Max Carmichael's Blog, page 16

Stalked by a Hawk

Last Sunday’s hike had involved a long drive and an overnight, so today I wanted to stay closer to home. But many of my favorite crest hikes could only be reached via a canyon-bottom trail, and after our wet monsoon, canyon bottoms had turned into jungles.

There was one crest hike very close to town that I hadn’t tried since my recovery, because it started with a “primitive” road up a narrow canyon with at least a dozen crossings of a perennial creek. And on my last visit, shortly after the start of the monsoon, the creek had flooded so high it couldn’t be crossed on foot.

But our rains had slacked off recently, so I figured I’d give it another try.

This is the longest of my day hikes – 18-1/2 miles out and back, with 4,400′ of accumulated elevation gain. The only reason I can achieve that much mileage in a day is because the trail’s in better condition than any others – most of it follows the Continental Divide Trail, which is completely restored annually, as opposed to our national forest trails, a few of which are only partially cleared at much longer intervals, with the rest completely abandoned.

On the down side, with the exception of one short canyon passage, it’s the least spectacular of my hikes. You’re mostly hemmed in by forest, and when you’re not, you’re crossing burn-scarred slopes with only nearby views of featureless forested mountains. I end the hike at a “park” – a shallow bowl on the crest of a ridge with tall ponderosas around the edge and a grassy clearing in the center.

The hike starts at 6,600′, following the primitive dirt road eastward up the canyon for two miles. The creek was running briskly, but my waterproof boots made all the crossings easy. Spectacular rock formations rise on both sides but are mostly hidden behind the trees, until you reach the mid-section, where the canyon narrows and the road becomes steep bedrock, with the creek pouring down it.

Here, I found the road completely destroyed by erosion. Not even the ruggedest and highest-lifted Hummer or Jeep Wrangler could get up this road now – there were multiple 3-foot-high ledges and 3-foot-diameter boulders blocking the narrow passage between shear cliffs.

I recalled the day a couple of years ago when I’d met a young couple from California who were hoping to view a property at the end of this road, high in the forest. The road had been barely drivable for my vehicle then, with 4wd and 9″ ground clearance, but they’d made their way up to the midsection in a Prius, finally giving up and hiking the rest of the way. I wondered who owned that property now, and what they would do with the road, if anything. It’s simply a misconceived road in the wrong place.

Less than a mile up the “road” past the midpoint, you reach the hiking trailhead. From there, you wind and switchback up the densely forested side of the canyon to a long level ledge through parklike forest. That takes you to the upper part of the canyon, where the trail rejoins the creek and climbs steeply to a forested saddle where it joins the CDT.

The CDT crosses eastward to another densely forested watershed, where it traverses in long switchbacks up a south-facing slope to the 9,000′ peak. Apart from short rocky sections, this is mostly a smooth forest trail on packed dirt, so I was able to make good time.

Northwards past the peak, the trail reaches the edge of the 2014 wildfire, dropping toward a saddle through alternating burn scar and surviving stands of mixed conifers. Here, I found very fresh bear sign, then suddenly came upon a young couple hiking up from the saddle, where the trail meets the gravel road to the nearby fire lookout.

The young woman was busy leashing a medium-sized black dog, but what immediately caught my eye was the black cat wrapped around the young man’s shoulders. “Wow, you’re the first hikers I’ve ever seen with a cat!”

“That’s right, ignore the dog, he’s used to it!” said the girl, laughing.

We had a brief, friendly chat, while the cat on the guy’s shoulder fixed me with an intense stare. They seemed anxious for more, but I felt like I was running out of steam and wanted to keep my momentum.

Shortly after leaving them I felt a shadow passing over and figured it was a vulture. Instead, I saw a large hawk just settling into an upper branch of a low snag next to the trail, to peer down at me curiously. We watched each other for a while, then I continued, finding the couple’s vehicle at the road, with a New Jersey plate.

Past the saddle the trail begins traversing further east around a series of rounded slopes through moonscape burn scar which has filled in with shrubs and annuals. Here I was joined by the hawk again. Why? Normally a hawk will only pay attention to a human if it has a nest nearby, but this hawk was stalking me a quarter mile from where I’d first seen it.

As usual at this time of year, the annuals on the slope were at their peak of flowering, but hard to photograph. Nearing the intact forest after another half mile of traversing, I was amazed to find the hawk again joining me, briefly. I guess it was just curiosity!

The trail crosses into yet another big forested canyon, where it continues to traverse the head, just below the crest, descending gradually toward a saddle on the eastern rim. At this point I was really fading. My legs and right hip were burning and I was deeply fatigued. I’d only gone between 7 and 8 miles – how would I make the full 18-1/2? I stopped to stretch my hip, and that helped a little, but I was still worn out. Then, nearing the saddle, I came upon recent cattle tracks. Great.

But I’d come this far – I had to reach the park. Once there, having finally crossed to the north side of the long ridge, I didn’t continue to the grassy center – I collapsed on pine needles in the shade of the big ponderosas and Gambel oaks.

I lay there for a long time, knowing it was getting late, but figuring the return hike would go faster since it was all downhill past the peak.

Finally I forced myself to get up, and trudged back out of the park and over the crest. On the long traverse back toward the road saddle, after another session of stretching my sore joints, I took a pain pill, and by the time I’d reached the road I was feeling good again.

Surprisingly, the New Jersey van was still there. And just as I reached the top of the traverse to the peak, I glimpsed them through the trees ahead, and their dog shot forward barking hysterically and threatening me.

I was making good time, so at this encounter, while the woman struggled to subdue her young dog, we talked even longer. Despite the Jersey plate, they’d been living in town for a year, cobbling together miscellaneous jobs. They hoped to see me again later.

I was really feeling much better as I strode down the mountain, smiling and spreading my arms to stretch my shoulders. I hadn’t seen any recent footprints on the CDT, but when I eventually reached the creek trail I began to notice occasional mountain bike tread, and when I finally reached the upper part of the dirt road in the canyon bottom, I realized two people had ridden their mountain bikes here while I was hiking. Then at the rocky midpoint of the road I found footprints of another couple who’d walked up today. And just past the eroded, undriveable part there were off-road-vehicle tracks and horse poop, also from today. Apparently there’d been a whole crowd down here on every conceivable conveyance while I was up higher hiking. Nice to be able to get away from the riffraff!

Blowin’ in the Wind

It was September already, and there was only one of my regular crest hikes that I hadn’t tried since my May-June illness and loss of capacity. It was in the range of canyons over in Arizona, southwest of here, and was far enough that it involved an overnight stay.

The last time I’d been up there was the end of January. We hadn’t had much snow, but there were some drifts that had enabled a test of my new waterproof boots.

Now I was wearing those same boots during the summer monsoon, to help with creek crossings and fend off rain. It appeared that our thunderstorms were on the wane, but I brought the boots anyway, and was glad as I saw a layer of clouds over the mountains ahead. Then I remembered the creek crossings at the beginning of the trail, sometimes a challenge even at low flow, and was doubly glad.

The first half of the hike involves a steep climb from a lush riparian corridor at 5,800′, deep in the central basin, to a “pine park” at 8,000′, up on the shoulder of one of the range’s tallest peaks. It starts with three crossings of the range’s most famous creek, which turned out to be running high as expected, and up to 15′ wide. Trusting in my boots, I basically just ran across on submerged rocks, but at the second crossing I encountered a father and son who were wearing sneakers, and I helped them find a stick to make their crossing safer.

Despite it being a holiday weekend and this being a popular getaway from Tucson and Phoenix, I didn’t see anyone else after that. The 2,000′ climb from oak scrub to mixed conifer forest is very steep – when I started hiking here 3 years ago I considered it one of my most daunting climbs – so with my current reduced lung capacity I approached it with a stiff upper lip. But it actually wasn’t too bad. I realized I was in exactly the same position I’d been in 3 years ago – having to stop often to catch my breath, I’d trained myself to climb more slowly so I didn’t have to stop as often. I covered the 3 miles to the park in 2 hours, which didn’t seem bad. And as usual, I was grateful for how much better maintained the trails are here than back at home. Fighting through monsoon overgrowth of shrubs and annuals has become a real chore this year, but there wasn’t nearly as much of it in these mountains.

Clouds were drifting back and forth over the crest, and the temperature was mild when I started out, but I was soon sweating through my clothes, and before I was even halfway up to the park, I was sweating so hard it was dripping constantly from my hatbrim, nose, and chin – another thing I’m getting really tired of.

Then, as I continued past the park and rounded the corner into the big upper canyon, I was hit by a blast of cold wind, and quickly became chilled. This cold wind chased me for the rest of the climb – my hat and shirt didn’t dry out until I reached the end – so it was only the effort of climbing that kept me from being miserably cold.

This second stretch of the hike is not quite as steep as the first half, and I was able to maintain a good pace until the last mile, when I really ran out of steam and had to stop often. It’s always been a hard slog – it originally took me 3 tries to reach the top. But today I was determined to go farther than ever before – to explore a little of the crest trail beyond the junction, into the other big canyon in the south of the range.

In the bleak, burned saddle at 9,300′, the trail disappears in overgrowth of annuals, and makes a sharp turn to traverse the next peak toward the actual crest trail. It’s only because I’ve hiked it before that I know where to go at this point – there’s an almost invisible path through the shoulder-high ferns that you can only detect when you’re right on top of it, and even then you have to use landmarks ahead and behind to keep on track.

But this traverse lies at the southwest head of the long, deep canyon, and today’s wind was out of the northeast, so the entire canyon was acting as a funnel, and all along this traverse I was subjected to gale-force wind, intensifying as I reached the junction saddle. I was only able to keep my hat on by cinching it down tightly over my ears.

It’s always great to reach a new watershed, with new vistas – this hike progresses across 3 major ones – but it was so damn windy I couldn’t linger. I only explored about 300 yards up the crest trail before it was time to turn back.

My shirt and hat were finally dry, but now the wind was in my face as I started back down the big canyon. It’d been a grueling hike and I was feeling a little sick at first, running out of breath and having to stop occasionally, but after the first mile of descent I was okay. The lower I climbed, the wind gradually slowed and temperature gradually increased, until when I reached the pine park I was actually warm again.l

From the pine park, you’re descending a north slope in late afternoon, so you’re mostly in shade, with long shadows from the crest cutting across the slopes ahead, making wonderful patterns of light and dark. As usual, I was looking forward to burrito and beer in the cafe, but still lingered as much as time allowed, to admire flowers and butterflies.

Fall of the Elders

Since mid-June, when this year’s massive wildfire burned through the habitat of one of my regular hikes, I’ve been yearning to go back there. But the Forest Service had issued a closure notice for that entire area effective until the end of the year.

The trail is really popular with Texans from El Paso, so on Saturday, on a whim, I checked the web page for that trail on the most popular online hiking forum, and found trip reports from a couple of weeks ago saying the trail had just been reopened. So this Sunday’s choice of a hike was a no-brainer!

I was especially concerned about the beautiful old-growth fir forest on the back side of the peak. That forest had survived the big 2013 wildfire as an island of lush alpine growth, and there were two ancient firs I really loved that stood on each side of the trail, like sentinals. During this year’s fire, the incident team had noted that the burn on top of the peak was low-intensity, so I was pretty sure my favorite trees had survived.

The weather forecast I quickly checked before leaving predicted cloudy skies and mild temperatures, so I reluctantly pulled on my heavy waterproof boots and packed the heavy, uncomfortable waterproof hunting pants. I was so tired of dressing for rain! But by the time I’d crossed town and entered open country, I noticed there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky ahead. Damn! Had I forgotten to refresh the weather page? It doesn’t auto-refresh on every platform – maybe I’d been looking at yesterday’s forecast.

The highway was virtually empty of other vehicles, but I came close to hitting deer twice – our deer population has exploded again, and driving anywhere outside of town is super stressful. But on the plus side, as I was slowly winding up through the tall forest toward the pass, a bobcat crossed in front of me. I hadn’t seen one in years.

Since this is our most popular trail with out-of-towners, I always expect to meet other hikers, and today was no exception – within the first 2 miles I encountered a single middle-aged man heading back out. We exchanged brief greetings but that was clearly all he was interested in. Most people using this trail are simply heading for the famous fire lookout on the peak, but I’m here for the wilderness – I bypass the lookout and continue several miles farther on the crest trail.

This year’s fire had stopped its southward advance at the peak, 5-1/2 miles north of the trailhead, and its scar couldn’t even be seen until you reached the top. But the 2013 wildfire had turned most of the crest into a treeless moonscape, colonized in the intervening years by shrubs and annuals. After this year’s wet monsoon, I saw plenty of flowers and birds in that area.

And during the initial traverse through the old burn scar, I was a little encouraged to see some small clouds rising behind the crest to the north. Maybe I’d get some weather after all, to justify my preparations!

By the time I reached the end of the burn scar at a saddle below the peak, a storm was definitely brewing in the north. And it hit me just as I crossed the southeastern shoulder of the peak, quickly developing into a heavy hailstorm as I scrambled to change pants and pull on my poncho.

Climbing the final switchbacks to the peak, I finally came upon scars of this year’s fire. Here, they were simply small black bare patches in a sea of lush annuals – it looked as if windblown sparks had started spot fires that had burned out without spreading.

But when I traversed around the peak through the lush forest below the lookout, I became confused. This area alternates between dense stands of fir and small grassy meadows surrounding isolated stands of venerable pine, fir, and Gambel oak. Here, many firs had been killed while their immediate neighbors had been spared. As before, there were small black bare spots where ground fires had burned with high intensity, but hadn’t seemed to have spread. The more I looked, the harder it was to tell where and how the fire had actually burned, because most of the ground cover was grass and forbs, which could’ve come up after the fire.

Suddenly I came upon two blackened stumps, and realized my favorite firs had not only been killed – they’d completely burned down. It was so strange – firs only 40 feet from them hadn’t even been scorched.

The peak forest is an island. Forest on the slopes below it was destroyed in the 2013 fire, and the trail there is crowded with seedlings of thorny locust and aspen. Some of this survived this year’s fire – enough to really slow me down.

And at the bottom, a trail junction and saddle where some tall ponderosas had survived the 2013 fire, this year’s fire had burned hot. The tree holding the trail signs had been torched – its charred trunk lay on the ground, and the trail signs had apparently burned to ashes. I’d often stopped at this saddle for a shaded lunch or a few minutes’ rest, but it was a bleak place now.

Beyond the saddle was a bowl that had been turned into a chaos of fallen logs by the 2013 fire, and these logs had clearly provided fuel for this year’s fire. Now that those logs had burned, along with the new growth of shrubs, this year’s wet monsoon was quickly eroding the bare soil and washing it downstream.

Below the bowl is a narrow canyon, whose forest had been partly killed by the older fire. This year’s fire had killed all the rest, and this summer’s rains were alternately flooding the creek with debris and cutting it into deep gorges.

The trail through this canyon had been cleared of logs just last fall – 8 years after the 2013 fire – and now it was rapidly being eroded away. As usual, it was only my past familiarity that enabled me to follow it. Slowed down by all the fire damage, I only made it to the second saddle – a mile short of my destination. The rain had finally stopped, and despite frequent thunder from surrounding storms, I could pack away the poncho for the rest of the hike.

The rain had chilled the air here between 8,000′ and 10,000′, so I could climb the 1,400′ back to the peak without much sweating, which was a relief from the heat and humidity of so many recent hikes. And as usual on crest hikes, there were no flies bothering me!

The long descent gave me an opportunity to watch storms developing far away across the landscape, as well as to appreciate flowers and fungi I’d missed on the way up. Just below the peak, I surprised a small hawk from the slope just above the trail. It first thought to perch on a seedling right in front of me, then decided it was too close and soared away to a much farther branch, so I couldn’t get a good picture.

The work of my hikes seldom ends when I reach the vehicle. During a wet monsoon, or in winter snow, my gear gets soaked and filthy. I can’t relax back home until it’s stashed somewhere for next morning’s cleanup, and the next day begins with a cleaning session for hat, boots, pants, poncho, etc.

Missing the Desert

This was the weekend when my region was forecast to get extreme rain and widespread flooding. Most of it was supposed to arrive on Saturday, but that turned out to be something of a letdown.

Still, I was sure there’d been enough rainfall in the mountains to raise the level of creeks in canyon bottoms, and most of my hikes involve creek crossings. So I figured it was time to drive over to Arizona and do the big climb from the desert to the fir forest. It was a really hard climb, but with no creek crossings required.

It was a perfect day for this hike, because it’s generally too hot in summer, but today’s cloud cover would fix that. Sure enough, it was in the 60s when I set out from the trailhead, through an overgrazed maze of boulders, mesquite, and big Emory oaks. But the humidity was almost 100% and the head-high vegetation was dripping from overnight rains. So I in addition to waterproof boots, I put on my waterproof, thornproof hunting pants and left my regular hiking pants in the car.

My destination, the mountain crest, was completely obscured by low clouds. And as I approached back and forth through the lowland maze, I was accompanied by the freight train sound of a raging flood not too far off on my right. I was surprised because it wasn’t raining, and I didn’t think any of the drainages near this trail had big enough watersheds to flood. But the trail led me away from the sound and I thought no more of it.

Then, less than a mile into the hike, the trail began climbing and led around a hill toward a narrow gully – the only gully crossing on this hike – and the freight train sound came back. It was coming from the gully! What the hell was I going to find?

I was shocked to find this littly gully, which had never had water in it before, turned into a churning torrent of muddy water, 8-10 feet wide at its narrowest. Then I began to visualize the landscape above, and I realized that the watershed for this tiny gully led 3 miles down from the crest, which was over 3,000′ above. So it was actually able to collect a decent amount of runoff and ultimately funnel it through here.

The logical thing would’ve been to start worrying about what would happen to this flood if the crest got rain later in my hike, but as usual all I could think about was getting past the obstacle. Fortunately there was a log across the surface of the torrent, which could be reached by stepping out on a slippery rock, with another shorter log as an intermediate foothold. And I found a soggy stick I could use to improve my balance while crossing.

But the intermediate log turned out to be rotten and immediately broke in half under me, briefly submerging one of my boots as I scrambled to leap to the opposite bank. Without that intermediate log, would I be able to get back across on my return at end of day?

It always amazes me how a loud a creek can be. Even the smallest creek can sound like a raging torrent from hundreds of yards away, and that sound can really set your nerves on edge if you know you have to cross it at some point.

This trail is very seldom used by anyone other than me, and the last time I’d been here, in March – long before the growing season – I’d gotten lost because the tread vanishes at many points. I knew it would be overgrown after this year’s long, wet monsoon, and it exceeded my expectations. Beyond the flood crossing, I was wading almost continuously through sopping wet chest-high grasses. The crest was still hidden behind clouds, but at least it wasn’t raining – yet!

Most of the cairns that mark some of the turns in the trail were hidden under the tall grass, so I kept having to stop to search for sticks and rocks that would work as route markers on my descent. And as I’ve noted many times before, these trails are always lined with rocks – loose or embedded – and the overgrowth also hides the rocks in the trail, so you have to either go very slow, feeling your way with each step, or be condemned to stumble or lose your balance often.

At times I was helped by a corridor where the surface of the grass had been trampled, and at first I thought another hiker might’ve come this way recently. But gradually I realized the trampling had been done by game, because it often led away from the actual hiking trail.

With all this stopping and trail marking, it took me forever to reach the saddle which marks the halfway point. Meanwhile the sky had darkened and I could see isolated rainfall behind me in the lower range to the south. I was so discouraged by my slow pace that I considered giving up and turning back, especially with the flood danger. But as usual, I threw caution to the wind and kept going, thinking the descent would go a lot faster.

In the next stretch – the final climb to the crest – the dense grass is replaced by scrub oak, and eventually by scattered pines and firs. Here, the trail often turned into a creek. The higher I got, the more it seemed that water was just flowing down the entire slope.

By the time I reached the saddle on the crest, it had taken me 4-3/4 hours to go 4-3/4 miles. My legs were sore and I was tired and out of breath, so I figured I’d just take it easy from here on, enough to enjoy the alpine forest, and turn back well before reaching the end.

But again, my compulsive nature won out. At the high point, there wasn’t even a view to reward me, since the peaks of the range were still hidden under clouds, so I continued down to the highway saddle – the terminus of the trail, which most hikers use as a starting point. It was empty – not surprising in this weather. I’d used up so much time already that I realized I’d get back to the vehicle near sunset, facing a 2-hour drive back home in the dark. So I decided to drive to Safford and stay there in a motel – I thought I might have enough points for a free night. The idea picked up my spirits – Safford is a strange place and could add to the day’s adventure.

Clouds were entering and darkening the forest as I proceeded back down the crest toward the saddle, and before long I ran into rain. The descent did go quickly, but the rain also increased. Realizing I could begin worrying about crossing the flood – at that gully which was still almost 5 miles away, and which was being steadily renewed by this rainfall – I forced myself to smile, on the principle that mind follows body.

If I couldn’t cross that flood, there’s no telling how long I’d have to wait for it to subside. There was no other way off the mountain, and it was too wet to start a fire to keep warm throughout the night. I might be forced to call for a catastrophically expensive rescue – using my GPS device since there was no cell signal. These were the things I was trying to keep from thinking.

As usual, the rain only lasted a half hour, but now, runoff was pouring down the entire slope, and the entire trail was functioning as a creek. As mentioned earlier, the sound of a flood is exaggerated and carries a long distance, so I was accompanied by that freight train roar most of the way down.

I’d never encountered runoff like this back home – I wondered if the geology of these mountains was the cause? Our local mountains, being all volcanic, might be porous enough to absorb most runoff.

In the end, I successfully failed to think about the flood until I literally reached the bank of the gully. It had gotten higher, wider, and angrier, but I could still see the diagonal log, and the sloping rock on the opposite side. I wasted some time scouting unsuccessfully for another stick to supplement the one I’d used in the morning, then gave up and just rushed across as best I could. It turned out to be both precarious and easy.

Evenings are usually spectacular in this valley, and this was no exception. But as beautiful as it was, I was getting really tired of humidity, lush vegetation, and spending nine hours in clothes drenched with sweat. This is really not my favorite kind of habitat to hike in. I was really missing the desert.

Ironically, the motel I got a free night in calls itself the Desert Inn. I knew from experience there were no decent restaurants open on Sunday night, but on the way I remembered I could pick something up at the Safeway and warm it up in the room’s microwave. So I enjoyed a celebratory dinner, a good night’s sleep, and an easy drive home the next day.

While sampling the motel’s breakfast the next morning, I idly studied the local newspaper, discovering that the Forest Service had scheduled a volunteer work session on that very trail for both Saturday and Sunday. Since I’d seen no sign of work or workers, they’d apparently had to cancel due to weather.

Life Renewing on the Burned Crest

Much of the story about this Sunday’s hike is not shown in the pictures. Of all the hikes I do in our region, this is the hardest to get to. It’s only 50 miles from home as the crow flies, but like many hikes in our local wilderness, it requires a much longer drive than the hikes I do 80-90 miles away in Arizona.

I always forget how bad the road is. It begins at 5,000′ as a paved 2-lane in good condition. It climbs onto a flat mesa at 5,600′, at the end of which it begins the serious climb, turning into a one-lane with blind hairpin curves and sheer drop-offs with no guard rails. Here, the rough pavement is littered with rocks that have fallen off the cliffs above.

After climbing to over 7,000′ in the foothills, the paved road drops into a narrow canyon where the ghost town nestles. There, the pavement ends, and it turns into a forest road up a dark, narrow canyon lined with flash-flood debris and shaded by old-growth conifers. As it slowly ascends the canyon, fording the creek again and again, it just gets rougher and rockier, until it crosses the creek one last time and begins the serious climb to the crest. Here, I switch into 4wd, and high ground clearance is essential.

Crawling over shelves of rock, slowing for steep sections and erosional gullies, watching carefully for approaching vehicles – including big trucks towing trailers – that I may need to stop or back up for, I finally reach the crest, at over 9,000′. Here, after our exceptional monsoon rains, a section of the road is flooded to 9″ deep, a muddy lake almost high enough to reach the door sills of my vehicle.

It’s always a huge relief to reach the ledge with its big parking area and incongruous permanent restroom. Surrounded by a steep drop-off with a forever view, it’s a platform in the sky that emphasizes how you’ve driven 4,000′ above the surrounding countryside.

I parked next to two other vehicles. I wasn’t particularly surprised – this is a legendary road, and on my one previous hike I’d met a couple from Texas.

We’d been getting a lot of rain, with cloudy skies and cool temperatures. At 9,200′ it was in the low 60s and positively clammy.

My goal was to get as far along the crest as possible, but what had drawn me back here now was curiosity. My previous visit, almost two years ago, had been a few weeks after an extreme wind event had toppled thousands of fire-killed snags across the trail. In a masochistic determination not to let that stop me, I’d fought my way over, under, and around a couple thousand fallen logs, and it was such a miserable experience I swore not to return until the trail had been cleared.

Earlier this year, in late winter, I spoke to the Forest Service trails supervisor, and she’d said that clearing that trail was a priority for the coming season. Then in early June, a hiker posted a report on the most popular hiking website, saying they’d encountered a trail crew clearing that trail and planning to reach the first milestone, a popular saddle below the peak of the range, by the middle of the month. But around that time, our monsoon storms started early, and I could find no update on trail condition anywhere.

So I took a big risk making that epic drive, hoping the trail would be clear.

The most recent entry on the trailhead log, from a month ago, was from a hiker who claimed to have climbed the peak. That was encouraging, because surely the trail to the saddle had to have been cleared. Nobody was as crazy as me, to fight their way through fallen logs just to reach a forested peak that didn’t even have a view!

So I started up the trail, soon leaving the small margin of intact forest behind and entering the moonscape burn scar, which has been filled by a thicket of aspen and thorny locust. I knew most of the crest would be like this. Despite being the highest-elevation trail in our region, it’s not a scenic hike – it runs through a devastated landscape, and your view is mostly obstructed by a dense ghost forest of dead tree trunks. But you do get glimpes, between the snags, of the surrounding mountains, to remind you how high up you are.

Just before emerging from the intact forest, I spotted a hiker up ahead, returning down the trail. He had a big gray dog, and it bounded down the trail toward me. I said something friendly and reached out my hand, and the dog started barking violently, jumping around me in a circle, threatening to attack. The owner approached, and I said, “Your dog seems a little suspicious!”

“No, he never bothers anybody.” Like it can’t possibly bother me to have a dog barking and threatening me. I love how dog owners always deny what’s happening before their eyes – despite the evidence, their pet can’t possibly bother anyone. I’m sure it comes from the lazy owner’s sense of guilt at not making the effort to train their pet – not to mention disobeying the leash rule on public trails.

Because the trail runs along the crest of a ridge connecting the highest mountains, it involves little climbing, and I was hoping I could move fast, and if enough of the trail was clear of blowdown, at best I might be able to go as far as 9 miles, and reach a cabin on a connecting trail, far beyond the highest peak.

And in fact, when I reached the point, about a mile in, where the blowdown had begun, I found a broad path had been cut through the logs. Smooth sailing!

About 3 miles in, the trail switches from the northeast to the southwest side of the ridge, an important milestone for me because you finally get glimpses of the interior of the range, where I do most of my hiking. And about 4 miles in, you reach a rocky outcrop where your view is for once actually unobstructed by dead trees.

And shortly beyond this, the cleared trail ended.

My heart sank when I saw those criss-crossed logs blocking the trail ahead. Why hadn’t they finished the job and cleared it all the way to the saddle, as promised? Hiking to this point, and no farther, made no sense.

Maybe the early storms had stopped them. Or maybe the money ran out. In any event, the Forest Service hadn’t updated its public trail information in almost a year – maybe they were ashamed to admit they hadn’t met their goals.

I knew the saddle wasn’t much farther, so I fought my way through the logs for another half mile. Then I encountered a logjam where the tread completely disappeared in a thicket of thorny locust. That was too much even for me, and I gave up and stopped for lunch in a small, sunny clearing where I sat and watched pollinators working the wildflowers.

At one point I glanced over my shoulder to find a chipmunk sitting on a log about 9 feet away, watching me in curiosity.

A big storm was dumping to the northeast as I headed back. Another began building to the southwest, and just as I entered the margin of intact forest before reaching the trailhead, I felt the first drops of rain.

The other two vehicles were still there. They must be backpacking. I couldn’t believe they’d fought their way through that logjam – another trail started here, running down into a side canyon – maybe that’s where they’d gone.

It rained on and off during the drive back, making for spectacular skies. For once, since my planned hike had been cut short, I would get home early enough to make a decent dinner.

Hiker in the Storm

This Sunday’s weather was forecast to be partly cloudy and warm. I’d been having such a hard time climbing – my lung capacity didn’t seem to be recovering – I felt I needed to keep pushing, forcing myself to climb higher on each new hike. And getting up in the higher elevations would help with the heat. Maybe I’d even get some rain.

With the wildfire closures, the only nearby hike I hadn’t tackled yet was my old favorite, which climbs to the shoulder of a 9,700′ peak and continues down a ridge to a saddle with dramatic rock outcrops. It would involve between 4,000′ and 5,000′ of accumulated elevation gain, depending on how far I got.

But first I had to get through the jungle in the canyon bottom, which occupied 2-1/2 miles of the hike. It was as overgrown as I’d expected, a riot of flowers, flies, and waist-high growth with heavy dew, completely covering the trail, soaking my canvas pants. As usual, I was drenched with sweat from the beginning, but in the sections where the creek was flowing above ground, I could wet my hat and head net for a little evaporative cooling.

And I’d worn waterproof boots, so my feet stayed dry.

The long climb to the 9,500′ crest was difficult and slow. I’m beginning to suspect the damage to my lungs was permanent, and I may never regain the ability to climb steadily at my normal walking pace.

I stopped at the spring below the peak, to rinse out my hat and head net. I’d been glad to see no recent cattle sign so far, but unfortunately found a big cowpie near the spring less than a day old. The beast was apparently hanging out in the high country – avoiding the Forest Service’s recent attempt at removal.

Far above the spring, just as I turned the corner into the interior and got my first view of a storm building over the wilderness, it began to rain. I first pulled on my poncho, then when I reached the saddle with its little surviving stand of pines and aspens, I changed into my waterproof and thornproof hunting pants.

Last fall’s trail crew had cleared most of the logs across this trail, but from here on, the main challenge was thorny locust, and they’d done nothing about that. I’d chopped about a half mile of locust with my machete a couple of years ago, but it’s fast growing, and if I wanted to continue I’d just have to fight my way through it.

I knew there would be little reward – after the slow climb to the crest, I knew I didn’t have enough time to reach the rocky saddle, and the intervening trail would just be a thorny jungle with no view and no landmarks. But I still wanted to give my lungs a workout, so I fought my way through the thorns for another mile or so, stopping at an arbitrary point on a traverse just below the crest of the ridge. Through an opening in the locust, I spotted something far down the canyon, a hazy spot that might or might not be smoke.

I watched it long enough to see it drift and change. Yes, there was a little fire down there, apparently a lightning strike. But the whole landscape was saturated, and another big storm was building over the mountains – surely this would burn out quickly?

After I began the hike back up the ridge, the vegetation was so dense that I didn’t get another view of the little fire. But it was soon raining again, and I knew I didn’t have to worry.

At the saddle, I trudged up the little rise that gives a view over the peaks of the range. The northern half of the interior was getting hammered by rain, and another storm was forming outside the mountains in the south.

Lightning and thunder were bombarding me from all sides up there, and the first part of the descent is totally exposed, so I wasted no time descending. The rain fell harder, blowing sideways, but I knew it would move on soon.

After the rain moved on, the air was so chilled I regretted leaving my sweater at home. But as it turned out, the hike down the long switchbacks and through the canyon bottom jungle went much faster than the climb up, and hiking kept me warm.

In the canyon bottom, I was really glad of the waterproof pants now that all that waist-high vegetation was soaked from the rain. Unable to see the rocks in the trail, I was constantly slipping and stumbling. And my third rain of the day began during the last stretch before the climb out of the canyon. I’d been accompanied by the sound of thunder continuously since reaching the crest hours ago.

Driving out of the mountains, and looking back at where I’d come from, I could see storms getting bigger both east and west, over Arizona. And back home, I’d no sooner parked in my driveway than it began to pour.

Art File

Shed in the Hills

I’ve described before how the rising cost of living in California had driven me relentlessly from larger lodgings, where I originally had room for art and music studios, into smaller and smaller places, finally ending up in a tiny studio apartment with all my creative work and equipment far away in storage. It wasn’t until I moved to this remote small town in New Mexico that I could afford enough space to get all my work and gear together, and it still took me years to pull a lifetime of art and music out of boxes and set up studio space to continue that work after the dismal hiatus of struggling to survive in California.

Part of that process was finding a readily accessible way to store my thousands of works on paper and canvas – by me and others. For a decade and a half most of those paintings and drawings had been packed away in boxes, portfolio cases, and mailing tubes and stashed in various basements or garages. I needed a big flat file.

I was registered on an online community forum maintained by a couple of older men, 60s hippies who were fixtures in the local progressive subculture. At the end of July 2008, I posted my need for a file, and immediately got a response from one of those guys. It turned out his ex-girlfriend had left him a big flat file made by a local cabinetmaker from local pinewood. But it was stored in a shed way out in the mountains, an hour’s drive from town, and he didn’t have a vehicle that could move it.

So I bought it from him and drove him out there in my pickup truck. It took all day – we had to stop first at a rural settlement on the river to pick up a key, then we slowly drove for miles, winding back into the hills on a rough, narrow gravel road, finally reaching the shed. The file was so heavy that we had to remove all the drawers first to lift it into the truck.

But of course, once I got it home, I was faced with how to get this big wooden box into my house by myself.

First, I borrowed a dolly from a neighbor, and improvised a ramp from a sheet of plywood so I could roll the cabinet off the truck. Then I had to take my front door off the hinges and unscrew all the weatherstripping from the jamb in order to just barely scrape the file through the doorway.

Once I’d walked the awkward thing past my vestibule, put it back on the dolly, and rolled it into place, I could carefully reinstall all the drawers into their ball-bearing slides.

The cabinetmaker had put a huge amount of work into this file – precisely cutting, planing, and joining the pine planks for the sides, building the drawers from scratch, cutting perfect rabbet joints at all the corners. But for some reason he had neglected to finish it, leaving it topless, so John had given me a heavy sheet of particle board to put over it. I covered this with a Mexican blanket so it wouldn’t look so shabby in my living room.

After the Fire

Just as it was hugely liberating and inspiring to get my music, instruments, and recording gear out of storage after all those years, it was a revelation to rediscover my art. And soon I began a new series of work, filling the drawers of the file to the brim.

But my house fire in August 2020 put another stop to my creative work. I had to quickly remove those thousands of art works, re-pack them in boxes and portfolio cases, and move them back into storage.

Contractors moved all my furnishings out of the house in preparation for interior cleaning and repairs – all except for the file, which was too much of a hassle. It wasn’t until almost a year later, when the flooring subcontractor prepared to refinish my oak floors, that we absolutely had to get the flat file out of the house. So I again removed the drawers, took off the house’s front door and weatherstripping, and with a couple of young construction workers muscled the big thing out of the house and into a tight space in the already nearly full casita in back, in between my bed frame, fridge, and gas range.

In the process, one side of the cabinet was chipped. I salvaged the wedge-shaped piece of wood and quickly stashed it somewhere I thought it would be safe and retrievable, for however far away in the future it would take to fix this thing and get it back in the house.

Working Around It

The flat file and its separate drawers were now taking up space in the casita, along with most of the other furnishings of my house. I had moved back into and was camping out in the main house, but it was now the middle of winter, and I needed at least one room of that casita as a workshop, to start completing the interior of the house and make repairs to items like the flat file.

I cleared out the workshop as much as possible, but the flat file cabinet had to stay there while I put in the wiring – it was too big to fit through the casita’s other doors. So I worked around it, moving it from place to place as needed.

Repairing the Chip

Finally, at the end of March, I was ready to start fixing up the flat file. But by now I’d completely forgotten where I put that missing wood chip. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it – I would simply have to fabricate a new piece and glue it in. But how to match the original knotty pine? Knotty pine is no longer available, especially here.

Fortunately I had an old piece of scrap pine hanging around that had similar grain and color.

Refinishing the File Cabinet

The body of the file was quite worn, not to mention smoke damaged. But getting the old finish off took two days of heavy sanding, and in the process I discovered it had never been sanded to begin with – the surface was extremely rough under the finish the cabinetmaker had applied.

Like many things around here, it was paradoxical – the unfinished, imperfect product of a lot of obsessive labor.

I also found out early that sanding in the workshop raised far too much dust, and applying the finish indoors generated too many fumes. So I rolled the cabinet outside on my new dolly and applied three coats of polyurethane, sanding between each coat, covering it with plastic every night and uncovering it every morning.

Making Feet & Corner Guards

The base of the cabinet was the crudest part of it – inconsistent with the rest of the thing, the base was made out of rough, construction-grade two-by-fours. I wasn’t going to have that sliding around on my newly refinished oak floors, so I had to make feet, to which I would attach protective felt. I made these out of scraps of oak from another project, plus I cut corner guards to protect the vulnerable bottom edges of the cabinet, where the chip had come off earlier.

Moving It Back Into the House

Like a fool I was determined to get the cabinet back into the house by myself, and it did not go well – after taking off door and weatherstripping again, there was still only about 1/16″ clearance between the sides of the cabinet and the door jamb, and I ended up scratching up my new finish in a few places. But those were easily repaired.

Installing the Feet & Corner Guards Reinforcing the Cabinet

I spent weeks puzzling over how to make a top for this cabinet. It would have to span over a yard of open space without warping, and there was no room to add bracing within the existing cabinet – the top would have to be framed above the existing front, sides, and back.

Plywood wouldn’t do – it should be solid wood – equivalent, if not superior, in quality to the expertly joined sides. But I didn’t have access to a broad selection of cabinet-grade wood – our local lumber yard only stocks a limited selection of “project boards” in poplar and oak up to 12″ wide. And I didn’t have the tools or setup to match the joinery of the sides.

Meanwhile, I realized that the top would need to be removable! A fixed top would prevent access to the drawer slides inside the cabinet, and they are mechanical parts that can wear out and break and need to be replaced. I decided to make the top hinged at the back with a continuous piano hinge.

A removable top added even more complexity to a project that just seemed to keep growing. And whereas a fixed top would reinforce the whole cabinet, a removable top would place stress on a structure that didn’t seem to have enough bracing as is. The top front crosspiece was so flimsy you could bend it up and down with one hand.

So I cut a couple of oak boards as cross braces for the body of the cabinet – they would just barely fit above the top drawer, and would stabilize the cross member in front, as well as to prevent warping of the sides. They would also need to be removable to facilitate getting your whole body inside the cabinet to work on the slides!

Building a Top for the File

We didn’t have any cabinet-grade wood panels available locally to cover the entire top, but I finally figured out a way to combine two different woods without more expensive tools. In addition to the oak boards, the lumber yard had a few 24″x48″ cabinet-grade pieces of birch plywood with a nice surface grain, and I was lucky to find two pieces that were book-matched.

I used the oak as edge binding and to join the two pieces of plywood down the center. I still didn’t have long clamps, but I managed to get enough pressure using bungee cords, and a doweling jig, to get reasonably fine joinery.

Being all hardwood, the top ended up really heavy.

Installing the New Top

Once I’d decided to hinge the top, I worried for weeks about how to align the hinge. Both the cabinet and the top were really heavy pieces, and the hinge would need to be attached with the top open, in such a manner that the top would be aligned with the cabinet when closed.

And the fit was not perfect – the original cabinetmaker hadn’t cut the sides perfectly straight, and I hadn’t thought to plane them earlier. Ultimately, searching online, I found adhesive-backed felt tape to line the interface between top, sides, and front. This would help keep dust out. I ordered it the week before I left for Indiana, and it was waiting for me 6 weeks later when I got back from the hospital.

To align the hinge properly was extremely complicated and took three tries, drilling a few holes at first, mounting a few screws, setting the whole heavy thing upright, relocating some holes and screws, lowering, removing and reattaching, etc.

And finally, I discovered that my house floor is uneven, and the cabinet flexes as it’s moved around the floor, so that in some positions, the hinged top is out of alignment, whereas in other positions it’s perfectly aligned. So I gave up and accepted imperfection.

I also realized that the cheap piano hinge from our local Ace is not really sturdy enough for the weight of this top. But it took me so long to install it, I’ll leave it as is for now, letting the next owner worry about that.

Refinishing the Drawers

I kept thinking I was almost done, until I realized the drawers still needed to be sanded and refinished – all 8 of them.

First I had to remove the wooden pulls – they were originally unfinished, and I decided to spray paint them black.

Refinishing the drawers took over a week, partly because I first sealed them with Danish oil to deepen the color, and I had to wait a day and sand between each coat. I had to keep moving them from place to place after each of the 4 coats, to keep them from running and sticking together, and to keep them free of dust from another project I was starting in the shop.

Installing the Drawers

Finally the drawers were ready! I assumed the project was done – what a huge relief! The last big piece of furniture repaired and restored to my house, almost two years after the fire!

I carefully carried each drawer from the casita, up onto the back porch, through the kitchen, and into the living room. When they were all there, I started by inserting the bottom drawer into its slides. These drawers have always been a tight fit, needing several firm pushes to get all the way in. But after the second firm push, one of the drawer sides exploded and ball bearings shot out across the floor.

I wasn’t finished after all. And thank god I’d made that top removable!

So I order a new set of slides for the bottom drawer, and waited another week for it to arrive. And meanwhile, I finally found that missing chip from the side of the cabinet. It was in the bottom of one of the drawers. If only I’d found it months ago, I would’ve saved a couple days of work fabricating a new patch, and the cabinet would’ve ended up looking better. So it goes.

But how to prop up the hinged top so I could work inside the cabinet? I hadn’t included that in my design yet, and there wasn’t much room to work with inside the cabinet. After a few days of design experimentation, I came up with the solution you see below, which works great.

Long Walk For a Shallow Dip

We’d been getting regular cloud cover and occasional rain in town, so I expected fairly good summer hiking weather. Like last weekend, I hoped I might even get some cooling rain in the mountains.

On the drive north, the sky was clear to the west, but there were broad, high clouds over the mountains on my right. And I was excited to get a little rain on the windshield as I headed toward them, but it didn’t last.

I knew just what hike I wanted to do, but I was a little worried when I crossed the river on the highway – it was in flood, 4 times its normal flow. To get to the trailhead, I had to drive across one of its perennial tributaries. Would that be in flood too?

But when I got there, emerging from a shady sycamore grove, the creek’s flow was normal.

This is one of the only two major perennial streams in our mountains that isn’t called a river. The trail begins near the creek downstream, and climbs over several ridges to meet the creek again deep in the wilderness. I’d only been there once before, briefly. It was a hike of over 15 miles round trip, the most I’d done since my illness. If I could make it all the way, I would deserve a dip in the creek!

On the long approach up a rolling basin, I was distracted again and again by wildflowers. The morning temperature was in the 60s, but the humidity is so high now, I was soon drenched with sweat again.

Finally I reached the steep climb to the pass, and now I was really sweating! On past visits I’d found these seemingly endless, exposed switchbacks the most daunting part of the hike, but now I didn’t mind them so much. At least I was getting an occasional breeze.

Beyond the pass you enter the backcountry, a land of deep canyons, burn scars, multicolored layers of rock and dramatic formations, with the crest of the range on your horizon. I’d always thought of this next section of trail as a seemingly endless traverse without much elevation gain, but this time I experienced it completely differently – as an endless series of steep erosional gullies lined with loose rocks. Just goes to show how much our experiences depend on psychology.

The reward at the end is the ponderosa pine “park” – a small, shady, grassy plateau before the trail becomes a ridge hike. But today, I’d been plagued by flies all along that traverse, and as expected the flies were even worse in the park. So I just rushed through it to the descent to the ridge.

On the ridge you are high above the canyon of the creek, with spectacular views to left and right. In the first saddle below the park was my first decision point – the junction with a trail that could be my short cut to the creek. I stood there a while trying to make up my mind. Although the temperature was probably only in the 70s, I was dripping with sweat and really wanted that creek, but I also wanted this hike to be an improvement on last week, with more mileage and/or elevation, and if I took this shortcut it would end up almost identical to last week’s hike.

So ultimately I decided to keep going up the ridge to the next creek crossing.

About another mile along the ridge, the trail begins descending steeply into the canyon, through burn scar regrowth, across erosional gullies, over more fractured white rock, much of it exposed with spectacular views of high peaks and multicolored cliffs of volcanic rock on the opposite side. I kept pushing the head net up from my face, thinking the flies were gone, only to have them return in swarms, dive bombing my eyes and nose.

When I reached the creek, deep in the wilderness, it looked completely different – narrower, choked with vegetation, its bed rearranged by floods. And the flies were terrible. There was no swimming hole, only a shallow channel choked with rocks, but all I could think about was shedding my damp, stinky clothes and getting in, somehow.

I found a channel between rocks that was deep enough to lie back in, and rinsed out my shirt, hat, and head net. The water wasn’t actually cold, but it felt marvelous after that sweaty hike! And while I was wet from the creek water, the flies briefly left me alone.

It’d taken me a long time to reach that crossing – a walk of close to 8 miles – and I knew the hike back would seem truly endless. But first I had to climb out of the canyon, about 800 vertical feet, and I had to take it slow – my lungs were still struggling, and I wanted to preserve the memory of that dip in the water and not get overheated.

Clouds had been massing over the crest in the distance – it looked like there might even be a storm elsewhere in the range. But not here. I knew the temperature couldn’t be above the low 80s, but it felt like the high 90s with all that humidity.

Finally I left the ridge and climbed to the pine park, where the flies swarmed me with a vengeance. And from there forwards, the trail really felt unfamiliar. The “traverse” back to the pass and the open country beyond the mountains felt even more endless than usual, and the rock-lined erosional gullies were harder to descend than they’d been to ascend. With my compromised foot and hip, I had to take it slowly and carefully.

And despite the approach of evening, it didn’t get any cooler. Over the pass, down the endless switchbacks to the foot of the mountains, and then the two-mile slog out the rolling basin, the sun burning down on me all the way. Dark clouds were moving out from the crest of the range, but that dip in the creek was only a distant memory by now!

Hike of Many Chapters

I always assumed this is my favorite hike because of the views – especially the view of the first canyon, lined with spectacular rock formations. And because it takes me to a place that feels remote, wild, liberated from the cramped, petty world of men.

But today, on my return hike, I realized that one reason why it feels so remote, is that the route passes through a dozen distinct habitats, topographically different and memorable places, each of which is like a chapter in the story.

I didn’t photograph all of these places today, since I’ve photographed them all abundantly many times before on previous hikes. Like it or not, this dispatch is more textual than visual.

I’ve also noted, after previous hikes, that this is one of the most difficult hikes I do. Since I’m currently weakened, recovering from illness, I didn’t know how far I would get. The hardest part is the climb out of the second canyon. Before tackling this trail, I mostly stuck to peak hikes, where you do all the work on the morning ascent and are rewarded by an easier afternoon descent. It still surprises me that I’m willing to descend that brutally steep and rocky trail early in the day, knowing I’ll have to climb back up it later, when the day is potentially hotter.

Our monsoon seemed to be returning after a hiatus, but this morning was still clear, sunny, and hot. I wore my waterproof boots and carried the waterproof hunting pants in my pack, hoping to get some rain later, but I was already drenched with sweat within the first mile.

Like other trails on the west side of our wilderness, this one starts by descending into a canyon, traversing down its west wall for about a mile up canyon. These canyons have steeper walls than most – sheer cliffs in some places – and the mostly exposed traverse through pinyon, juniper, and scrub oak forms the first chapter of the hike. As you traverse up canyon and descend toward the creek, more of the view ahead is revealed.

At the bottom you enter the riparian forest, with ponderosa pine forming the canopy and dense scrub willow lining the creek. In this very narrow canyon there’s no floodplain, and after crossing on stepping stones to the east bank, the trail continues upstream through the lush riparian forest for another third of a mile.

The third chapter consists of the thousand-foot climb up the eastern wall of the canyon, on a series of long switchbacks that progressively reveal more and more of the spectacular rock formations farther up the canyon. The slope above and below the switchbacks is often sheer, so the view is vertiginous.

At the top of the switchbacks, the trail cuts east into a shallow hanging valley lined with evocative rock formations. In pinyon-juniper-oak forest again, you work your way up to the head of this hidden valley, where finally you emerge onto a sort sort of saddle with a small rocky peak looming above.

The climb to that peak, on dozens of short switchbacks in loose rock at an average grade of 30%, is one of the hardest parts of the hike. Fortunately, it’s only 400 vertical feet! But when you get up there you have the most expansive views of the entire route: north to the crest of the range, east to the heart of the wilderness, west to the mountains of Arizona. This little peak forms the western edge of the rolling plateau you cross to reach the second canyon.

But even this central plateau is divided into distinct, memorable chapters. First, the long, mostly level walk on a surface of shattered white rock, winding between low scrub oak and manzanita and open patches of short ponderosa, mostly exposed with 360 degree views, feeling like you’re up in the sky although the elevation is only 7,200′.

Then you descend on ledges into a hidden valley, a couple hundred feet deep, where you cross a long patch of soft red soil, enter a dense ponderosa forest, and eventually begin climbing up a chaotic, deeply eroded slope which forms the next, and ugliest chapter of the hike.

That slope takes you to the rim of the second canyon, where you face the impossibly steep wall of Lookout Mountain, a long, nearly level ridge whose western wall consists mostly of 2,000′ tall talus slopes.

From this trail, Lookout Mountain is your theatrical backdrop as you begin to descend more than a thousand feet, in stages, into the second canyon.

The first stage is down the gully of a dry, vegetation-choked hanging drainage that you can’t see out of. This gets tighter and tighter, finally leading to a patch of shady mixed-conifer forest with such a shallow slope that it feels like a plateau.

The trail skirts this ledge and begins the final descent into the second canyon, which you dread, knowing you’ll have to climb up it on the way back. This part of the trail consists of loose rock with an average grade of 30%, zigzagging back and forth through a mixture of scrub oak and ponderosa along which you judge your progress by peeking through gaps in the forest at the wall of Lookout Mountain across the canyon.

Finally, again peering down through gaps in the forest and scrub, you spot more level ground below – the shady pine and fir forest above the elevated floodplain of the second creek. This is a huge relief!

That forest steps its way down to the grassy meadows of the elevated floodplain, where Lookout Mountain looms above at its full 2,000′ height, and you can barely hear the creek flowing below.

The trail continues steeply down to the willow thicket lining the creek. I was so hot and sweaty at this point I was looking forward to stripping down and taking a dip, but the wide creek is too shallow at this point, and when I took off my boots and socks, I realized that I had to keep the biomechanical tape and felt on my left foot and ankle – I’d need them on the return hike, and I wasn’t carrying spares. So all I could do was soak and rinse out my sweat-drenched hat and shirt and hope those would cool me a little.

Plus, monsoon clouds had been gradually building over the wilderness, stirring up cool breezes over the creek. So I spent the better part of an hour creekside, vowing to add spare tape and felt to my pack so I could immerse myself on future hot-weather hikes.

By the time I faced the brutal climb out of the second canyon, clouds had extended over it, giving me welcome shade. But in my compromised physical condition, it was still brutal and seemed to take forever – up the precipitous, rocky, seemingly endless switchbacks, up the claustrophobic, vegetation-choked drainage, and on the final climb in loose dirt at a 40% grade to the saddle at the top, where you face the steep descent on the chaotic eroded slope into the shallow hidden valley. Reaching that saddle felt like a major step forward in my recovery! I might not be able to hike as fast as I could a few months ago, but I could plod my way up the steepest slopes.

From there on, I had alternating sunlight and cloud shadow. Hoping for rain, all I got was occasional breezes and the sound of distant thunder from the east.

After crossing the plateau of white rock and scrub, I reached the little peak with the expansive view west, where I could see storms forming far away. Down another steep slope in loose rock, and out the hanging valley to the start of the switchbacks that descend back into the first canyon. It was a long descent, getting hotter the closer I got to the creek, simply due to reduction in elevation and the hothouse microclimate of the narrow canyon bottom.

The final traverse out of the first canyon seemed especially hot and endless. It wasn’t until an hour later, as I drove up the hill entering town, that I finally encountered rain, and by the time I got home it was a downpour.

Hot, Slow Climb Into the Sky

I was half inclined not to hike this Sunday. I hadn’t felt good on Saturday, and Sunday was forecast to be hot, reaching the low 90s in town.

I’d just finished repairing my deer-damaged 4wd Sidekick the day before. It seemed okay, but most of my favorite hikes involve long drives without a cell phone connection, and after an impact like that I wasn’t sure I wanted to immediately put it to the test.

There are typically two ways to get away from the heat: elevation and shade. But all the high-elevation hikes within an hour of town are either closed due to fire or involve long approaches through hot, overgrown low-elevation canyons.

Finally I realized that my best option actually involved the longest drive. One of the coolest places I know is a hanging canyon ranging from 8,500′-9,000′ down on the Arizona border, with a shady old-growth forest at its head. And most of the drive there retains full cell coverage and AAA road service would be available if the Sidekick broke down.

It was counterintuitive because if it was in the low 90s here, it would be 100 degrees at the entrance to that range, which is 1,000′ lower. But the trailhead is actually even higher than here – 6,500′ – and I would get there early enough so the climb to the canyon should be bearable.

The drive was a real leap of faith in my vehicle and my repair job. Not only did it start with 1-1/2 hours of high-speed, high-temperature driving, but it ended with a thousand-foot climb up the incredibly rough, rocky, high-clearance 4wd-only road to the trailhead, which few people besides me are willing to risk anymore. But the Sidekick performed perfectly.

I was drenched with sweat within the first half mile of the gradual climb up the first canyon. Our early monsoon rains had ensured that the trail was more overgrown by vegetation than ever, and I saw no evidence that anyone else had used it in the past month. Except bears! I found a continuous trail of fresh scat all the way up.

When I reached the switchbacks that take you to the high pass into the hanging canyon, I found a real puzzle. I was already fighting my way through thickets of thorny locust when I came upon big branches of elderberry that had been torn down, so that they blocked the trail and had to be climbed around. Dozens of mature branches, a dozen feet long and over 2″ thick, had been violently broken off, far back from the trail, requiring a long reach and a lot of strength. More strength in many cases than a human would have – and there was no sign humans had used this trail during the growing season, and why would a human pull down vegetation to block a trail anyway? It could only be bears, but bears don’t eat elderberries – all the berry clumps on the branches were intact.

Another surprise occurred when I reached out my thumb to touch a herbaceous leaf that reminded me of mint. I recoiled in pain at the lightest touch – it was stinging nettle! I’d never encountered stinging nettle in this region, but suddenly it seemed to be everywhere on this trail.

Wikipedia says stinging nettle is only native to the Old World, which is patently false. My aboriginal survival course in southeast Utah had included a lesson in how to cook and eat the native species. But in the more than 3 decades since then, I’d forgotten about them. On this trail, it was literally impossible to avoid touching them, so I was plagued by stings throughout the day. Why had they all sprung up suddenly this season, in this place, for the first time?

My lungs have turned out to be the slowest part of me to recover from their near-fatal crisis 2 months ago. Drenched with sweat, with little forest cover, I had to stop over, and over, and over again on the way up to the high pass, to catch my breath. When I finally crossed into the hanging canyon, and made the long traverse to the creek, it was loudly rushing, but it was no shadier and no cooler down there. The many crossings of the rocky, log-choked gully have always been a slow passage. As beautiful as it was, a riot of wildflower color, I found myself trudging and yearning to reach the upper end where the trail enters the shady forest.

I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to hike uphill. The slightest grade just wore me out. Would I ever recover the capacity I had before the illness?

I stopped at the Forest Service cabin, just below the crest, to rest in the shade of the big pines and firs. The trail to the crest is 4 miles, gaining 2,750 vertical feet. It’s always been a difficult, slow trail, but today it was taking me 3-1/2 hours to hike those 4 miles – painfully slow.

Somehow, leaving the cabin, I got a second wind. I couldn’t climb any faster, but I’d trained myself to walk at half my usual pace, which enabled me to go farther without stopping to rest. And the saddle at the crest trail junction, with its long view toward Mexico, was carpeted with yellow flowers. A young couple was coming back up the crest trail – like most people, they’d done the long, slow drive to the alpine campground several miles north, so they could do the easy crest hike, which involves little elevation change.

I’d started this hike not knowing how far I would get. But from the junction, it was an easy hike north through shady forest to the next saddle, so I continued that way.

I typically pick my turnaround point based on my planned end time minus my actual starting time, divided by two. Closer to home, I usually have 9 hours to hike in summer, but over here, 8 hours is usually the most I have, in order to reach the cafe before closing time.

But when I reached the saddle where I’d planned to end my hike, I realized that despite the ascent taking so long, the descent would be much shorter – at my usual, much faster, pace. That might give me extra time to climb the 9,700′ peak above the saddle.

It’s not much of a peak – the original south side forest burned by the 2011 wildfire has been replaced by aspen thickets, so there’s barely a view. But the remaining forest makes for a nice shady spot to lie in the grass, and the minimal view of distant peaks peeking above the young aspens reminds you that you’re high in the sky.

A variety of birds were passing through, there was a nice breeze, and monsoon clouds were forming all around, occasionally drifting over the sun and providing even more cooling shade. My clothes were so drenched with sweat from the hot climb that they wouldn’t dry out until long after the hike, but I’d learned to ignore that minor discomfort, whenever my body had a chance to temporarily cool off.

In the past, I’d always tried to hike as far as possible, so I was left with no margin on the return and had to descend way too fast, which was hard on my joints. But today I felt I had enough time to return slower than usual. Hah! My joints still didn’t like it at all.

The flies had been with me all the way up, but on the return they became much more aggressive – maybe because of the rising heat – so I finally pulled on my head net. And the stinging nettles seemed to be jumping out at me at every turn.

But I got back to the vehicle with plenty of time to reach the cafe, for that beer, that burrito, and that room for the night. Amazingly, despite how hard and slow it had been, I’d hiked over 10 miles and climbed almost 3,300′, which represented a significant improvement from last weekend. Maybe I really was recovering!