks.

One consolation I had on the way up was the assumption that the descent would be easier and go much faster. This turned out to be true – I could go much farther without stopping to catch my breath – but I had to be careful too. Like most trails in the Southwest, this was lined with rocks, and every dozen yards or so I stepped on a rock hidden beneath the snow. The sharp ones threw me off balance, and when I stepped on a tilted one, one foot immediately slid out from under me.

The sun was going down when I crossed back into the first canyon, and could see how much farther I had to descend to the creek crossing and the campground. At this point it was obvious that this trail had been built primarily on slopes where the deepest snow would collect. I had really put my snow hiking ability to the test today, and would be likely to reserve hikes like this for snow-free conditions.

But with the end in sight, I started paying more attention to the habitat. These Arizona ranges host very different plant life from our New Mexico mountains, and I always look forward to it.

Back at the vehicle after more than 7 hours of snow hiking, my hips and ankles were worn out from all that instability. This would be a great trail to hike without the snow – the convicts did a great job, and only about 3 logs had fallen across since their work.

It was the eve of the shortest day and the sun was well set as I descended that icy road, lucky to have no one behind pressuring me – although I did pass a Jeep and an SUV on late runs up to their cabins.

Snow Practice

This will be a short one. I’m planning some hikes over in Arizona in the coming week, so I didn’t want to drive far or use up a lot of energy today. I picked a segment of the Continental Divide Trail just south of town, starting at just under 6,400′ near the highway and climbing a ridge to a series of modest 8,000′ peaks. I’ve done versions of this hike several times in the past, and I expected quite a bit of snow up there from the past week’s little storm. I thought it might be good practice for Arizona, where I expected even more snow.

The day was forecast to be cloudy, starting in the high 20s and reaching the high 40s. I didn’t expect it to snow. Since the drive was short, I got an earlier start than usual. Low clouds made it a dark day, and I was all bundled up, wearing my old insulated ski gloves.

After climbing through a maze of rocky foothills, the trail reaches the ridgetop and ponderosa pine forest. Approaching the first peak, the trail meets a dirt forest road that services communications towers. In the past, the trail continued up the road to the peak, then dropped to a saddle before climbing to the second peak. But when I reached the road, I discovered that the trail has been re-routed around the peak to the saddle, so I went that way, and that was where I found the most snow, averaging about 6 inches but with drifts up to a foot deep. Another man had climbed up there in the past couple of days, but he’d turned back without reaching the saddle. I continued to the saddle and up to the second peak in virgin powder, and it started snowing pretty good after I reached the second peak.

I generally love being in mountains in snow, and today was no exception. The forest was beautiful, and I found it really exhilarating, especially after more snow started falling. I returned to the saddle and found my own route up to the first peak, and from there, continued down the road to the trail junction. It snowed for about an hour, then the sky tried to clear, but it was snowing again by the time I dropped from the ridge back into the foothills. What a wonderful opportunity!

Fantasy in Freefall

As my regional options for long, high-elevation day hikes have shrunk due to post-wildfire deadfall, overgrowth, erosion, and flood damage, my motivation has reached an all-time low. Yes, there are a few favorite trails left – one to the east, two to the west, and three over in Arizona – but I’ve already hiked all of those in the past two months, so to avoid repetition I’m trying hikes that normally wouldn’t challenge or otherwise interest me.

This Sunday’s goal was a trail that branched off of one I’ve hiked before, in the eastern range, following a canyon bottom from 7,000′ to 9,000′. I was planning to explore the crest trail beyond the junction, then return down the other canyon for a loop.

The trail starts by crossing a creek, which has been flooded and uncrossable at times in the past, but I was wearing my waterproof boots and carrying gaiters so I figured I could handle a few inches without getting my feet wet.

The temperate was in the 20s up there – I drove over a pool of frozen-solid rainwater to get to the trailhead. The creek was rushing and frothing, making a lot of noise, but the first crossing looked doable. I had to spend a few minutes scouting upstream for a stick, and stepping stones that weren’t slippery – a slip would plunge my foot into ice-cold water over a foot deep and end my day.

After less than a minute of progress up the trail I hit the next stream crossing and realized I’d picked the wrong trail. But I really didn’t like my alternatives, and I figured I only had a mile of this to cover before branching off into the side canyon. So I spent another five minutes returning for the stick I’d used at the last crossing and scouting up and downstream for more stepping stones.

After the second crossing, I likewise walked another dozen yards or so to the third, and likewise spent another five minutes scouting and crossing. Not the way I preferred to use my time.

Another short walk to the fourth crossing. Here, the creek had spread across a debris flow nearly 30 feet wide, with multiple channels. I picked my way precariously up most of the flooded debris flow without finding a crossing point, then saw that the trail recrossed a little ways ahead, and I could just climb up my side of the bank to rejoin the trail without crossing the flood.

At this point, long stretches of the creek had backed up behind debris to form placid channels two feet deep and eight feet wide. When I came to the next crossing, I discovered that to get past one of these uncrossable channels, I would have to fight my way through thickets of willows that floods had bent down in my direction – like the pickets of a defensive barracade –  for dozens of yards, to reach another crossing point. I’d used up a half hour so far, and had only gone a quarter of a mile.

The crest trail, accessed from the pass a few slow miles’ drive away, was now my only option. Since I’d hiked the preferable northern segment as far as possible less than two months ago, I unwillingly embarked on the southbound segment, which I’d had a fairly miserable experience with back in July – I’d been slowed by thorny locust and deadfall and drenched in a cold thunderstorm without proper preparation. Since it’s in a popular location, I optimistically hoped it would’ve seen more traffic since and was maybe a little clearer.

In the event, the thorny locust had been trampled or pushed aside in places, but by horses not hikers. And to negate that minor improvement, they’d come up here in the monsoon when the trail was muddy, and postholed or undercut the trail with their hooves so it was much harder and more dangerous to walk. So ironic that the backcountry horsemen, who are now the only people doing trail work in our region, have embarked on an expensive PR campaign to show how they’re “improving trails for all users“.

To the logs fallen across the trail, more had been added. So it took me 2-1/2 hours to struggle the 3 miles to the 9,700′ peak. And most of the way, I was passing through a landscape of death – charred conifer snags, leafless shrubs, and the dry winter stalks of annuals. Yeah, I know it’s all part of the cycle of life, but even the endless view east across the distant Rio Grande was in the same drab color scheme and failed to cheer me up.

A 6-mile out-and-back hike would be a real anticlimax to my day, so I tried to continue south on the crest, past the peak. I’d made it a couple of miles farther on my first venture up here, back in June 2020, but that had involved some extreme routefinding though mazes of deadfall and overgrowth. This time, I was only able to go a half mile further, without locating any remaining evidence of a trail which had once been the jewel of the range.

Outside magazine was launched in 1977, the year after I moved to California for grad school and became a serious outdoor recreationist. For once – coincidentally – I was in tune with my times.

The love of my life had dumped me the year before, and I needed a radical change. After suffering through childhood as a weak, sickly child, enduring adolescence as a sensitive artist, and beginning adulthood immersed in academia, I abruptly started working out at a gym, training for a marathon, learning to sail, rock-climb, and cross-country ski. In the months before the first issue of Outside came out, I backpacked into Yosemite’s high country on snowshoes and did a solo ascent of 14,179′ Mount Shasta.

I was an early subscriber to the magazine, and kept it coming for the next few years as I rejected the professional career I’d trained for and threw myself into an exploration of music, art, and nature that continues to this day.

People didn’t wait until the late Seventies to go outside, but the launch of Outside marked a cultural shift. Before the Seventies, people who weren’t rich went hiking, camping, or backpacking primarily for traditional subsistence purposes. They may have unconsciously been drawn outside to enjoy nature, but ostensibly they were there to hunt or fish.

Even the rich had to have a better reason than a love of nature. They went outside to sail or to ski.

Outside marked the spread of outdoor recreation to the middle class. It wasn’t clear at the beginning, but it was a revolution in capitalism and technology. During the next few decades, it seemed there was no limit to the ways consumers could apply technology to use nature for thrills and enjoyment, and the magazine, along with the REI website, remains one of the most comprehensive guides to capitalist, technological recreation.

From skiing and surfing to mountain biking and rock climbing – and even to the humble pursuit of hiking – technological recreation has made a lot of capitalists rich, from Yann Wenner, celebrity founder of Outside, to Yvon Chouinard, celebrity founder of Patagonia. And as skiers and surfers expect the powder and the waves to keep coming, year after year, hikers expect the trails to keep unfolding under their REI-supplied footwear for all eternity.

In these Dispatches, I’ve already described how the Anglo-European colonial practices of indigenous removal and fire suppression have resulted in mega-wildfires that are making trail systems on public land unsustainable. But capitalism and technology – Outside, REI, Patagonia, and the like – keep churning out high-tech gear that’s inappropriate for the new outdoor regime. Gear designed for cleared, well-maintained trails that no longer exist. Gear that doesn’t hold up in the trackless, overgrown fire scars of our contemporary public lands. “Eco-friendly” gear made out of recycled plastic that will ultimately degrade into microfibers and microplastics to further pollute natural ecosystems.

The Outside/REI/Patagonia fantasy, of attractive young consumers scampering or cycling along clear trails through towering forests and over endless white glaciers, is in free fall, along with the rest of our culture. It will be interesting to see how technology and capitalism adapt to this brave new world.

Mystery Spot

By Sunday morning, it’d been raining on and off in town for almost 24 hours, and I assumed the crest of the mountains would be getting even more. The vast majority of trails in our region involve canyon bottoms or major stream crossings, any of which could be flooded. And I was really enjoying listening to the rain outside while staying warm and dry with a roof over my head.

Plus, I was still trying to go easy on my knee, so I needed a trail that didn’t involve long steep climbs. There was really only one option – to try the national trail from the starting point I’d used last week, but in the opposite direction. I was pretty sure it would also be overgrown with cosmos and feature the dreaded volcanic cobbles, but I had no other choice. Really hard to get motivated, but you know me.

On the plus side, it was warmer – in the 40s starting out, expected to reach 60 in town later. But most of the landscape was blanketed by fog.

From the remote westbound highway, the southbound trail winds through a dispersed camping area on a maze of dirt roads. Those roads would be muddy now, so instead of hiking from the highway, I drove through the campground all the way back to where the foot trail started, a little over a mile from the paved highway. This detail would become important later.

This trail starts at around 6,200′, in ponderosa forest at the base of terraced bluffs of volcanic conglomerate which the rain had stained a dark russet. I had studied the topo map months ago and picked out a vague destination about 8 miles in that should yield me about 2,500′ of elevation gain – but gradually, which would be easy on my knee. I would judge how far I’d gone by the time it took – I generally hike about 2 miles per hour including stops.

Several miles beyond that point, this trail would connect with a trail I’d taken last spring, and a little beyond that, it would connect with the trail that provides the longest hike in my repertoire – 18.3 miles out and back. Together, these converging trails form a sort of tripod intersecting on the crest of our local mountain range, so today’s hike would help fill a gap in my local hikes.

It wasn’t raining when I started out, but the thick fog, drifting slowly in and out of canyons and over ridgelines, limited my view to a hundred yards or less, so I had no idea what kind of landscape I was traversing. But the first mile or so climbed up the conglomerate bluffs, and along the way I got to enjoy some of that exposed rock.

This mountain range tops out at 9,000′ and consists of a maze of forested ridges which all look the same from a distance, so it’s normally my least favorite terrain. But the fog completely transformed it. Foliage, fire-killed tree trunks, soil, gravel, and stone were all saturated, so all the colors were darkened, and again I was walking outdoors in an intimate interior space, enclosed by the fog, with little sense of distance or elevation.

Climbing out of the ponderosa forest, I entered the pinyon-juniper-oak woodland and was immersed in a powerful pine fragrance, like turpentine but sweeter. That fragrance remained with me as long as I was in that habitat – I’ve hiked it for 16 years in all conditions but have never experienced anything like this before.

There was plenty of burr-laden cosmos parviflorus beside the trail, but unlike the eastern segment I’d hiked last week, this part of the trail was clear and easy to follow. And amazingly, it was cobble-free, the ground remaining nice and smooth until the later, higher segment became a little rockier. All in all, one of the easiest trails I’ve hiked in this region. I wasn’t pushing myself, but inevitably made good time.

A little over an hour into the hike, I’d reached the ridge top where the trail leveled out, and a light rain began to fall. My boots were already soaked from wet grass – I’d worn my waterproof boots and pants – and now I pulled on my rain poncho. It would rain lightly from then on, until the last mile of my descent at the end of the day.

Around the same time it started raining, I heard a man yelling, down in a canyon hidden by the fog, somewhere west of me. I figured it must be hunters, but there was no road or trail down there, so they must be on foot.

As expected, my walk continued for miles up ridges through low, open woodland – bathed in that amazing fragrance – with intervals across level, wooded, grassy meadows where the trail was flooded. My nose and cheeks itched from catching invisible strands of spider web that spanned the trail between branches at face height. The fog kept me blind to the landscape around me, and except for a couple of short steeper climbs, it became hard to tell whether I was going up or down at any given time. I was yearning to reach the higher-elevation ponderosa forest, just for some variety.

About 2-1/2 hours in, I did reach ponderosa forest, and the kind of pale, lichen-encrusted exposed bedrock I was familiar with on the crest of the range. And the trail began descending steeply into a hollow, which I didn’t remember from the map. I didn’t feel like I’d gone far enough to reach my planned destination, but this descent definitely wasn’t part of the program.

I continued anyway, crossed a little valley with running water and a faint UTV track, and began climbing again. Very strange. This part of the national forest is not designated wilderness, so I felt lucky not to encounter livestock depredations.

Less than a half mile beyond the hollow, I spotted a sign up ahead, and getting closer, a dirt forest road! I checked my watch – I’d only been hiking 3 hours, including lots of stops – how could I possibly be at the road, which I’d assumed was over 10 miles from the trailhead, and connected the three arms of the tripod? I still felt fresh, like I could keep hiking for miles beyond this point.

I noticed an old Forest Service trail sign that claimed I’d hiked 9-1/2 miles from the highway. 9-1/2 miles in 3 hours! That was much faster than my normal average speed, and I’d been taking it easy all the way. I could only assume it was because the trail was in such good condition. Wow! Now I was really excited. Why not continue to the connecting point with the trail I’d hiked last spring, and make it an even 10 miles? 20 miles out and back would be the longest day hike I’d ever done.

The road was muddy and flooded in places as it wound back and forth between the tall ponderosas. I was looking for a fence that ran alongside and intersected with another fence that was perpendicular, less than a half mile east. But I never found it, and eventually the road I was on started descending steeply off the crest. Where was the other trail? Now I was really confused.

So I returned to the trail I’d come up, and began my descent.

About a mile from the road, I heard a single gunshot – it sounded like a .22 rifle, somewhere west of me, where I knew there was no road or trail. Could it be the same hunters I’d heard, 6 miles or more to the north, bushwhacking on a completely different route from me?

Again, in the fog, I noticed that it was sometimes hard to tell if the trail was climbing or descending. I remembered from the map that this trail climbed over 2,000′, but it neither felt like I’d climbed that far in the morning, nor was descending that much now, in the afternoon. Very strange.

Eventually, I reached the final ridge that descended toward the trailhead. But even there, it felt like I was climbing more often than descending. I thought of the Mystery Spot, a tourist attraction in the California mountains designed to disrupt your senses of gravity and perspective. In the fog, this trail was becoming my mystery spot.

The freshness I’d felt at the top had now completely vanished. My feet were sore, my hip was starting to hurt, and I truly felt like this was the longest hike I’d ever done. The trail seemed to traverse in and out of dozens of side canyons on its way to the end of the ridge, all looking the same.

Finally, as I was about to shut down my feelings and switch into survival mode, I emerged into the final landscape of exposed, russet-colored, terraced conglomerate. Here, the fog had lifted enough for a view of several miles across the landscape. I saw a big canyon to the east, and reaching the end of the ridge, I could see north out over the valley of the highway. I was near the end and could stop to enjoy the view.

I also suddenly remembered that I hadn’t taken the trail from the highway – I’d chopped over a mile off the hike by driving through that campground – so I hadn’t actually gone 10 miles, and couldn’t claim this as my longest hike. Damn! Why did it feel so long anyway? Why was I so sore, and so exhausted, if I’d only gone the kind of distance I’ve been routinely covering for years now, but with even less elevation gain than usual?

It got even worse when I arrived home and checked the maps. My mapping platform contradicted the Forest Service sign I’d found, showing that the distance from highway to forest road is only 8 miles, not the 9-1/2 miles claimed by the old sign. And most discouraging, the forest road I’d reached, and continued east on to find the other trail, was not the road I thought it was. It was several miles short of the road that would “connect the tripod” and close the gap between the three trails.

All in all, instead of hiking 20 miles in a day, I’d hiked less than 14 miles, and only felt like I’d hiked 20. And the elevation gain was less than I’d expected, too. Clearly not a day for the numbers, but on the plus side, I now know the trail’s in good shape, and next year, when the days grow longer, maybe I can return and do the whole thing.

Day of the Cosmos

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Four Eagle Hike

It was time for my first hike in three weeks – after the hiatus of visiting family in the flatlands of a Midwestern city. Before that, I’d blissed out on the exposed rock and forever views of my beloved desert, so now that I was back home in southwestern New Mexico, I wasn’t anxious to bury myself in the forests and thickets of our local mountains.

The views being better on the west side, I decided to head over there and choose a trail while driving.

The temperature was in the low 20s and I had to scrape heavy frost off the windows before starting. A low haze hugged the landscape ahead – probably some effect of the cold. At the end of September, I’d discovered that most of the west side trails had been wiped out by flash floods, and the access road to another had been cut off by the same floods. Now, two months later, I hoped that road would’ve been fixed, so I took a chance and detoured about 16 miles up the dirt mesa road – only to find “Road Closed” and “Impassible” signs at the turnoff.

By the time I got back to the highway, the false start had delayed my day’s hike by an hour. Without much hope of success, I decided to do a “reconnaissance” hike on my old favorite trail, which leads up a canyon to a high saddle with views over the wilderness. I assumed the canyon part of the trail had been damaged by the floods, but at least I would find out how bad it was.

Entering the foothills on the highway, I suddenly saw a half dozen geese wheeling low overhead, on their way south. They looked really big – I’m used to seeing them much higher.

Starting the hike on the traverse into the canyon, I scanned the ridge above, on my left, as a possible alternative if I found the canyon too choked with flood debris. I figured I could return up the traverse and bushwhack up the ridge and see how far I got.

Then, on the final approach to the canyon bottom, a big black bird emerged from the bend below me. A friend has often been skeptical of my bird sightings, correcting me when I’ve misidentified eagles, so I’ve become insecure about bird identification, and reluctant to take pictures of what might be some more humdrum species. This bird wasn’t flying like a vulture, and its coloration wasn’t right for a raven, but I was still slow on the draw and failed to get a pic as it gracefully flapped its way past me.

I continued, and three minutes later another one emerged. This time I knew it had to be a golden eagle, and I was a little quicker with the camera. Two eagles! They must be migrating and had temporarily joined up here.

But after another three minutes, yet another eagle. Three! It was like scheduled flights leaving an airport. I was almost at the creek crossing in the canyon bottom when the fourth eagle emerged from the riparian canopy, following the first three. This one passed within 60′ of me, but wasn’t visible long enough for a photo. This was the third time I’d encountered a convocation of migrating eagles – it’d been at least a decade since the last.

And to my surprise, the canyon bottom, and its creek, showed no evidence of flooding. I wouldn’t need a bushwhacking alternative, but after the false start, I didn’t have enough time to go my usual distance on this trail. I would just hike 5 miles up to the viewpoint on the shoulder of the 9,700′ peak, but that was okay – it would be a “soft” resumption of my broken hiking routine.

Unusually, there had been two other vehicles – pickups – parked at the trailhead. And about 3 miles up the trail in the canyon bottom, I spotted a dog ahead, and then its owner appeared – a backpacker, probably in his 40s. We stopped to talk, and unlike many “outsiders” I’ve met on these trails, he seemed glad to meet me and reluctant to continue his descent. As he revealed his familiarity with the area, I assumed he was local.

He’d spent two nights up on the crest trail, but he wasn’t returning happy. He’d only made it as far as I’ve gotten on a day hike, and was surprised to find I’d gone that far, as he complained about the overgrowth and deadfall he had to fight his way through. He said it was just too much work to be worth it. He said the trail was much worse now than 2 years ago, when he’d gone almost twice as far.

We agreed that in the current wildfire regime, most wilderness trails are simply unmaintainable, and he wasn’t adapting well to the new normal. He said the only way to keep trails open now is with mechanized equipment. Local trail crews had applied for a permit to bring chain saws in the wilderness, but they’d been denied, which he seemed to think was a shame.

I didn’t think it was appropriate to touch on the issue with a frustrated stranger, but afterward I revisited the question of whether human access to wilderness is good or bad. It sits within the larger problem of wilderness itself – an artifical Western concept that denies the cultural nature of pre-conquest habitats. We only preserve wilderness areas because our unsustainable society has degraded or destroyed all other habitats.

What does this mean for trails? Pundits and policymakers claim that access to natural areas encourages people to care about them, and this is lost when trails are abandoned. But the effort and cost of maintaining trails in this new regime are more than we’re willing to invest.

Talking to the backpacker slowed me even more, so I embraced this as a more leisurely hike than usual. The low haze was starting to clear as I reached the crest, but it was still chilly up there, with patches of snow in shady spots. Knowing this trail well, I continued past the crest for another half mile so I could log more mileage and elevation while still ending the hike at a reasonable time.

Unfortunately, on the downhill stretch beyond the saddle, my right knee started hurting, and I remembered the same thing had happened on my last local hike, a month ago in late October. Strangely, I’d had no trouble in the 30 miles of hikes I’d done in our rugged desert mountains. Why did my knee hurt in New Mexico and not in California?

Maybe it was the cold – it is colder here this time of year. But the more I pondered, I thought it might also be the activity itself. Here, I hike on trails that are mostly hard-packed, where I end up pounding my way downhill, which creates repetitive impact on the knees. While in the desert, with no trail, I tend to pick my way cautiously downhill, in random directions dictated by obstacles, and the ground is often loose, absorbing impact.

In any event, I’m going to be even more frustrated now since I’ll need to rest that knee for weeks!

In the meantime, even with knee brace and a pain pill, it was a really painful return to the vehicle.

At least the pain pill put me in a good mood while driving home. And as dusk turned to night, I saw a bright falling star leaving a long trail, directly ahead over the highway.

Desert Trip 2022: Day 7

Previous: Day 6

On Tuesday, I actually got up at dawn, long before the sun crested the rim of the basin and warmed the campsite.

I really felt like I was just getting started here, and hated to leave. But I was running out of food and water. I’d brought 15 gallons of water and only had about 3 gallons left – I still can’t explain why. And after breakfast, my food supply was down to cheese, jerky, half a cabbage, a couple days worth of granola, a can of beans, and miscellaneous snacks.

My new rotomolded cooler, one of the highest-rated on the market, still had ice after almost a week. But I’d started with three 5-pound blocks of block ice, occupying about 60% of the interior volume, and had kept it in shade for all but a couple hours on the first day, in temps that never got above 70 and probably averaged less than 55. I was hoping for slower melting – it would presumably be much faster in hot weather, when my old cheap coolers would last up to 4 days.

Long-time readers may have noticed I took fewer pictures than usual. I carry a spare battery and SD card, but was trying to conserve both space and energy by avoiding things I already had good photos of from previous trips. And this is not the most colorful time of year anyway! Still, I ended up with space on the original card, and time to spare on the original battery, after 6 days of shooting.

I apologize to my desert friends that I didn’t see on this trip. You were often in my thoughts, especially as I visited places or experienced things that might interest you! Unfortunately, the only plan I was able to make in advance was my flight to Indiana to visit family. I wasn’t sure until the last minute when I would actually head out to the desert, and then car trouble stranded me in Flagstaff, so even if I had made plans to visit desert friends, I would’ve had to change or cancel enroute.

But to be honest, the main reason I didn’t plan to visit friends in the desert is that I needed to reconnect with my land, and I didn’t know what that would be like. I didn’t want to plan an itinerary because I wanted to be able to follow my heart once I got there. I hadn’t gone camping or backpacking in years, most of my old familiar gear had been replaced, and I was frankly a little apprehensive about the whole experience.

And of course once I got out there, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone – except by climbing to the peak I described on Day 6.

The drive out of the mountains and over to Kingman for lunch was uneventful and unenlightening. One bright spot was not having to stop in Needles – seems like I’ve always been forced to stop there in the past.

The drive went to Hell when I turned south toward Phoenix. I’ve always had problems with Arizona drivers, and that highway, which alternates between 2 and 4 lanes, was a race course for big rigs, monster trucks, and strangely, Tesla Model 3’s. The speed limit was 65, Arizonans wanted to go at least 85, and everyone stuck behind me became enraged.

Ironically, the landscape is beautiful, but I could rarely enjoy it. Excepting the one-hour stop in Kingman, what I’d expected to be, at most, a 7-hour drive turned into 9 hours of stress. Then I had to sort through my gear and pack for the flight, but thanks to Ambien I did get a good night’s sleep!

Thanks for reading. I hope you and your families are all enjoying peace and good health, and I hope we can meet up soon, ideally in our beloved desert mountains!

Desert Trip 2022: Day 6

Previous: Day 5

I woke up on Monday not knowing how or when my trip would end. I only knew I had to reach a hotel at the Phoenix airport by Tuesday night, to catch my flight to Indiana (and family) early Wednesday morning.

The last time I’d talked to my mom, last Wednesday morning, she’d sounded upset that I might be out of touch for almost a week while camping in the desert. Like me, she’s prone to anxiety attacks, and throughout the trip I’d been increasingly worried about her.

I’d been sending pre-recorded text messages from my GPS unit, every day, to reassure her I was okay, but hadn’t briefed her to watch for those, and wasn’t sure she’d even notice the GPS emails among the dozens of junk messages she gets each day.

In addition, during each hike so far, whenever I crested a ridge and had a line of sight for dozens of miles out of the mountains and across the open desert, I turned on my cell phone and searched for a signal to call her, but could never connect with a tower.

By Monday, I could easily imagine her having a panic attack and calling on my friends to come out and find me. So I was worried about staying another day without being able to reassure her. But I was so happy to be here, and felt like I was only just settling in and getting started – I couldn’t remember any time in the past decade when I’d felt so at home on my land. I would really hate to leave a day early.

From our campsite on the ledge above the big wash, I gazed up at the peak looming to the north, where an ambitious but failed mine perches on a dizzying precipice just below the summit. The hike to that mine, which I’ve done many times both solo and with friends, is one of the most challenging hikes in the range, but the peak above it is the only place where I was sure I could get a signal on my phone to call and reassure my mom.

My imagined need to justify staying out here another day led me to completely ignore the difficulty and danger of that climb. When I decided to do it, packed and started off on the hike, I was only thinking of a quick out-and-back that would leave my afternoon free. I was in complete denial that it would be the scariest, hardest, and longest hike of the entire trip, with the sole purpose of making a phone call that turned out to be unnecessary.

The peak stands almost 2,000′ above camp, but you can’t see it or the mine from below, since massive rock outcrops rise between. The peak itself is only a mile and a half away in horizontal distance, making for a 25% average grade – which is pretty extreme in itself, far steeper than any of the hikes I do back home.

However, the lower half of the climb is misleadingly straightforward, on a gentler grade traversing bare ground between shrubs and smaller outcrops. Back in the early 90s when I was romping all over these mountains like a bighorn sheep, I would look at a distant peak and say “It’ll take me only an hour to get there”, and I was usually correct. Now, I couldn’t remember my estimate for this peak – fanciful numbers between 45 and 90 minutes were bouncing around in my head.

One ascent with friends, about 25 years ago, had gone bad because my partner’s girlfriend, who was in good shape but was afraid of heights, was having a major meltdown by the time we reached the mine. She had to be coached all the way down, step by step, in abject terror and hating us both for taking her up there. And on one of my more recent ascents, I’d tried a different route that turned out to be even harder, and fell and cut myself pretty bad on a rock coming down.

Today, it was at that halfway point that I realized my mistake. This was going to be a long, tough one. But there was no turning back, and at least I wouldn’t be taking the same route on the way down – I planned to cross the ridge below the mine and drop into the next drainage east, to check the seep above the shade house where I’d lived back in 1992.

The upper half of the climb to the mine involves finding your way around and over ramparts of granite that block the way forward, using bouldering moves that were made more dangerous by my heavy old pack, which has no waist strap and swings back and forth, threatening to throw me off balance – another example of my bullheaded commitment to old-fashioned, low-tech gear.

Getting past those stone ramparts gets harder and harder the higher you get, until the last one, which forces you to climb to the top of the outcrop overlooking the mine works, and then downclimb the north face, using more bouldering moves. On each of those successive ramparts I’d found scat from groups of bighorn sheep – mostly rams, I’m assuming, because that’s what I’ve seen up here before – but it was all months old, at least. In fact, I’d seen lots of old sheep scat on every slope, ridge, or saddle I’d been to so far, here around the rim of our interior basin on the west side of the range.

Well below the main works of the mine I came upon a graded ledge containing bed frames and springs for 5 people – a feature I’d completely forgotten. That, in addition to the collapsed hexagonal cabin above, would’ve hosted up to 9 workers at a time, on a knife-edge ridge exposed to the most brutal winds in the range – but also with the most spectacular views.

Taking a quick look around the mine works – nothing had changed since my last visit, in 2011 – I was reminded of some recent comments by a friend who knows these mountains much better than I do. He also knows and respects my interest in native cultures and prehistoric sites, and questioned why we’d bought this property in the first place, since it’s been so torn up and abused by Anglo mine works, ruins, and trash.

My co-owner, on the other hand, has long been interested in Western (colonial) history, including mining, and views this place as an open-air museum.

My own take is that – apart from these being the only large intact parcels of private land on this side of the mountains – it’s also the perfect base and point of access for nearly 50 square miles of wild habitat, for the prehistoric cultural sites that surround our basin, and for the plateau, the heart of the range. And although I could easily do without all the mining stuff, the broader history of our species shows that these ruins and this junk can provide valuable resources for a resourceful subsistence community, sometime in the unknown future after our own culturally bankrupt society fades away and the regional climate becomes salubrious again.

I’d only been past the mine to the actual peak once before, in March 1990, and I’d completely forgotten both the route and the configuration of the peak itself, which is a quarter mile beyond the mine and 300 vertical feet above. It’s a beautiful, completely wild, grassy little plateau, tilted westward, where you can completely ignore the mining junk below and revel in the 360 degree view, blocked only in the north, across another long canyon, by the north wall of the range.

There, I got my first cell phone signal in the past 5 days, and spoke to my mom, who, as it turned out, wasn’t worried at all.

I hated to leave that place, but the 1-1/2 mile climb had taken 3 hours, and I had to start back down – both to ensure a warm shower, and because I was dreading the descent. On the last climb to the mine, I was with a friend who knew of a partial trail down the eastern slope, past the mine tailings, into the drainage that led to our seep.

Holding onto an old water pipe, I made it past the tailings, to the upper stage of the old cable tramway they used to lower ore into the side canyon beyond, but could see no clear trail from there. There was only a faint suggestion that I began to follow, but it continued only as far as the next little saddle on the outlying ridge between this and the next drainage. Below that, there might’ve been a switchback, so I kept going, but any sign of a trail completely disappeared, and I couldn’t spot anything else on the surrounding slopes. So I began picking my way down this dangerous slope of loose rock, as carefully as I possibly could, aiming for what I thought was the outcrop of metamorphic rock surrounding the seep, far below.

As expected, it was a nerve-wracking descent. I remembered making it on acid, back in the early 90s, after dosing at the mine and having a total freakout when I contemplated this slope from above. The way I prepared myself then was by imagining I was a mountain sheep, clenching the ball of my foot with each step for better traction. Whether real or imagined, it worked back then, but the boots I wear now are far too stiff for that.

Crossing back and forth over the continuously steep and narrow drainage to the seep, to avoid sheer pouroffs and rock walls – sometimes on the surrounding slopes and sometimes in the boulder-choked dry streambed itself – I slowly and carefully made it past what I’d originally thought to be the seep, and finally to the cleft of the seep, whose dammed-up tank amazingly held water – the only standing water I’d seen yet within our watershed of almost 50 square miles. But the seep itself looked completely dry, and there were no bees using it.

The descent of less than a mile had taken almost three more hours, and I could forget that warm shower, but reaching this point, from which I had a clear and relatively easy route back to camp, was a huge relief.

Following the old water pipe to the shade house, I briefly checked it out. Someone had been here and left an empty pop bottle since my last visit, moving the old box springs under the roof, but everything was otherwise intact.

I found the old road to the shade house completely undriveable without major work – a boulder weighing several hundred pounds has fallen into the lower part, and all the steep sections have additional erosion.

My last night in the mountains was bittersweet. I built a tiny fire with the last of my catclaw, ate the last of my leftovers and drank the last of my beer, but I found myself compulsively walking away from both the fire and the lantern, to let my eyes adjust and experience the land in its natural state.

The strap from my sleep screen that secures it under my bedding had torn off the night before, so I tried to do without it at first, but the mosquitos were persistent again and I had to fit the screen around me as best I could. I really wished I could keep sleeping out there under the stars for the rest of my life.

Next: Day 7

Desert Trip 2022: Day 5

Previous: Day 4

Again, I found myself lying in bed after dawn, waiting for the sun to rise above the eastern ridge and warm me up. Meanwhile, I watched the mosquitos desperately trying to reach me through the screen. I got to know them individually, and finally, the most active one suddenly appeared inside! It had apparently found a gap under the screen’s edge. Now I had to get up.

As forecast earlier in the week, clouds had appeared before dawn, but they cleared as I had breakfast and got ready for the next adventure. After hiking northeast on the first day, and east on the second and third, today I would go southeast. First, up to Blockhead – the monolith on the southeastern ridge – and hopefully, if I had time, past it to the head of the canyon with the spring. It’s an area that shows on the map as a jumbled plateau punctuated by a maze of boulders and outcrops, leading farther south to Mesquite Canyon, which I explored a few years ago.

The approach crosses the bajada of the basin and the combined wash that drains the plateau and the spring in the northeast corner. After a little over a mile of bajada, you join the wash that drains the high southern end of the bajada, and eventually hit the old road into the southern gulch, which climbs through a low pass and drops into the big wash that drains the southeastern ridge.

My first objective was the old mesquite tree and its spring. It’s tucked away back in a canyon that winds tortuously between cliffs and fanciful outcrops of ancient granite. I knew there was tamarisk in this canyon, but I was under no delusion of finding water in the spring, which usually has to be dug out of deep sand. And I wasn’t prepared for the state of the venerable tree.

At least it wasn’t completely dead. New growth had emerged from its lower trunk, and I figured it would take a lot more than the current drought to kill a tree with such deep roots. But it was still pretty sobering. The water sources in this range all seemed to be dry – where was the wildlife getting its water?

I realized it had been gradually getting warmer, day to day, throughout my stay. My shirt was unbuttoned all the way down and I had to add sunscreen to my chest.

I climbed up the ledges behind the dry spring and continued up the narrower canyon winding south across the basin below Blockhead, until I reached a bend where I thought I should leave the wash and traverse the slope above. This was a new approach for me – I’d come over from farther west in the past. And on the traverse, I began to be pursued bees. They never actually stung me, but I vowed to take the opposite side on the way back.

Cresting the ridge below Blockhead is another of those magic moments, because you’re suddenly above the Lost World. But since the days were so short now, and I always wanted to get back to camp to shower before the sun set behind the peak and plunged everything into shadow, I realized I didn’t have time to continue to the head of the next canyon. All I could do was gaze longingly at the route above me.

I did have time to climb past Blockhead and check out the continuation of the ridge westward, where again I found natural campsites, level protected places along the crest. And I got even more spectacular views.

I was bee-free on the descent down the opposite side of the drainage, and the hike back across the basin was beautiful in the low light of late afternoon. But I still didn’t make it to camp before shade descended, and had yet another chilly shower.

This was the first night when mosquitos joined me for dinner. The moon was up later, approaching half. And I began to notice more satellites, which really annoyed me. Yes – I’m using them for my GPS messenger, and the images you see on these route maps. But I’m not embracing them happily. They’re a scourge on our night skies.

I thought about the tamarisk I’d seen so far, in three widely separated drainages. Our gulch actually seems to be the worst place in the range – at least here on the west side. The plateau is also bad, but not so much. Here in the desert, after more than a century, tamarisk remains confined to short stretches of drainage, as opposed to along perennial streams elsewhere in the Southwest. And in the drainages where people haven’t tried to “eradicate” it, it seems to have established an equilibrium with native plants, which often thrive in proximity.

Because it’s a wild plant, it’s smarter than you – if you fight it, it comes back stronger. In a place like this, the lesson may be: Don’t fight it!

Since the moon was still up after dinner, I took one of my moonlight walks up the gulch. Moonlight walks have been such a big part of my desert experience! Coming back, I heard a piercing ringing from the north bank, then an answering sound from the south. Crickets? It was really loud.

I thought about the old mesquite, and my favorite willow up on the plateau. Trees here overgrow in wet periods, then die back almost to the ground in a long drought, finally resprouting from their lower trunks. That seems to be a pattern of the desert.

I’m naturally tense, but dinner, beer, and a walk finally relaxed me. Back at camp I continued to study the sky. I saw a red star above Orion and wondered if it could be Mars. Through the binoculars, the Pleiades were so beautiful, and a dense area of the Milky Way below Cassiopeia. In bed, bracing my elbows, I could finally see three moons of Jupiter. Two more meteorites before I fell asleep, and of course the damn satellites.

Next: Day 6

Desert Trip 2022: Day 4

Previous: Day 3

As at home, Saturday was to be my day of rest.

The wind was only a memory. And as I finished breakfast, sitting with my back to the sun, facing the dramatic peak north of camp and watching the occasional bird swoop from boulder to boulder, I was suddenly struck by the silence. At home alone, I’m always listening to music – usually streaming radio from some distant city. It keeps me company. But now, after that relentless wind on the plateau, the silence was welcome.

As occasionally happens, after taking a pain pill the night before, my back pain had vanished by morning. I’d started doing all the right things – stretching, walking a lot, lifting mindfully and using lumbar support – and it troubled me no more on this trip, which after a week under the threat of paralysis was a huge relief.

In the shade of the big boulder at the north end of camp, there’s a little alcove that at this time of year provides shade for one person, so I sat there reading for a couple of hours. I was so still and quiet that a covey of Gambel’s quail came within a couple yards of me, foraging for about a half hour, without ever noticing I was there.

Again, I scanned this landscape of precious memories – the ridges, slopes, canyons, bajada, washes. When I got up to pass from shade to sunlight, I felt the extremes of temperature – it felt like going instantly from the 60s to the 80s – something we’re not used to when living indoors – the power of the sun!

Despite the cool weather, I was frequently pestered by flies, in all sizes. I decided to revisit my old stash above camp – miscellaneous materials for the over-ambitious projects we had three decades ago: a 100 gallon galvanized water tank, some PVC pipe for a well lining, a wheelbarrow, a roll of barbed wire. It was eerie, like stumbling upon the work of a stranger – is that the bail I built, to clean rocks out of the well? Those projects will never materialize now – those materials will likely never be needed by those who come after.

This whole place goes on without me. Despite my early ambitions, I haven’t really made a difference. I’m so little a part of it, virtually insignificant, and that’s probably a good thing.

Back at camp, I discovered sunburn from the past two days of hiking. I’d forgotten to apply sunscreen – a hat protects me at home, but here, the pale, reflective rock, gravel, and sand that cover most of the ground bounce the sunlight up from below.

After lunch I moved to a sitting spot on the now-shaded east side of the boulder. In the past, in really hot weather, I’d always hiked up to the shade house in the side canyon with all the mining ruins. But now, this boulder shaded me enough that I didn’t need to leave camp.

By mid-afternoon the whole camp was in shade of the peak above, and the temperature quickly dropped. I hadn’t been planning to shower, but I had to gather more firewood, and that got me all sweaty again.

It felt like that windy, cold Thursday night on the Plateau had been my test, my trial, and this calm day had been my reward.

The meat I’d bought in Flagstaff last Tuesday had been sitting in my cooler for four days and nights, so I planned to grill it all tonight and keep the surplus for the following nights. I still wasn’t sure how long I could or would stay.

It took a while for the meat to cook – previous campers (maybe even myself) had set the rocks in the fireplace a little too high, and I had to remove some to get my new grill closer to the coals.

As the moon, Jupiter, the stars and Milky Way came out, I was reminded of my lifelong history with the night sky. The reflector telescope I had as a small child, the refractor I got a few years later. That led me to all the science stuff I had growing up, mostly from my dad: the telescopes, a microscope and collection of mounted slides, the Visible Man and Woman models, rocket models.

Life has led me away from science, and all that’s left is the images, the memories they evoke, seeing these things like the night sky as my life draws toward its close, like old friends.

My Dad wanted to do what I’m doing now – he was on that path. One of the inevitable tragedies of my selfish life is that I can’t pass on that desire, that momentum to the next generation.

Part of me wants to believe that only the time I spend here in the desert is real – but that’s not completely true – it’s only a fantasy I’ve believed in deeply.

Moving around camp, I began using my new headlamp out here for the first time – an innovation I finally picked up from other desert friends. At home, it allows me to hike longer, because I can return in the dark. Here, I was figuring out how and when to use it, versus my trusty oil lantern. The problem was I kept forgetting I had the headlamp on!

When the firewood ran out, I went to bed, the screen keeping me safe from buzzing mosquitos, and I saw another falling star before dropping off to sleep.

Next: Day 5