Max Carmichael's Blog, page 20

Turning of the Season

Two weeks without hiking! Life was only going to get harder in the weeks to come. I just had to get away for a day – maybe to that “range of canyons” on the Arizona border.

Like so many times before, I swore I would do an easy hike – from the first, most popular trailhead, a 9-mile out-and-back peak climb with 3,100′ elevation gain. Only a half-day hike, leaving me time for another short hike if I felt like it, an early burrito and beer, and a reasonable drive home before dark.

Since my last hike, our weather had flipped from monsoon heat to fall chill. Everyone agreed that this monsoon had been our best in over a decade. But most people had only experienced it in town, in the form of flooded streets, rain and hail on windows, pets frightened by thunder. I’d experienced it deep in the wilderness, soaking wet from sweat, dew, or cloudbursts, struggling through rampant vegetation, with lightning striking nearby. In this new cooler, drier regime, I found myself looking forward to winter.

At a thousand feet lower than home, the weather at my destination was forecast to be mild and partly cloudy, with no chance of rain.

I got an early start, but by the time I reached the trailhead, the parking area was filled with half a dozen vehicles. I checked the time. There was another hike I’d really been hoping to do here, but had decided would just take too long to get me home at a decent hour. It involved a slow drive up a rough 4wd road to the trailhead, and a 15-mile out-and-back, extending the last hike I’d done there, to the farthest southwest peak in the range. If I could fit it in, it would yield views over completely new terrain.

I did the math in my head. My goal would be to return to the cafe for burrito and beer before the 6pm closing time. I was early enough that I should be able to drive that 4wd road and reach the actual trailhead with enough time for an 8-1/2 hour hike, which on decent trails would yield at least 17 miles. 15 seemed totally doable, so I drove deep into the mountains and started up the 4wd road through rolling oak and juniper forest.

Someone had left the cattle gate open. The rocky road was bone-rattlingly bad as usual – I had to creep between 5 and 10 mph, switching into 4wd at the high-clearance part. I passed a parked pickup truck, and a half mile later, a second. Damn, what a busy day here.

But nobody besides me had made it all the way to the trailhead. Plenty of water was coming down the unnamed creek, from our wet monsoon and last week’s heavy rains. I set out up the trail, and within the first half mile met two bear hunters.

They were young guys, probably early 30s, tall and fit. One looked like an urban professional, the other seemed more like a skilled tradesman. I said there always seemed to be a lot of bear sign around here, but they pointed to a tall Gambel oak nearby and said there were no acorns to speak of, the bears were likely to be someplace else. They wished me a good hike and I continued past them up the trail.

This north slope was saturated with moisture, and the creek poured noisily through its rocky gully. Where the trail led across meadows, the grass stood chest-high.

Partway up the switchbacks to the waterfall overlook, in burn scar overgrown with oak and scrub, I came upon tall shrubs I’d seen before, bearing, to my surprise, what looked like black raspberries. They were thimbleberries, Rubus parviflorus, but I didn’t know it at the time. I tried one – slightly sweet, but mostly bitter. I tried another. All in all, not enough flavor to make them appealing, and I wondered idly if they might even be poisonous.

I continued climbing the steeper and steeper slope past the overlook to the high entrance to the hanging canyon. I was intending to make short work of this first part of the hike, where most of my elevation would be gained, so I could focus more on the crest part of the hike, which consisted of long traverses with only a few hundred feet of up and down, and those spectacular views. But I’d forgotten how steep this first part is.

And in the hanging canyon, the section along the creek is always slow as you work your way back and forth over boulders and through dense vegetation. That creek bottom is the coldest place I know in the Southwest, so I pulled on my sweater. Fall had already started to color the riparian foliage down there.

I met a forty-something backpacker coming down the creek. He said he’d driven to the campground on the crest and had spent a couple of nights along the crest trail. I should’ve asked him how he was planning to get back to his vehicle after dropping thousands of feet on this trail. But I was already running late.

Up out of the congested canyon bottom and into the old growth fir forest on the upper slope. I stopped at the Forest Service cabin to drink water and dig out snacks for lunch, and surprised two middle-aged day hikers, guys who looked like professionals from a big city, who were resting in the grass before returning down the trail. I’d never seen so many hikers in these mountains.

By the time I reached the crest trail junction in the high saddle, where intact forest ends at the burn scar, I’d used up almost 3 hours to go less than 4 miles. My goal for the day was looking unlikely, but I would go as far as I could.

The crest trail goes much faster, and at 9,000′, it was in transition from the last of the monsoon flowers to the beginning of fall color. Butterflies, mostly smaller ones, were swarming all over the trail ahead, but it was chilly up there and I had to pull on my sweater again. That would turn into a theme of the day – getting chilled, pulling on my sweater, getting sweaty, taking it off again.

On this good trail, I walked fast up to the junction below the summit of the range, and turned downhill to the west from there, traversing across a steep, burned north slope into more fir forest where the trail becomes slow again across talus partly buried under damp soil, moss, and lichen. I was seeing where the mountains stored moisture in a wet monsoon, and where the vegetation was responding to it.

From the forested saddle west of the high peak, I entered a new watershed, which I’d only just discovered on my last hike here. I’d found it to be a wonderland of rocks, and this is where today’s hike really began for me.

The time it had taken to reach this point proved that I’d miscalculated the distance to today’s goal. Whereas I’d believed it to be about 7-1/2 miles one-way, it was now looking like between 8 and 9, and much of that was always going to be slow. I was now hiking out a rugged, exposed ridgeline with lots of ups and downs, and at every little saddle along the way, I could spot the fire lookout on the peak I was heading for, and it didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

But what a trail! This ridge was interrupted regularly by rock outcrops through which the trail builders had threaded a narrow track, taking advantage of natural gaps in the rock. I would look at a wall of rock ahead and expect the trail to bypass it, but it climbed and zigzagged through instead, and there were often fields of wildflowers before and behind.

In the short saddles between outcrops, the trail got harder and harder to follow, but eventually I always came upon some sort of minimal cairn, sometimes just a single rock perched on a stump or boulder. I didn’t bring a map and was expecting the trail to cross over the ridge into a new watershed earlier, but it became obvious that I’d reach that part only after traversing the modest peak – 9,440′ Raspberry Peak – at the end of this ridge. And I ran out of time at the saddle just before the trail’s turning point. Checking the map later, I would find I’d gotten with two-thirds of a mile of my original destination, but the lookout tower due west of me still appeared no closer.

If I’d known how close I was, I might’ve been tempted to continue. But the lure of that beer and burrito was strong, and I’d already had too many experiences of driving home in the dark, hungry and exhausted, desperately needing a shower and too tired to eat when I finally arrived after bedtime.

I felt I’d timed my turnaround well, allowing a little less time for the return because it’s mostly downhill. So I didn’t rush back – in fact, I took time to enjoy the views, rocks, flowers, and butterflies, stopping often for photos. With the cooling weather, aspens were beginning to turn, yielding isolated patches of gold widely separated across the vast slopes.

I was dragging my feet a little before leaving the big, rocky southern canyon and crossing the watershed north. From the little forested saddle below the summit, I began picking my way faster through the buried talus. Heavier clouds had formed just west of the crest, and I wondered if I would get any rain.

From the trail junction below the summit, the good, smooth trail went fast, and I soon turned my back on those top-of-the-world crest views to drop into the hanging canyon. It struck me that despite running into 5 people along the lower trail, I hadn’t seen anyone on the crest. It was Sunday afternoon, and the weekend visitors were probably well on their way back to Tucson by now.

After working my way down the overgrown creek bottom, when I reached the rim of the hanging canyon and regained the broad view over the interior basin to the northeast, I realized my time was getting tight. My left knee was starting to hurt, so I dug out and strapped on my knee brace, which makes me feel a little like a “bionic man”. With the knee brace, I can pound my way down steep slopes with relative impunity.

The farther I went, the tighter my time was looking. I figured if I kept up the pace to the trailhead, I might just have enough time to reach the cafe. With the changing of the season, the sun was lower now and the last part of the trail was in shade. I was chilly but still drenched with sweat from the effort of hiking fast – not my favorite combination.

Finally I reached the vehicle, stashed my gear, and began driving down the rough road. Despite its violent bouncing and rattling, my vehicle wears good all-terrain tires, and I knew it could handle a little abuse, so I drove it much harder and faster than usual, watching the time as I went. When I reached the graded gravel road, I really started speeding. It was going to be super close.

In the end, I reached the cafe about 5 minutes before closing. There was only one other party in the tiny dining room, an elderly couple. This county is one of Arizona’s worst COVID hot spots, and the lodge website features a dire virus warning from a local doctor, but no one was masked, not even the staff. I ordered my beer and asked if they had a room available. It would be great to finish dinner, take a shower, and get a good night’s sleep before driving back early in the morning. Yes! They had a room.

Whenever I run into a backpacker, I envy them. And whenever I pass an empty campsite returning from one of these hikes, I yearn to pull over and stay the night. I’ve replaced much of the camping gear destroyed in last year’s house fire, but while working 6 days a week to get my house habitable I just don’t have the time or energy for camping or backpacking yet. That day will come.

Tough But Glorious

I needed to get up early on Monday and do hard physical work, so I didn’t want Sunday’s hike to beat me up or involve hours of driving. I was running out of ideas until I noticed a trail on the Forest Service “cleared trails” map that I’d never tried before, because it didn’t seem to involve enough elevation gain.

Ironically, it was a trail I’d already approached several times from the north. The last time I did the “rolling plateau between two canyons” hike, I’d gotten a glimpse of the country traversed by this new trail. It was at the southwestern edge of the big wildfire we’d had back in June, and from the north, I’d seen how the dying fire had formed a mosaic of burned and unburned habitat over there. There was a rocky peak southeast of the trail that I’d begun dreaming about bushwhacking to – south of the new trail there was a long series of rocky peaks and ridges in the midst of a trail-less area spanning about 50 square miles, which in itself is extremely tempting.

To get to this trail, you take the long dirt road up onto the mesa, then turn onto a gravel ranch road that runs out to a spur of the mesa that overlooks the deep valley of the creek the trail is named after. The road plunges down the mesa side into the valley, and you drive past the ranch, across the creek, and up the valley toward a second ranch. Although as the crow flies it’s less than 40 miles from town, the complicated route and topography make it feel incredibly remote, and the hidden valley where the ranches lie is quite beautiful, especially now at the end of a wet monsoon.

Considering the remoteness, I was surprised to find a vehicle already parked at the trailhead. The trail sets out up a low basin that curves to the left between the mountain wall and an arm of the mesa. The basin is dissected by many gullies, and the trail winds up and down and around across this low broken land of mesquite and scrub oak for a mile or so until it begins to climb toward the mountains. The surface here is the dreaded “volcanic cobbles”, my least favorite hiking surface, but it was early and I had plenty of energy so I didn’t mind it yet.

The temperature was mild when I started out, but the sky was clear and it was forecast to reach the low 80s in town. However, town is almost a thousand feet higher than the valley I was climbing out of. I was sweating pretty bad before I even climbed out of the basin.

I flushed two dozen quail out of the mesquite – half went left, the other half went right.

Finally the trail took me up into a narrow hanging canyon below the westernmost peak, where switchbacks led to a high pass into the interior of the mountains. The footing was terrible, but I was committed and just had to deal with it. A redtail hawk soared above the head of the canyon, then plunged into the pinyon-juniper-oak forest.

Suddenly I crossed the divide between west and east and saw the peak I’d been dreaming of climbing, far to the east across an incredibly rugged landscape of white cliffs and hoodoos. It was sudden, dramatic – one of those “rim of the world” viewpoints – an exciting new world that in itself justified today’s hike. As I proceeded east, the trail traversed the long eastern slope of the peak behind me, progressively revealing more and more of the white-rock landscape to the east.

Studying topo maps at home, I’d already checked out a possible route to the rocky peak along an outlying ridge that intersected my trail, and as I hiked I kept my eye on that ridge. I didn’t really have much hope of reaching the peak today – it would probably be a 20 mile out and back hike with almost half of it routefinding and bushwhacking off trail – but if the routefinding and bushwhacking were too challenging, I could continue on this trail down to the creek for a reasonable 15 mile day hike. As I said, I didn’t want to beat myself up…

The traverse dipped in and out of deep ravines, and the farther I went, the better I could see how much farther I still had to go, just to get to the ridge that connects to the rocky peak. That ridge lies far above the big creek for which this trail is named – the creek I’d looked down into from the north on my last “rolling plateau” hike.

I’d lost count of all the side canyons I’d already crossed on this traverse when the trail began climbing a steep slope, and I suddenly emerged on a little forested plateau – the second dramatic ascent on this hike – a beautiful Ponderosa pine “park” that extended for hundreds of yards and was almost perfectly level. The occasional burned shrub and scatter of ashes at the base of the tall pines showed that a surface fire had been through here, only a few months ago, but the trees, having dropped their lower limbs long ago, had escaped it.

I’d had to put on my head net on the way up to the pass, but the flies in this pine park were the worst I’d ever found. They were so thick on the net over my face it was almost hard to see through them.

At the far end of the park, where the trail dropped steeply toward the ridge below, I saw that the fire had burned up the slope, killing the pines at the upper edge, without torching the canopy of the park itself. Amazing good fortune, and another lesson in wildfire ecology.

When I finally reached the ridge below, I got my first view north over the deep canyon of the big creek, to the terrain I’d hiked in the past. It was the second “rim of the world” viewpoint on this hike – not so sudden as the first, but dramatic nonetheless. And after another quarter mile or so climbing over bare white conglomerate and down through shady pine forest, I reached a junction where the trail I’d hiked from the north ended at the trail I was on today. The northern trail climbed steeply out of the deep canyon, and as I was photographing the trail sign, a backpacker suddenly stepped into my picture – the guy whose vehicle I’d seen at the trailhead.

He was about my age, and he’d been out alone for two nights, camping in the pine park the first night, and on the creek below last night.

I was now in the burn scar. The next section of trail wasn’t listed as recently cleared, so I didn’t know what to expect. It contined for the better part of a mile along the burned ridge, overgrown with wildflowers and with no recent tread – you had to be right on top of the old trail to see where the path was. But with all my experience it was only hard to follow in one or two places.

This area was like a vast, living textbook on how landforms, geology, and habitat shape wildfire – from the pine park where the trees’ growth habit protected them, to the broad slopes of solid rock which support only sparse fuels, to the cliffs, hoodoos, and boulder mazes which interrupt and redirect the fire’s growth.

Without forest cover, I could easily see where I’d have to leave the trail to climb toward the rocky peak. It turned out to be the place where the ridge trail began to descend into the canyon of the big creek. The slope I needed to bushwhack up looked doable – the white rock didn’t support continuous vegetation, although there were outcrops and rimrock I’d have to climb around.

As I started to traverse the first peak of this outlying ridge, I discovered it was best to just go straight up, because the scrub was sparser near the top. Up there, I found I could work my way southeastward along the ridge, where each little peak was slightly higher than the previous.

Then I came to the base of a dramatic hill of solid white rock. I traversed steeply up its western slope on giant stone steps, and on the other side, found a maze of boulders that led down to the next little saddle at the base of the next little peak. Descending through that boulder field looked hard but was actually fun.

I was starting to watch the time – I’d only had 45 minutes available when I’d left the trail. In the end, I was only able to climb two more of the little hills on the ridge leading to the big rocky peak. But it felt great to be exploring new terrain and doing it off-trail. For the first time in months, I wasn’t drenched, I wasn’t in pain, and I was actually having fun on a hike!

As usual, now that I knew my route, the return to the trail went smoother. Cumulus clouds had formed all across the region, and now, half the time I was in shade. I was looking forward to climbing to the pine park again, and hiking the traverse with the long view over the white rock interior. What a wonderful day!

My joy turned to aggravation when I crossed the east-west pass and began the final descent, on that terrible surface of loose, roughly foot-sized rock that went on for miles. I suddenly realized something that had been only on the verge of consciousness during the past three years.

I used to believe our Mojave Desert mountains represent some of the ruggedest terrain on earth, and my new local trails in southwest New Mexico are tame in comparison. But actually, hiking in the desert, where there are no trails, is actually much easier than hiking the trails of the Gila Wilderness. The geology here, where all the rock is ancient volcanic ejecta or tuff-based volcanic congomerate, is just not conducive to trails. I’m convinced that the dangerous, unstable surface of most of our trails is a reason why our trails get so little traffic – ironically, the poor footing helps protect our wilderness, because you have to be really tough and really determined to penetrate it.

It’s conceivable that I’ll eventually just give up trying to hike these trails. It’s just too hard to avoid injury on all those loose rocks.

But I made it to the vehicle. 14 miles out and back, and the elevation gain had been better than I’d expected. The drive out, during the long sunset, was glorious. Although rain hadn’t been forecast, it was actually raining in town as I drove home, and had just ended when I arrived.

Conquered By Flowers

The Hike

Needing another easy hike close to home, I decided on the 8-1/2-mile-one-way ridge trail a half hour’s drive north. I’d been hiking this trail for more than a decade, following it all the way to the isolated stock pond at the far end of the ridge several times in the past 3 years. Much of the forest burned last year, but the trail had been cleared after the fire and I expected no problems, especially since it’s one of our most popular trails. Today I figured I’d try hiking it all the way to the opposite trailhead at the bottom of the other end of the ridge, for some additional elevation gain on the way back. A fairly easy 17 mile out-and-back hike with about 4,000′ of accumulated elevation.

This trail mostly traverses the very steep north slope, which holds a lot of moisture even in dry years, so between spring and fall I expect pretty wildflowers in shady, moist pockets along the way.

The day started quite cool, but the afternoon high was forecast to reach 90. The climb to the ridge top was uneventful until about a mile in, when I met two younger women on their way down. One was my former massage therapist, someone I’d known ever since moving here. She said the trail ahead was overgrown with shoulder-high wildflowers – she’d tried to take a picture of her friend, and all that was visible was her head, floating on the flowers.

The climb was exposed enough to be hot, and as I began to sweat, the flies began to swarm, requiring my old trusty head net.

Not long after that, I reached the start of the long traverse, and found myself wishing, for the first time in years, that I’d dropped acid before this hike. After 15 years of hiking in our Southwest monsoon, on dozens of hikes in dozens of mountain ranges, I’d never seen anything like this ridge. The wildflowers were mind-boggling, and the pollinators were swarming. The only place I’ve seen more sphinx moths is in my beloved Mojave Desert, where they swarm by the thousands on blooming desert willows.

Most hikers, less driven than me, only follow this trail for the first 2 or 3 miles. Although the flowers were thick and indeed shoulder-high, the path through the flowers was fairly evident for the first two miles. But then it got harder.

Tread – ground that’s been walked on regularly – became scarcer and scarcer. I knew this trail like the palm of my hand, but since it was mostly hidden under the dense wildflowers, post-fire erosion and old postholes from equestrians made it hazardous. I fell again and again, and it became obvious that no one else had gone farther than two miles since the start of the monsoon in late June.

I found this strange, because in the past I’d usually found evidence of at least one intrepid hiker that walked the whole ridgeline. Then I remembered my former hiking buddy pointing out that I was the only local hiker she knew that hiked in “bad” weather – the hot days of summer, the storms of the monsoon, the snows of winter. Apparently everyone else avoids long hikes during monsoon season when they may be caught in a storm.

I chuckled, thinking about all the government and crowdsourced trail guides that list “best times to hike this trail” – usually spring or fall. I find it strange that people actually follow that kind of guidance, missing entire regimes of ecological wonder.

After the two mile point, the trail climbs very steeply to a long, narrow plateau, the high stretch of the ridge, where the forest mostly avoided destruction in last year’s fire. There, the tread is normally sparser, and I found an unbroken mass of wildflowers and no remaining tread. I had to rely on my visual memory, and pushing my way slowly through, with many false starts, I was somehow able to trace the route, finding the occasional cairn completely buried under the flowers. I was careful to trample the flowers as I went, otherwise I might’ve become completely lost on the way back.

But I was finally stumped, near the end of the narrow plateau where the trail becomes vague even without the overgrowth. I suddenly realized that in 2-1/2 hours I’d gone less than 4 miles, burning up 45 minutes just to cover the last half mile. Once again, this wonderful monsoon had ruined my plans. I turned around and laboriously retraced my steps, vowing to treat myself to a restaurant meal and a draft beer on my early return to town. One of the highlights of the descent from the plateau was a stumble over a hidden rock, immediately followed by a tall thorny locust grabbing my head net, so I had to scramble for footing to avoid falling and ripping the net.

The title of this Dispatch is adapted from the lyrics of one of my favorite original songs, “Fish in the River“, which nobody but me seems to like.

The Flowers The Pollinators

Cold Feet

Stressed out almost to the breaking point by the struggle to get my life back, I’d been pushing myself too hard on recent hikes. I’d been having adventures, and people seemed to enjoy reading about them, but few seemed to realize that I actually hadn’t been having much fun. Au contraire, I’d been suffering and ending up miserable in one way or another after every hike.

This Sunday I wanted to break the pattern and do a hike that was easy but beautiful. Unfortunately that turned out to be much easier said than done. As I’ve mentioned in the past, southwest New Mexico is just not my favorite habitat – I’d rather be in the desert.

Finally I decided to return to the 10,000′ peak with the fire lookout an hour east of home. It was a fairly easy hike – 11 miles round-trip but only 2,000′ of elevation gain – with long views, and there were those grassy meadows just below the peak surrounded by giant old growth firs. If I could restrain myself from continuing down the other side to get more mileage and elevation, maybe I could just hang out in the grass and relax for a change. Listen to the birds and watch the butterflies.

The desire to just hang out in nature is often only wishful thinking. In this case, the grass in the meadows was heavy with dew. So I continued down the back side to the saddle. On the way, I watched a big storm developing and dumping rain a few miles away to the northwest.

By the time I reached the saddle, the storm had spread over me and a few drops were falling. I thought, great, I’ll spread out my poncho as a shelter and hang out here under the big ponderosas. But it turned out my cheap poncho was too small and had no grommets, and anyway, I wasn’t in the habit of carrying cord to anchor it to trees and branches. Without shelter, I couldn’t sit down – I had to keep moving. The only thing I could do was give up on this hike and head back home in the rain.

For the first time this season, I was actually cold. The temperature had dropped into the sixties, and the rain and humidity were sapping my body heat. Ironically, I’d left my emergency sweater at home today, because I’d been too hot on every hike so far this summer. I could see the storm was surrounding the peak now, so I changed into my rain pants and poncho. Hopefully the poncho would act as a thermal barrier and keep me warm.

It occurred to me that this was the first time a storm had noticeably reduced the ambient temperature during this year’s monsoon. In past monsoons, afternoon storms had almost instantly lowered the temperature by as much as 30 degrees. That was one of their best impacts. Our climate had definitely changed, in a way that was likely to be catastrophic. Despite all the rain we were getting, the average temperatures this summer felt much, much higher than in the past.

As I started climbing back up toward the peak, the rain was light at first, and I was feeling fine. Then about halfway up, I was suddenly hit by a barrage of hail, and for the next half hour, I climbed through a deluge of mixed rain and hail. The trail turned into a creek and I had to walk above it through dense, soaking wet grass and brush. When I was only a few hundred yards from the peak, lightning struck it, followed by one of the most violent thunderclaps I’ve ever heard. There was no place to shelter so I just kept hiking, looking forward to getting home early since I hadn’t hiked as far as usual.

By the time I crossed the peak and started my descent, the hail had stopped and the rain had lightened up, but my feet were soaked inside my boots. A mile down the mountain the rain finally stopped and I changed into dry socks. But within another mile the water in my boots had soaked through the new socks. They were “Smartwool”, but they weren’t working – my feet were freezing.

A mile farther down the mountain, a gale force wind rose out of the west, and a new storm began. The trail turned into a creek again and the normally difficult rocky stretch had been eroded and made harder to walk on. It was wonderful that we were having this wet monsoon, but every hike seemed to be turning into an ordeal. Maybe I should just stop hiking until the monsoon ends – but then I would have to work to rebuild my conditioning.

The worst part of the day turned out to be the drive home. I hadn’t brought a dry pair of shoes and socks, and driving barefoot is not an option with my foot condition, so I had to drive home in cold, wet boots. It felt like my feet were encased in sponges soaked with freezing water. I had the heater on, but it took almost the entire drive to warm them up.

Others have probably noticed that I’m strongly achievement oriented. My peace of mind depends on accomplishing stuff I’m passionate about. But for more than a year, since the house fire, I’ve been unable to work on music, art, or my book project. Managing the repairs on my house is like pulling teeth. These hikes are my only chance to achieve something really satisfying.

People who function as an integral part of their habitats – subsistence cultures who provide for their own needs instead of shopping in the capitalist consumer economy – are always aware that immersing yourself in nature is hard work – dangerous and often unpleasant. I don’t hunt, fish, or farm, but by hiking all year ’round in all kinds of weather I avoid some of the illusions of the civilized, “recreational” lifestyle. And during a wet monsoon like this, hiking for pleasure is seldom even an option.

My Favorite Trail?

I was hankering to get back to my favorite trail, the rollercoaster hike that takes me across two rocky canyons and the rolling plateau in between, with spectacular views at almost every point. The weather was forecast to be warm but not hot, with the potential for some afternoon cloud cover, if not a bit of rain.

Descending into the first canyon, the first thing I noticed was the flies. They were everywhere today, not just in the humid canyon bottom. I decided to try ignoring them at first.

Halfway down I came upon one of the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen, lounging right on the trail. I grew up obsessed with snakes, and despite decades of forgetfullness I figured it for a kingsnake or milk snake. Back home I would identify it as an Arizona/Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake – my first.

The creek had been dry on my last visit, three weeks into the monsoon. Now it was roaring, and I had to find a stick to stabilize my crossing over flooded steppingstones. One of my boots got wet, but I figured it would dry out soon. The crossing was precarious enough that as I continued the hike I scouted for a pair of sticks to use on my return, and left them along the trail where I could easily spot them later.

There had been two city vehicles at the trailhead –  first time I’d seen anyone else there – and only a mile into the trail I saw two men about my age camping on the bank of the creek. Now I knew I had the rest of the trail to myself.

Despite the mild temperature and the steep north slope being in shade, it was humid enough that I was drenched with sweat on the long climb out of the canyon, and the flies gave me no peace. After one had flown up my nose and another down my throat, I finally gave up and pulled on my head net. It was hard wearing it while sweating so much, and I still hoped the flies would fade away at higher elevations, but no such luck – they stayed with me all day.

I was trying to maintain a steady, relentless pace, because I wanted to go farther than before, to the bottom of the third canyon. The only place where it’s possible to go fast is the middle rise of the plateau between first and second canyons. I hadn’t seen any human tracks on the climb up, but suddenly on that middle rise I found a recently trampled annual plant. After that I looked closely for tracks but could only spot animal sign, until I finally neared the far edge of the plateau, climbing out of the last deep hollow toward the saddle above the West Fork. There I found a track that at first looked like a boot print, but which I eventually realized was from a big bear.

I started down into the deep canyon of the West Fork, with the long, talus-striped wall of Lookout Mountain towering above on the opposite side. It was slower going than before due to additional deadfall, and the steep, rocky trail was as treacherous as ever.

One of the points you most look forward to on this hike is after that brutal descent, entering the parklike ponderosa pine forest at the bottom of the trail, above the west bank of the West Fork. I’d been a little worried about crossing the West Fork, but easily found two sticks and adequate steppingstones. As before, I left the sticks where I could find them on my return.

After all our recent rain, the less-maintained trail beyond the creek turned out to be densely overgrown. Clearly nobody but me was using this trail. Most people only walked the first mile, to the first creek, and no one except me had climbed to the plateau this summer, let alone penetrated all the way to the West Fork.

As I fought my way up the steep traverse across the base of Lookout Mountain, it was starting to dawn on me that despite this being my favorite trail, it was damn hard, and damn slow going. I’d been imagining the extension to the third creek just in terms of miles and elevation, but what with the steep and rocky trail, the humidity, the flies, and the chance of rain, it became an excessively long, slow ordeal.

Eventually I reached the farthest point I’d hiked to in the past – the saddle where the traverse begins descending into the third canyon. I was pretty much spent, but I just had to go a little farther, to make this day’s hike worthwhile.

In the end, I descended far enough to see into the third canyon. There was a storm building over it, and the canyon itself turned out to be rockier and a little prettier than I’d expected. I got to a point where the trail skirted a cliff edge that gave a good view both upstream and down. It was time to turn back, but I was glad I’d achieved that new view.

The rain caught me on the way back, just as I reached the saddle below Lookout Mountain. It came down pretty hard, but huddling under a small juniper, it took me 15 minutes to change into my new rain pants, by which time the rain had ended. Such is our weather. However, I was glad I had those pants on while pushing through the wet vegetation that overgrew the trail.

As I returned toward and across the West Fork, the storm spread north and west over the second canyon. I always want to stop and hang out in the parklike forest on the west bank, but I’d had to make so many stops I was now behind schedule.

It started to rain again just as I was starting to climb that brutal slope out of the canyon. So I switched hats and prepared to don my poncho, only for the rain to stop again. But the flies were relentless.

I was so worn out, and sweating so bad, it seemed to take forever to climb that slope. I was literally stopping about every hundred feet to catch my breath. What an incredible relief to reach the saddle and start back across the plateau!

The storm dispersed as I headed west. I was now moving as fast as I could, and continuing to work up a sweat even when going downhill. The long switchbacks into the first canyon seemed interminable, and I had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes, through the head net, which drove the flies nuts.

Nearing the first creek, I grabbed the two sticks I’d left in the morning. But after the day’s rain over the head of the canyon, the creek had risen over all the stepping stones. I tried to add more but the creek was just too wide and deep now. I’d simply have to try crossing barefoot – something really dangerous for my foot condition.

Using the sticks to stabilize myself, I stepped across very slowly through the rushing flood waters, across the rocky creek bottom, feeling carefully with each step for footing that wouldn’t put weight on the ball of my left foot. I finally made it across and immediately sat down on the rough rocks of the bank to dry my feet and pull my boots back on. The whole process had taken another 15 minutes – I calculated that over an hour of my hike had been used up in stops like this. It was turning into a 9-1/2 hour hike, almost as long as my “longest hike”, despite only being 14 miles total.

The blister on my little toe had returned, slowing me down even more. The sun was just setting as I reached the vehicle. I wouldn’t get home until 8:30. Fortunately I had a frozen burrito left, to warm up in the microwave…

The Longest Day

Insomnia Saturday night…only 3 or 4 hours of sleep. When my alarm went off at 6 am, I had no faith in my ability to get back to sleep, so I got up and prepared for my Sunday hike. I felt half dead, and figured I’d just go as far as I could, and stop for a nap along the trail if I ran out of steam.

I’d already decided to take the trail I’d hiked most frequently and used to consider my favorite. How things have changed in only two years! When I first hiked this trail, the 10 miles to the crest and back was two miles too far. Now, 15 miles doesn’t seem far enough.

Last time I’d been over here, I’d discovered a trail crew had cut a path through the many deadfall and blowdown logs that’d accumulated since the last trail work in 2019. I wondered if they’d continued up on the ridge, where the trail snakes along the crest into the heart of the range, and where I’d been exploring farther and farther over the past year, bushwhacking over deadfall and through thickets of thorny locust. If they’d cleared that part of the trail, I might be able to make it all the way to the junction saddle. That would be pretty cool.

I wore my new “upland hunting” pants, in case of rain. The day started out cool, but the lining in the damn pants ensured that I immediately overheated down in the humid jungle of the canyon bottom. And the flies – gnats, really – swarmed me from the beginning, so I quickly got tired of swatting and donned my head net.

Two and a half miles in, not far from where I’d encountered a rattler on my last visit, I was forcing my way through the jungle when I spotted a rattlesnake tail receding across the trail right in front of me. It disappeared under the dense vegetation on my left, rattling weakly. I started pushing through the equally dense vegetation on my right, but that triggered a second rattle. There were two snakes, one on each side!

I retreated out of the thicket and found a broken limb that made a good walking staff. I returned to the snake spot and began probing ahead through the vegetation on both sides of the trail. No response. I crossed the jungly patch and passed a small tree. More rattling on my left. After peering into the vegetation below the tree, I finally spotted the snake, coiled in the shadows. Interesting. I wondered if this was the snake I’d encountered nearby, weeks earlier. And now it had a mate.

I left a small stick across the trail to remind me of the location when I returned in the afternoon. And I used the staff to probe for snakes while crossing thickets up ahead.

The thickets, the hot pants, the humidity, and the snake factor were all slowing me down. I had to stop regularly to rinse my sweaty head net and hat in the creek. I knew I wouldn’t get very far in these lined pants. I planned to stop at the base of the switchbacks, about 3-1/2 miles into the hike, and take them off. Beyond that, I’d be climbing out of the canyon bottom, and the trail would be mostly clear until the crest.

The pant legs are cut super wide, and zip up to the knee, so you can, with a certain amount of struggling, get them on and off while wearing boots. So I climbed the mountain in my skivvies, which felt great! Once the pants were rolled up in my pack, I realized I should never start a hike wearing them. I should simply always bring them along, and switch pants when the going gets wet.

Highlights of the ascent were giant, beautiful fungi, and a Montezuma quail – my first! That quail simply refused to fly away – it kept hiding behind clumps of bunch grass only a few feet off the trail, where it kept bobbing its head up briefly to see what I was doing.

Just past the spring below the peak, the steep trail through the forest was blocked by a rope hanging from a ponderosa branch, about 20 feet above. Tied to it were 3 large carabiners, and there was another long rope wrapped separately around the tree trunk. Someone had obviously been camping at the spring, and had constructed this elaborate setup to lift their food out of reach of bears. But they’d walked away without it. This was the second time this summer I’d come upon things left attached to trees in the wilderness – a bad trend of careless forest users. I pulled both ropes down, coiled them up, and stashed them in my pack to carry out.

I was really happy to find that the recent trail crew had cut a path through the dozens of logs blocking the trail along the crest. Despite my slow ascent, I was now determined to head for the distant saddle. I figured if the trail ahead continued to be passable, I had just enough time to reach it.

But what I found was perplexing – and much harder.

Past the saddle at 9,500′, a wide swath had been cleared through the thickets of aspen and locust, continuing down through the stand of fir that’d been blocked by dozens of deadfall aspen. On the other side, an eerie 8-foot-wide swath of trail had been completely cleared, like a firebreak, for a few hundred yards. Then it stopped, and the old path continued through locust thorns. My bare legs were soon bleeding from multiple scratches and I had to stop and pull my hot upland pants back on. Fortunately there was a good breeze blowing across the crest.

That’s when I realized I’d left my snake staff a mile or so behind – and I noticed I’d also lost the splint I wear to keep my trigger thumb at bay. This is only one of several health problems that have accumulated since the house fire, and I haven’t had time to treat properly. It has to be special-ordered and takes up to a week to replace, but over time the fit gets loose, and I wasn’t surprised it’d fallen off. It’s just hard living without it.

Descending the ridge, I discovered the trail crew had indeed cut through all the logs across the trail, but except for that short “firebreak”, they hadn’t done anything about the thorny locust overgrowing the trail and often completely blocking it.

I fought my way down and across to the farthest point I’d reached in the past, and kept going past that. The locust thorns just kept getting worse, to the point where you couldn’t even see a trail ahead.

Then suddenly another “firebreak” appeared – a several hundred yard clear swath, isolated in the middle of nowhere. It was welcome but didn’t make sense. Why would they clear these isolated stretches and do nothing with the rest of the trail?

It was taking much longer than expected and I was running out of time. I kept misreading the landforms ahead, thinking I was almost there, and that’s what drew me forward, despite how difficult it was.

Finally the trail switched to the opposite side of the ridge, and I could see what had to be the junction saddle, much farther ahead and hundreds of feet lower. I’d come too far to stop, so I kept going, through a broad burn scar choked with thorns.

I came to a forested rock outcrop, behind which, but much lower, I could sense the saddle. The vague trail continued down a deeply eroded bowl, then abruptly stopped at a big blowdown which was completely overgrown. Massive trees had fallen every which way across the trail, and locust had grown up between them, forming an impassable wall. The trail crew’s work ended here, only a few hundred yards from the saddle. It was amazing to get so close and be unable to go any farther!

Still, from the rock outcrop, I had a great view across the spectacular, almost inaccessible big canyon I’d fought my way into earlier this year.

I was now way behind schedule. I try to get home by 7 to warm up leftovers for dinner, but it was now looking like, despite getting an early start, I’d be 30 minutes to an hour late. I’d been wondering all day if I’d get any rain to further test the new pants, and working my way back up the ridgeline, I could see rain falling from heavy clouds a few miles to the north. An occasional crash of thunder reached me, but the storm didn’t seem to be moving my way.

It took just as long to fight my way back up that ridge as it had to fight down it – exacerbated by the 1,500′ climb. Fortunately my insomnia hadn’t caught up with me – I still had plenty of energy. And even wearing those hot pants, the ridgetop breeze and sporadic cloud shadows kept me relatively cool.

Finally I crossed the 9,500′ saddle and began my descent. Since walking too fast was regularly causing me pain, I paced myself. Halfway down the switchbacks I stopped at the big boulder pile to fill my water bottle. I happened to glance down, and there was my thumb splint! Out of the dozens of places where I stopped on this hike, I’d lost it here, and by accident, found it here hours later!

When I reached the canyon bottom, the swarms of flies found me. I picked up another branch to probe for rattlesnakes, but when I reached the spot where they’d been in the morning, didn’t find any.

It was only a few hundred yards farther that the familiar rattling started. There was a huge rattlesnake a few yards away, in rocks above the trail on my right. I photographed it and continued, but another rattling started immediately, below the trail on my left. There were two of them – they must be the same pair, on opposite sides of the trail, just as before! I’d never encountered this many rattlesnakes before – as much as I hike, I usually only see two or three a year.

I wasn’t walking slow, but I was really going to be late. I realized I wouldn’t get home until after 8, and I’d be exhausted.

The sun had just set by the time I reached the vehicle, but it was still plenty light out. I offloaded my gear into the right places and dug my iPad out of hiding so I’d have music on the hour-plus drive. Finally I got into the driver’s seat, belted up, and felt my shirt pocket for my sunglasses. They weren’t there!

I checked all around the front seat and in my duffel bag. I got out and looked under the seats. Nothing. I freaked out. I’d paid $150 for those, out of desperation, on my recent trip to Indianapolis. I’d tried cheap sunglasses from the drugstore in Silver City but they hurt my ears. I’d looked at REI in Phoenix, enroute, but they only had a half dozen pairs on display, all over $200. Sunglasses are surprisingly hard to find if you don’t live in an affluent neighborhood in a huge metropolitan area.

I got out of the vehicle, opened the rear door, and scanned the ground all around. Then I trudged up toward the trailhead. I knew I’d been wearing them on the hike back – maybe I’d absentmindedly dropped them near the trailhead. But I’d left the vehicle running – first I’d have to go back, turn it off, and lock up.

It was on the walk back to the vehicle that I spotted my sunglasses sitting on the corner of the rear bumper, behind where the rear door hinges open. That was a place where I never would’ve set them consciously or intentionally. There was simply no reason for them to be there. I guess the insomnia was finally catching up with me – not to mention the lingering PTSD, which often makes me feel like an idiot.

I was treated to a spectacular cloud show, amid occasional sparse showers, on the drive home.

I got back at 8:30. I was too tired to eat, so I just swallowed a shot of protein supplement and took a quick shower. I’d hiked over 16 miles and climbed over 5,000′, but it had taken me 10-1/2 hours.

Summer 2021 Escape

Part 1: Fat Basketball Players’ Retreat

My temporary living space is dominated by a desk, covered with piles of paper. Each pile represents one of the 6-8 major projects I’m juggling simultaneously. It’s the elephant in the house – I can’t ignore it, as long as I’m in that place I can’t avoid that desk and the obligations, demands, and arguments I’m embroiled in as I struggle to get my life back.

Suddenly there was an unexpected hiatus over at my real, empty, fire-damaged, long-under-repair house – a flooring crew was refinishing the wood floors, and no other work could go on for a couple of weeks – hence I was experiencing no demands from, or arguments with, the contractor. Instead of rejoicing I fell into a deep depression. I still had so much to do, and so many deadlines to meet, and that desk still dominated my living space, demanding that I spend every day working. I literally had to escape, to preserve my sanity.

The only real option was the funky alpine resort village 3 hours north of here, where I’ve always stayed in the cheap, fishing-themed motel. All their rooms were empty at midweek, but the new owners refuse to communicate directly with customers, requiring all reservations to be made online, 24 hours in advance, and it took me two days of calling and emailing and fruitlessly exploring other options to learn this. And by then it was the weekend and they were all booked up.

But I was temporarily flush with “funny money” from insurance, and finally, I located a much more expensive 2-bedroom vacation cabin that hadn’t been booked yet – apparently the last lodgings available in the area. And the property manager actually answered their phone and happily took my same-day reservation.

Fortunately, since I was still following my COVID shopping routine of stocking up on two weeks’ worth of food in advance, I didn’t have to shop. I just had to pack, and this would give me a chance to test my new high-performance camping cooler – one of the few items of fire-destroyed camping gear I’d been able to replace so far.

I called ahead and made a reservation for dinner at the only restaurant in town, and raced up the mostly empty highway through the long series of mountain ranges between here and there. I arrived just in time to check in before the office closed. My heart sank when I walked in the little cabin, saw the furniture, and felt the beds.

The beds consisted of super-soft, 4-inch thick memory foam on top of thin, soft mattresses. When you put pressure on the beds, you seemed to sink endlessly down into them, which is the worst thing possible for back pain. Who actually likes soft mattresses? Fat people? And the living room consisted of an overstuffed fake leather recliner and a futon couch, both of which seemed to be designed for 7-foot-tall basketball players. The ergonomics of this cabin were far worse than the cheap motel room, whose pillowy bed had triggered an episode of severe lower back pain the last time I’d come up here.

But I’d learned my lesson back then, and hoped to avoid back pain now by sleeping only on my stomach, and sitting only on the straight-backed wooden kitchen chairs. There was no wifi, but that was probably a good thing. And the restaurant was only a 10 minute walk away on the gravel roads. It was cool up here, so I changed into warmer clothes and strolled over, carrying my rain shell just in case.

Part 2: Day of the Fungids

The next day was Friday, and I was hoping to hit my favorite nearby trail before the weekend rush. In fact, I realized I should now be able to do the full loop for the first time, hiking up one route to the top and returning down the other. It totalled 17 miles, but involved less than 3,000′ of accumulated elevation gain.

I drove the shortcut, the rough backcountry road through alternating mixed-conifer forest and vast grassy meadows across the rolling, 9,000′ plateau to the trailhead, where I parked next to a new, lifted Toyota pickup where two college-age guys were preparing to start a backpack. They were both at least six inches taller than me. All I had to do was shoulder my pack and lock the vehicle, so I took off while they were still getting ready.

I crossed the big meadows around the mouth of the East Fork of the Little Colorado, and stopped after about a half mile, as usual, to stretch, and to tighten and secure my bootlaces. The young guys caught up and passed me there.

But, also as usual, I was full of energy at the start of this hike, and soon caught up with them again as the three of us climbed through the fantastic sandstone boulders that are the highlight of this trail.

Halfway up this first slope, we passed a party of two young couples who were camping in the forest below the trail – only two miles from the trailhead. Like on my last trip to these mountains, I was surprised to find so many young people “slackpacking” – hiking only a short distance to camp near a trailhead, something my generation would consider pointless.

I was on the young guys’ tail all the way to the big rock exposure at the top of the ridge, and passed them where they had stopped there to take in the view. I knew there was a second rock exposure farther on, also with a good view, and I never saw them again.

I remembered seeing a lot of mushrooms on my last visit here during monsoon season, but nothing like this time. Mushrooms were so plentiful they became the theme of the hike – especially the flamboyant Amanita muscaria. But the wildflowers came a close second.

From the big rock exposures at the top of the first ridge, the trail continues climbing the ridgeline through dense spruce forest with no views, so I kept racing upward. Near the point were I’d stopped and turned back on my first and longest previous hike here, I caught up with and passed a solo backpacker, another really tall guy, probably in his 40s. It made me wonder. I was doing this entire trail system as a day hike. There were no connecting trails, so why were so many people doing it as a backpack? It seemed at best only a one-night trip, which didn’t seem worth all the effort of backpacking. Sure, you could camp out at the crest, but there wasn’t any place to go from there except back down.

Shortly after passing the backpacker, I reached the burn scar near the top, where the east route becomes the west route.

This burn scar in spruce forest, at over 11,000′ elevation, is an eerie place, but during this abundant monsoon it was teeming with verdant shrubs and annual wildflowers, and water trickled down across the trail at many points.

Storms had been forecast for the whole weekend, but so far, although cloud cover came and went, I could see nothing menacing overhead. The temperature was perfect, which was probably lucky for me, as I was testing out a new pair of pants.

My regular pants were heavy cotton, and had been selected for thorn-resistance. But during this monsoon I’d suffered so much from waterlogged pants wicking moisture into my boots, so I’d spent some time researching both waterproof and thornproof pants.

REI and the other “hiker” brands don’t address this need at all – they assume their yuppie customers will stick to trails or climb snowy peaks devoid of thorns. REI staff in Tucson actually admitted to me, to their chagrin, that despite being in the arid southwest, they get the same inventory as their counterparts in Seattle. My only recourse, as with my boots, was to research the hunting suppliers. That’s where I learned that thornproof and waterproof pants constitute part of the “upland” hunting wardrobe – applying to hunters of non-aquatic game birds like pheasant and grouse, because they have to bushwhack through thorny thickets, often during storms or in heavy morning dew.

I’d ordered an affordable but highly-rated pair of U.S.-made upland hunting pants, and so far my only problem with them was the lining. It hadn’t been clear from the product info that they were lined, and although the pants had zippable side vents from knee to hip, the lining would probably make them really hot on most summer days in our climate. So I was doubly glad it was cool today.

After a half mile or so, the trail left the burn scar and re-entered intact spruce forest. And suddenly I was facing a glue grouse, pacing back and forth on a fallen tree trunk only ten feet in front of me. I stopped and was able to get my camera out – another recent challenge in itself.

I’d broken the lens assembly on my previous camera, and had spent over a month trying to find a replacement, and a way to protect the new camera from similar accidents. Whereas in the past I’d carried the camera alternately on a wrist strap and in a pocket, I was now wearing it in a holster-type case on my belt, where I tried to remember to slip on the wrist strap before pulling out the camera.

The big bird – they’re the same size as the average chicken – cooperated by remaining on the log as I took a few pictures. Then it made a noise and another grouse exploded out of the bush at my feet, and they both took off. It was the animal highlight of my trip.

This segment of trail left the mature forest and climbed gently through tiny meadows and dense groves of spruce seedlings, until it reached its high point in a saddle below the actual peak, which is sacred to the Apaches and off-limits to Anglos. At this saddle, I’d been hoping for a view over the vast country to the west, which descends for hundreds of miles to the low desert around Phoenix. But it was densely forested, and in rare peeks between the surrounding tree trunks, all I could see was more high, densely forested mountains in the near distance. So I continued down onto the outlying ridge above the canyon of the West Fork.

That outlying ridge finally brought me to a narrow saddle with an open view to the southeast – so I at least had a new perspective on the ridge I’d climbed in the morning. I’d climbed so fast that it was still early in the day, and I realized that if I didn’t slow down, I’d be done with the hike by midafternoon. I didn’t want that – I wanted to spend more time up here in this special alpine forest that is so rare in our Southwest.

Past the narrow, semi-open saddle, the trail began switchbacking down the very steep side of the West Fork canyon. Eventually it reached the head of the drainage in a burn scar where spruce seedlings were returning and wild raspberries were abundant.

Past the burn scar at the head of the West Fork, the trail curved leftwards through intact spruce forest into a big side canyon, where it finally crossed a robust creek. This trail may lack the spectacular rock outcrops of the East Fork – although there are plenty of boulders in the West Fork forest – but it actually has more varied habitat.

As part of my “slowing down” plan, I was paying even more attention now to my surroundings – primarily plants, fungi, and butterflies. In the stretch of trail past the side creek I saw my first coral fungus.

I was surprised to be feeling pretty sore and weary. To get back to the vehicle, I had to continue on this trail to its junction with the “crossover” trail, a 3-1/2 mile link between the trailheads. So no matter how much farther it was to the junction, I would still have those 3-1/2 miles to cross over.

But before starting the hike, I’d glanced at the elevation profile for the crossover trail, and had concluded it would be all downhill from this side. So at least I had that in my favor.

Eventually I started encountering meadows, which encouraged me to believe the junction was near. Each one ended up giving false hope, but at least I could see the West Fork meandering scenically below.

Finally, crossing a grassy slope high above the little river, I spotted a person far ahead. Then suddenly a bird flushed out of the meadow ahead of the distant person and shot overhead and past me. It appeared to be a falcon, which would explain why it was on the ground. When I reached the people who had flushed the bird – a couple a little older than me – I was so excited about the bird that I forgot to ask them how much farther it was to the trail junction.

After the falcon incident, I couldn’t ignore the pain in my left foot and right ankle. The right ankle pain was exactly like what I’d had in my left ankle a couple of years earlier. I was limping on both feet again, just like last weekend, and not looking forward at all to the crossover hike. I was transitioning from excitement about my beautiful surroundings into a “got to just survive this” frame of mind.

Fortunately it was only about a half mile beyond the bird incident that I met a college-age couple who pointed to the crossover junction, only a hundred yards farther. There, I crossed the rushing West Fork on a crude log bridge, and to my surprise, faced a steep climb on the other side.

In fact, I’d completely misinterpreted the crossover elevation profile. This trail was like a rollercoaster, climbing and descending hundreds of rocky feet at a time, sometimes at up to a 40% grade, through deep forest and across vast rolling meadows, over and over again, for the entire 3-1/2 miles between trailheads. In my condition, it was like some sort of legendary trial.

One of the few benefits of the crossover was the abundance of coral fungi.

The anticipated storm didn’t hit until I arrived back in the village, and even then it was only scattered showers. I changed out of my heavy gear and limped over to the restaurant, where I’d made a reservation the previous evening. This time I had a steak and a glass of pinot noir.

Part 3: Couch Potato

Saturday was about resting and recovering and relishing my time away from the terrible pressure of home. I had plenty to read on my iPad, and throughout the day, I did some long slow stretching and iced my foot and ankle at intervals. I knew how to treat my foot, but the ankle really worried me. It was swollen and my boots tightened right on the pressure point, so no more hiking until it healed.

There was one seemingly identical cabin next to me, but the folks staying there were having a near-continual party in their tiny back yard with a large group of companions from elsewhere in the village. And of course, the larger cabin across the road had a barking dog – it’s impossible to get away from barking dogs in this era cursed with social media.

I found that the futon couch was actually more comfortable than the bed – but to use it as a bed would require opening it flat, which would call for some brute force that would risk triggering my back pain. So I was stuck with things as they were. I’d brought fixings for a simple dinner at home that night, and went to bed early.

Part 4: Short Hike on a Poor Trail

Sunday was departure day, but I didn’t want to just race back home. I didn’t want to leave at all, and I’d considered staying an extra night, but back home, the city was resurfacing the street where my house is located during the coming week, and on Monday morning I had to move my truck off the street into the driveway all the contractors were using, arranging to switch with them. To avoid getting the truck towed, if I stayed here another night, I’d have to leave really early in the morning.

I had a few hours before checking out to study the maps, and I figured if I could attach some padding over the swollen ankle, maybe I could stop along the way for a shorter hike. I identified a few possibilities along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

While packing, I put on all my hiking clothes, applied biomechanical taping to my foot and a felt pad over the swollen ankle, and finally slipped into my boots. I tried to walk across the floor, but there was no way I could walk in those boots with that ankle. Damn!

I took off all the hiking gear, and changed back into my driving shorts and t-shirt. My sneakers were so low cut that they didn’t bother the ankle – I finally realized it wasn’t any kind of a strain or sprain, it was just some kind of pressure- or friction-caused inflammation. And then it occurred to me to try my other pair of boots, which I’d brought as backup in case the primary pair got wet.

My primary boots are designed for maximum ankle support – the shaft or collar of the boot, around the ankle, is reinforced. This is the part that is apparently irritating my ankles on long hikes. The other pair of boots are cut below the swollen area, so when I tried them on, they didn’t even contact it. I realized I could probably stop for a hike after all, so I set aside all my hiking gear for quick access in the vehicle.

As usual, I took the scenic route through the mountains before connecting with the highway home. It seems shorter every time – it’s so beautiful you don’t want it to end.

Back on the highway, the first turnoff I tried was at a pass between Alpine and Luna. It was a forest road I’d always wondered about, that claimed to lead to a fire lookout. It turned out to be one of those actually scary mountain roads – steep, twisty, rocky and deeply eroded, and strictly one-lane, with a deadly dropoff at the edge. The trail I was optimistically looking for was probably impassable – maps showed it crossed a large burn scar, and it hadn’t been maintained since the big wildfire – and the trailhead was almost 6 miles back on this road. The road went up, and down, and around, very slowly, and the first couple of miles took me 10 minutes, so I found a wide spot in a bend and turned around. Then I encountered a big truck coming up, and had to back uphill to the turnaround place to let them pass.

The next possible hikes were off a prominent backcountry road between Reserve and Glenwood, and would be my first exploration of the legendary Blue Range Primitive Area and Wilderness. I’d always wanted to explore this area, but it was simultaneously too close to and too far from home to be convenient.

It was a glorious day, like my first day of hiking. This area was a couple thousand feet lower than the alpine region I’d just left, with parklike pinyon, juniper, and occasional ponderosa over rolling hills at the foot of higher ridges and mountains in the near distance. I had two trails to choose from. The first was represented by an unnamed kiosk and had clear tread that beckoned up a shallow canyon. But from the map it looked too easy and didn’t seem to offer views.

The next trail was listed as “cleared” by a trail crew two years earlier, and appeared to climb a low ridge for a mile or two. There was no real trailhead – I was looking carefully at the roadside as I drove slowly along, and just happened to notice one of those little “hiker” icons on a post at an overgrown turnout. There was no tread leading inward, only the vague, overgrown suggestion of an opening through the parklike forest. But when I took a few steps past the signpost, I glimpsed a faded wilderness sign on a pinyon pine far ahead. So I figured I would gear up and check it out.

It was well past lunchtime, and I decided to not only make a sandwich – utilizing my new cooler as a table – but to drink a beer as well, breaking my usual habit of not drinking until the evening. Nothing says vacation like drinking in midday, and especially before a hike!

This trail turned out to be mostly forgettable. No one besides trespass cattle had used it in ages, and the surface was my most hated local footing – a mix of embedded and loose volcanic cobbles that is maddening and dangerous to walk on. Marked frequently by cairns, the route climbed the ridge at a generally shallow grade, mostly exposed so despite the mild temperature I was sweating pretty bad. But I was determined to get as high as I could, in hope of some kind of view.

The main attraction of that view turned out to be behind me – the peak with the fire lookout at the end of that scary road I’d given up on the way here. It was about 5 miles away to the northwest, and was a pretty mountain with a complex mosaic of rocky slopes, forest, and meadows.

Marked only by its cairns, my route drifted in and out of a cleared corridor through the open scrub forest, suggesting that in some distant past there might’ve been a wagon trail. The path completely ended in dense chaparral at the top of the ridge, after only a couple of miles of hiking.

When trail workers reported this trail “cleared” two years ago, it was obvious that all they meant was that they’d checked it to the chaparral on top – there’d been no clearing required. And it seemed that nobody but me even cared.

On the way down I lost the trail at one point, where a false cairn beckoned me onto a game trail down a side drainage. After wasting 5 minutes on that sidetrack, I dismantled the fraudulent cairn and found the right track to continue back to my vehicle. By my standards it hadn’t been much of a hike, but at least I’d set foot in a new wilderness area and seen some new mountains.

I had a pleasant drive home as usual – apart from the minivan driver who wanted to race down the twistiest part of the highway, tailgating me dangerously, finally passing only to slow down in front of me on the straight part of the road as he drifted back and forth across the center line, probably texting on his smart phone. By that point I was relaxed enough not to care.

My home is always first and foremost a studio, an office, a workspace, so the only way I can take a break from work is to get away from home. This trip had been my first getaway – my first vacation – in almost two years. And it had been over two years since I’d visited those mountains. So on the drive home I was re-evaluating my relationship with that place, and my attitude toward it.

One problem I can see is that it has kind of an awkward combination of extreme beauty and overwhelming recreational culture. It’s kind of like a huge national park in which the visitors are widely dispersed instead of concentrated like they are in, for example, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

Despite its huge size, the area has historically far fewer hiking trails than the national forest in my backyard, and after the 2011 wildfire, only the half dozen most popular and easily accessed of those trails have been maintained. So all the hikers are concentrated on those few trails, none of which is particularly challenging. The trails in the large, rugged wilderness area at the south of the range have been abandoned and are essentially impassable, because that was the origin of the wildfire.

So for me, as a hiker looking for challenges and new discoveries, the area actually doesn’t seem to offer much.

But since the northern half of the range consists of those vast grassy meadows divided by hills and ridges with relatively open mixed-conifer forest, it suddenly occurred to me that off-trail hiking might be the solution. Maybe in the future I should just ignore the limited trail network and set off across country. I’m not sure how feasible that would really be, but it’s worth trying…

Another Easy Hike

After last Sunday’s soggy, painful descent from a downpour and long drive through a major law enforcement operation, I needed an easy hike near home. My fallback involved three trails chained together: a 4-mile up a lush canyon, another 2 miles ascending a peak on the Continental Divide Trail, followed by a 2-mile ridge hike to another peak. Round-trip distance would be 16 miles, all of it on well-maintained trails, with accumulated elevation gain of 3,500′ – less than I normally aim for.

It’s close enough to town that I almost always encounter other hikers, most of them venturing no farther than the head of the initial canyon.

Our monsoon wildflowers were spectacular as usual – as I hiked, I catalogued the species I’d seen already and eagerly watched for new ones.

I passed two parties in the first two miles, but saw no one else until I was about halfway between the two peaks, up on the 9,000′ ridge. There I encountered a trail runner, an athletic guy now in his 40s whom I’d seen occasionally ever since I moved here. He used to be a technical mountain biker, and I was glad to see him off his machine and onto his feet.

At the second peak, I stopped only briefly. It was still early, I still had plenty of energy, and if I went straight back for the 16-mile round trip, I’d get home much earlier than usual. So I decided to add some mileage.

The best way to extend my hike seemed to be to return to the first peak and take the CDT farther north. I didn’t think it would add much elevation – it just snakes northeastward along a slightly lower ridge – but it goes through a burn scar so I should have some views over the landscape.

From the junction at the first peak, this unfamiliar section of trail traversed several hundred feet down an outlying ridge to a fire road. Much of it was on the edge of the burn scar and was overgrown with locust, but some shrubbier stretches had wild raspberries.

From the fire road, the trail enters a “moonscape” burn scar which has been taken over by shrubs and annuals, traversing the south side of a ridge, occasionally passing through surviving stands of pine and fir. I was planning to hike about two miles on this section of trail, so my final round-trip distance would be 20 miles. A lot of miles, but all of them on good trail. And later, back home, I would calculate that the ups and downs of this traverse would add 1,200′ of elevation to my hike, yielding a total of 4,700′ for the day – not too shabby!

Crossing the burn scar, every time I stopped I saw a dark cloud growing over the first peak, now a mile away on my right. Rain had not been forecast for today, but I knew that storms often form over the mountains even when it’s dry in town. In reality, during this monsoon, every time I hike, I get a storm.

The blister on my toe from last Sunday was still healing. I’d made a felt ring around it which had kept it from hurting so far, but as I watched the storm grow nearby, I realized that if my feet got wet again, the 10-mile hike back to my vehicle could become very painful.

I stopped after 45 minutes on the new trail – my measure of the two mile distance – and sure enough, shortly after I turned around, the storm hit me.

Rain poured down, lightning flashed and thunder crashed, and while the poncho kept my upper body and pack dry, my pants and boots were soon soaked. As always, I had spare socks, but I’d have to wait until the rain stopped to change. And it didn’t stop until 45 minutes later, when I was on my way down from the first peak.

By that point my toe was so bad every step felt like a nail driving into it, and my pants were so soaked it felt like I was carrying 5-pound weights on each leg. I had to pour the water out of each boot, and as in the past, used my spare bandannas to dry my feet and sponge water out of the boot linings.

I had spare felt in my pack and made another blister protector. But my pants and boots held so much residual water that after another mile of hiking the second pair of socks was soaked and my poor toe was on fire again. Now, after 15 miles of hiking, the chronic injury in the ball of my other foot had been triggered, so I was limping on two painful feet, and still had 5 miles and 2,000′ to descend. I had no recourse but to pop a pain pill. Like most of my monsoon hikes so far, this “easy” hike was turning into quite an ordeal.

Two miles farther along the pain in my toe was so bad I had to stop again, take off my boots, wring the water out of my second pair of socks, and apply a dry piece of felt to the toe. That enabled me to limp the remaining 3 miles to the vehicle – and fortunately from there it was only a 20 minute drive home!

Cloudbursts & Torrents, Thunderclaps & Gunshots

At this point, we can all expect Max’s next hike to be an adventure. But some more than others.

It’s August already, so I can go ahead and admit that this is one of our best monsoons ever. Meaning that every week, I spend hours cleaning and reconditioning my gear after sweating in high humidity and getting soaked in yet another thunderstorm.

It was finally time to head back to Arizona. My last experience of chaining together both maintained and abandoned trails hadn’t worked out, so this Sunday I wanted to stick to good trails. There were really only two trailhead options over there, and I’d hiked my favorite in June. The remaining trail definitely wasn’t my favorite – it involved a very steep initial climb and a long, high traverse that was completely exposed, ending at a bleak saddle. But the day was forecast to be mostly cloudy – which probably meant storms – and I figured I could vary this hike by extending it a mile or two onto a part of the crest trail I hadn’t hit before. The upper part of the hike would have absolutely no protection from storms, but I should be used to that by now. And if I returned early enough, there’d be a red chile pork burrito and a local IPA waiting for me at the village cafe.

I made good time on the highways, and there were only a few small cumulus clouds shifting over the range amid a crystal blue sky. But I knew that would change.

The first trail zigzags up a densely forested canyon bottom, crossing and recrossing a creek which was running strong from the past month of good rain. With few or no stepping stones, crossings are tricky, and I fell once – fortunately backward onto the rocky bank instead of into the water. The clouds were coming together and darkening overhead as I finally began the steep climb out of the canyon, through dense oak scrub. It was a good time for wildflowers, butterflies, fungi, and slime molds.

It wasn’t hot, but as usual it was so humid my shirt was soaked by the time I reached the forested upper slopes. A glance back at the northern part of the range showed rain already falling only a few miles away. The humidity slowed me down so that it took almost two hours to climb the first three miles and 2,000′, and when I moved onto the second trail in the chain and entered the pine “park” at the halfway point of the day’s hike, the sky ahead was low and dark. I realized the storm would hit me on the exposed traverse.

The arms of the storm were surrounding me as I began the traverse up the side of the long, deep canyon – three thousand vertical feet between crest and bottom. Near the beginning I suddenly saw a familiar pattern beside the trail ahead – a diamondback rattlesnake. It was full-grown, its body extended toward me, and its head was covered by vegetation only a couple of feet from my forward boot. Not a good position. I backed up just as the snake snapped back into its defensive coil and began to rattle.

I couldn’t pass it on the trail, so I had to climb up the steep, brush-choked bank of loose gravel at the side, hoping I wouldn’t slip and fall right on top of the snake.

It was shortly after that that the storm hit, and I had to dig out my poncho. Rain quickly became torrential, and since there was no place to shelter, I just had to keep climbing through it. This was the heaviest storm I’d been out in this year. I had to keep my eyes glued to the trail, but lightning seemed to be striking on the ridges far above – the time between strikes and thunderclaps was reassuringly long.

It was raining so hard on this steep slope that each little gully quickly became a torrent I had to carefully step over, and bigger drainages had been reshaped into temporary banks of debris that were more treacherous than usual. I kept telling myself the storm would move away soon, but it dumped on me for almost an hour – two miles of climbing – before moving off east down the canyon.

I’d passed the switchback that bypasses a big rock outcrop, and was crossing the short but coarse talus slope when I realized my feet were soaked and it was time to change socks. The oversize fragments of talus provided a good changing bench. That delayed me another 20 minutes – again, I wasn’t going to reach my planned destination for the day.

On the final stretch before the bleak saddle, where a ghost forest of fire-killed ponderosa dots the slope, I heard a raptor shrieking, and assumed it was hundreds of yards away on the opposite slope. But it kept up its cry of alarm several times a minute, and scanning the nearby trees, I found it only about 50 feet away. As I kept hiking, it kept moving to perches near me – it must’ve had a nest in a rock outcrop near the trail.

By the time I reached the saddle at 9,300′, I was already pushing my schedule – the time I needed to return to the vehicle in order to get that burrito and beer. But I’d been here twice before already – I just had to venture farther on this hike, even if only to the junction with the crest trail, less than half a mile farther. That would give me a view into the next big watershed, justifying the day’s effort and discomfort.

There was a trail, but just barely. It started out through a vast stand of chest-high ferns, with just the barest trace of tread hidden among them. Of course they were all wet from the storm, and although my pants were soaked already, I knew all that additional water would soak right through my boots so my temporarily dry feet would be wet again soon.

As short as it was, it was an interesting trail. Past the ferns it climbed across a bare, dramatic rock outcrop, then through a tunnel of aspen seedlings, emerging above an old, broken concrete springbox where it met the crest trail.

Whenever I encounter a structure like this, many miles and thousands of vertical feet from the nearest road, I can’t help thinking of the poor equines that had to carry those bags of cement mix.

I followed the crest trail down to the next saddle, which overlooked the big canyon I’d hiked into in June. I was filling in my mental map of the range.

On the way back, the hawk rejoined me in the same place, crying its regular warnings. I was in a hurry now. I’d used up time I barely had and was still hoping to reach the cafe just before closing.

I pounded down that steep slope, ignoring my wet, worn-out feet and joints, as if my body were 50 years younger. I was timing myself and making much better time going downhill. Three miles later and 2,000′ lower, when I reached the pine park, I was right on time, but storm clouds were forming again.

A mile down the next, steepest trail, my right knee reached a crisis stage. It hurt to walk on and it was impossible to lift it to step over a fallen log. I’d never had trouble with that knee before, but I dug the knee brace out of my pack, strapped it on, and continued. It started to rain again under a mostly clear sky, but only lightly, and it stopped before I reached the canyon bottom.

I checked my watch again, and then it hit me. I’d made a really stupid mistake. I’d forgotten about the time difference – something I’d never done before, on dozens of trips. There’d been no need to hurry, because I’d cut my hike unneccesarily short, and I had plenty of time. I could’ve continued on that crest trail as originally planned. I slowed down, and brutally chastised myself, cursing my stupidity. All that work and pain, and I could’ve gone even farther without even rushing!

But I soon had more to think about – before I even reached the first creek crossing I came under another downpour. Now my right little toe was killing me – that fast descent in wet boots had raised a blister – and I could hear the creek roaring ahead.

Although I had to keep my head down in the heavy rain, crossing the flooded creek turned out to be fairly easy. I didn’t have time to think, I wanted to reach the vehicle and change into dry clothes, so I just crossed the damn creek in any way I could.

Just as I got fully naked in the half-open vehicle – in an empty overflow parking lot big enough for 12 cars, at the end of a very rough dead-end road way back in the mountains – an elderly couple in a Prius drove up and parked right next to me. I stared at them, hoping they’d get the message I needed some privacy, but they just smiled and waved as I laboriously pulled on my dry clothes.

A half hour later, I was sitting in the cafe enjoying my early dinner, among staff and diners blissfully maskless, when a dozen middle-aged fully-masked men and women, dressed like generic naturalists, burst rapidly through the tiny dining room and disappeared into the back, where as far as I knew there was only the kitchen and a restroom. They never reappeared.

After the big meal and the beer, I really wanted to book a room at the lodge. But I had yet another busy week ahead of me, so I hit the road at 7 pm New Mexico time.

The clouds were glorious. The sun had just set by the time I hit the highway north to Silver City, with no cars ahead of or behind me.

But I was wrong. Less than a quarter mile up the highway a big SUV filled my rearview, and it passed me, “SHERIFF” painted across the back. Then a rock hit my windshield and cracked it.

The sheriff’s car slammed to a stop ahead and whipped a U-turn, parking on the opposite shoulder, so I pulled onto the right shoulder, rolled my window down, and waved. The deputy came over and I showed him my windshield.

He said he was on a call – shots had been fired between vehicles on the highway ahead. But he spent about 15 minutes photographing my windshield and all my cards, and gave me a number to call. He was all amped up, and I wished him well. He told me to be careful, but didn’t stop me from driving on.

A little ways up the road the convoy appeared – a half dozen vehicles with lights flashing, speeding toward me – city police, county sheriff, state highway patrol. Past them, as it got dark, a half dozen more light-flashing law enforcement vehicles streamed past, one after the other. Finally, ten miles outside of town, there was a roadblock – but only on the opposite lane. I never found out what had happened, but I was kind of a nervous wreck by the time I dealt with my wet gear, showered, and climbed into bed.

Redemption Hike

Conflicting desires this Sunday. The weather was forecast to be cloudy and cooler – in the 70s. So this was a perfect time for a lower-elevation hike, for example over in Arizona where I could get a burrito and a beer afterward.

But for the past few weeks I’d been frustrated with shorter hikes and less elevation gain, so I felt I really needed a bigger hike today to maintain my conditioning. On paper, I’d been studying some possible loop hikes in various mountain ranges that would string together multiple trails. However, these loops all included trails that were abandoned or in bad shape. The problem with Arizona is that the longer driving time limits the time available for hiking. So for today, I decided to try a loop close to home, involving two trails I knew to be in good shape, and one that appeared to be long abandoned, with no info available on its condition. As usual, I was just going to take my chances.

Driving west of town, I could see clouds literally hugging the low mountains ahead. We’d had a lot of rain the past week, and both air and ground were saturated.

The hike starts with a two-mile stretch, dropping into a canyon and following it up to the trail junction. As usual this time of year, the canyon bottom was a green jungle, but the creek was barely running. The branch trail, climbing over a ridge into the next, bigger canyon system, leads ultimately to an old miner’s cabin, and is maintained by the Arizona family of his descendents. The Forest Service reports this trail impassable, and at the junction it’s overgrown to the point of invisibility, but once across the creek, it turns into a good trail.

Entering the monsoon jungle of the first canyon I discovered an unexpected problem: heavy dew on all the vegetation crowding the trail meant that by the time I started climbing toward the ridge, my pants were soaked. This was a northwest slope, mostly in shade, so I was hoping that once I crossed over to the southeast side, sunlight from regular openings between the clouds would dry me off. Despite the cooler temps, it was so humid that my shirt was soon soaked with sweat and I had to keep mopping sweat off my brows as I climbed.

One unexpected benefit of this trail was the different perspective I got on previous hikes, which continued north up the first canyon. As I climbed higher, I could see that canyon was much rockier than is apparent from the trail, which sticks to the densely forested canyon bottom most of the way. Above the forest are numerous huge rock outcrops and cliffs.

The miner’s cabin trail crests the ridge at a low saddle, where I had a great new view into and across the bigger canyon. This canyon is eight miles long and very rocky, and there’s no trail up it from its mouth like there are in every other canyon on this side of the range. You can only drop into it from farther up the sides, as on this trail.

The trail drops into the narrow side canyon of the north fork, which is where I hoped to pick up the abandoned north fork trail that climbed to a ridge, far back in the wilderness, where I would return on the continuation of the trail I’d left in the first canyon. The full loop would be about 15 miles, with nearly 5,000′ of accumulated elevation gain.

The clouds shifting around, covering and uncovering the peaks and ridges across the big canyon, made this a spectacular descent. Most of it had been burned in the 2012 wildfire and was exposed, through oak scrub, but I was relieved to find a little saddle halfway down, with parklike ponderosa forest. Descending past that, I flushed a white tailed deer.

From there the trail got steeper and rockier. I began to hear a roaring from the canyon bottom – this side must really be draining a lot of rainwater!

As I approached the canyon bottom, I checked my map for details of the junction with the abandoned north fork trail. It seemed to be close to the creek, but when I got to the bottom of the canyon it was very narrow, with steep sides lined with dense jungle. The cabin trail just disappeared – the only way down this canyon was via the flooded creek, through overgrown riparian vegetation. There was no sign of a trail junction, and this was no place to linger.

I double-checked my map, which was a just a low-resolution printout from a trails website. Now I could see that the junction probably lay 40-80 feet above the creek, so I began climbing back up the steep trail, carefully examining the right side for any sign of an old branch. After a quarter mile of climbing, I was about 120′ above the creek and had only seen one faint game trail that might be worth exploring, so I climbed all the way back down and tried it out. It disappeared within a dozen yards, and clearly wasn’t the old trail.

I spent about 45 minutes exploring all along that stretch of the cabin trail, bushwhacking several long side trips, and never found any sign of the old north fork trail. It’s just completely vanished. The only thing I could do was return, back over the ridge, to the first canyon. It was a steep climb and I was feeling exhausted and very sweaty as I headed over the saddle and back down to where I’d started, but at least the sporadic sunlight on the southeast-facing slope had dried the dew off my pants.

Approaching the original trail junction in the first canyon, I decided to make up for my aborted loop hike by walking up the first canyon trail a ways. I was pretty beat, so I’d just see how far I could get. I know this trail well, and figured I’d probably turn around at the base of the switchbacks that lead to the crest. That would give me another mile-and-a-half one-way and a few hundred more feet of elevation.

Not far past the junction in the first canyon, I surprised a rattlesnake at the base of a log alongside the trail. It’s always surprising to find a western rattlesnake in such a lush environment. I carefully sidestepped it and stopped to look back and memorize the configuration of rocks and logs so I could watch out for the snake on my return.

When I reached the base of the switchbacks, a tiny clearing in creekside forest, I wasn’t feeling completely exhausted yet. So I started up the switchbacks, figuring I’d stop at the boulder pile before the long traverse up the other side. There’s a really steep stretch leading to the boulder pile, and I figured that would do me in.

But somehow I was getting a second wind! I breezed up the steep part and past the boulder pile. A trail crew had been up here recently and cut up all the logs that had been blocking the trail for the past couple of years, which made it easier. Now I figured I might make it to the end of the first long traverse, where you get a view out over the big canyon where I’d failed to find the abandoned trail. That would really give me some elevation to compensate for the aborted loop.

As it turned out, I was feeling so good, I not only made it to the end of the first traverse, but I continued onto the much steeper and more difficult second traverse, which brought me to the edge of the final ascent to the crest – as far as I got on my first hike on this trail, 2-1/2 years ago. I now knew this was turning into a respectable hike – true redemption for my failure to find the abandoned north fork trail over in the other canyon. Although the combined hikes would amount to a little less than 13 miles, my accumulated elevation gain for the day was now nearly 5,000′. After being pretty miserable a couple hours earlier, I was now elated.

I descended in late afternoon through a forest made magical by alternating low-angle light and blue shadow. It looked like some weather was coming in the west, toward the mouth of the canyon.

Sure enough, when I reached the rattlesnake’s place, it was still there, in exactly the same position, but now it was asleep. It must’ve eaten recently and was immersed in the long, slow digestive process.

Climbing out of the canyon toward the trailhead, I finally got a glimpse of rain, miles away to the south.

It just kept getting better. Light rain appeared on my windshield as I neared the highway, and when I stopped there to loosen my bootlaces, I saw a half rainbow to the south. Rain and rainbows kept shifting around as I drove south, and all the arroyos were in flood. A big storm hung over the Gila River where it emerges from the mountains, and it was way over its banks at the bridge. What a day!