Monday, March 23rd, 2026: Grant, Hikes, P Bar, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
On this last day of the March heat wave, the high in town was forecast to hit 88. I’d abused my body the day before, making some long-delayed repairs to my house, so I was starting this hiking day with pain in my foot, knee, back, and shoulder. I was determined to head for high elevations, where it would be cooler, but with most of my body hurting, it would have to be more of a road trip, combining an easy hike with a lunch destination.
I decided to go all the way to the remote lodge isolated at the southeastern corner of Arizona’s 9,000-foot volcanic plateau, where it would be at least 15 degrees cooler. I started late so I would get there shortly after their noon opening hour, but after 2-1/2 hours of driving to that silent, empty meadow in the sky, I was the only customer, and no one responded to my shouts through the kitchen door.
After waiting ten minutes, I went around back, and finally roused the lady who’d served me during my first visit, seven years ago. She said she was willing to make me lunch, but it would take her ten minutes to get the kitchen turned on.
In the end I waited a total of 45 minutes, but there was no place I would rather be, and the burger was excellent as usual. It was closing time when I left, and I remained the day’s only customer.
Lots of trails start near the lodge, but most of them are either steep descents into the river valley on the east, or networks of level trails for cross-country ski use in winter. I decided to take a trail I’d done a very short hike on once before, because it leads across a forested plateau to a “lake” before dropping off toward the deep eastern valley.
From the trailhead, it climbs 300 vertical feet through spruce-aspen forest in long, gentle switchbacks. The plateau forest saw a patchy burn in the 2011 wildfire and is crisscrossed with deadfall, more of which had fallen across the trail since I’d been here last, but I also found a lot of pine and fir seedlings.
The lake, which I hadn’t reached before, appeared to be a natural basin filled with snowmelt. According to my maps, the trail I was on continues for another mile on the plateau, then descends into a long canyon toward the eastern valley. But just past the lake, I found a sign directing me onto a branch trail claiming to lead to the next big canyon to the south. My maps showed this trail dead-ending in a few hundred yards, so I decided to check it out.
Crossing the basin, the branch trail entered a very dark forest, where it began descending into a narrow canyon, eventually emerging into a “moonscape” burn scar where forest had been killed off on all the surrounding slopes.
I wanted to go easy on my knee, but the canyon I started down was “blind” – it made a curve to the right as it descended, and I wanted to get around that curve to see where it went next.
I ended up with a narrow view out this canyon and over the big eastern valley, to the skyline of the mountains on the other side, 15 miles away. I figured I’d gone at least two miles, and it was getting cloudier and cooler – the perfect time to head back.
The trail I’d ended up on is one of half a dozen routes from the alpine plateau to the river. The longest drops almost 5,000 feet in over 14 miles. It would be cool to park at the bottom, climb to the top, spend the night at the lodge, then descend the next day, maybe by a different route. But from my house, it takes three hours to drive to the bottom of that remote valley – considerably longer than to drive all the way around it to the lodge!
After driving 2-1/2 hours to the alpine plateau and the remote lodge, then spending almost two hours at lunch, plus another three hours of hiking, I wasn’t excited about driving the 2-1/2 hours back home that night. Instead, I stopped at the motel in the county seat north of us, blissed out on pain meds, warmed a can of chili in the microwave, listened to music on my boombox, and finished reading a book.
Monday, March 16th, 2026: Hikes, Southwest New Mexico, Summit Mountains.
My last hike was three weeks ago, and the corresponding Dispatch was titled “Last Hike”. Although my right knee finally seemed to be okay, the chronic inflammation in my left foot wasn’t responding to treatment, and I believed I might have to return to the Bay Area for a new exam and more ultrasound.
Plus, my right shoulder seemed to be getting worse. Using trekking poles and reaching for rocks while hiking was hard on it, and I’d also developed pain in my left forearm and injured my left elbow, so both arms were much less functional. And finally, the new surgeon in Tucson agreed that the best solution for the right shoulder is surgery – with a six-month recovery and the first 4-6 weeks of that immobilized.
I’d avoided all exercise for weeks, and now I fell into depression. I’d had two years of largely putting my life on hold while taking care of my family, and before that I’d spent almost a decade doing intensive rehab for surgery, injuries, and degenerative conditions. Plus – surviving a few near-death traumas.
My grandpa died at this age. You’re saying, instead of enjoying my new freedom and having fun for a change, I immediately need to be disabled for another six months?
With nothing to look forward to, feeling weak and fragile, losing the last shreds of my self-confidence, I was about ready to give up on life itself.
But meanwhile, I’d continued treating the foot, and it felt like it could maybe handle a few easy miles. So on Sunday morning, I drove south toward a stretch of the national trail that meanders across open, level country dotted with junipers. And along the way, I started daydreaming about a rocky peak I’d been wanting to climb over on the Arizona border.
I’d never tried it in the past because on paper it wasn’t enough of a challenge – only a mile and a quarter and 1,400 feet of elevation gain. But it’s in a really beautiful area. I figured if it turned out to be easy, I’d climb it. Otherwise I’d end up in a spectacular spot instead of stuck between junipers with no view.
Blue skies with high, wispy clouds, and a fire weather forecast for the entire Southwest – warm, dry, and windy. The climb would start at 5,300 feet and top out at almost 6,800 feet, and I set out in my shirtsleeves.
No trails in these mountains – seldom visited, the only roads built for mines and ranches – but since the peaks look striking from the distant highway, a handful of peakbaggers have ventured over here. I’d studied their routes for years, the shortest beginning on an old dead-end mine road in a pass. But of course, changing my mind at the last minute, I hadn’t brought a map. The mine road turned out to be obvious but clearly undriveable, so I parked and started up it.
The road overlooks a pretty canyon coming down from the north, dividing a ridge leading to today’s peak on my left, and a lower ridge opposite that. Below a saddle in the ridge on my side, the road turns right, and although deeply washed out, past there it was carpeted with poppies – so pretty I hated to walk on them.
I could see mine works high on the slope above, and midway up the traverse I passed the remains of a side road that leads to that earlier saddle. Ahead, a steep side canyon comes down from what appeared to be the peak, and I figured that would be my route.
The opposite slope of the canyon appeared to be mostly loose rock, so I started up the more vegetated, and slightly less steep, left slope. Near the road it was fairly gentle, although rocky and choked with yuccas, cholla, and thorns. But once I got into the canyon proper I was on nothing but loose rock at the angle of repose – talus colonized by various small perennials.
I soon came upon animal tracks, and although in the loose dirt I couldn’t tell what they were, I tried to follow them. Until they got too steep or disappeared.
I crossed deep gullies, kept slipping on loose rock, grabbed a fallen yucca stalk for balance, and eventually I reached a slope of bare talus. This is ridiculous, I thought. You’re going to destroy your foot, and maybe your knee too. Remember why you came here – to take it easy and enjoy the scenery.
But after a few minutes’ rest, staring up ahead where the canyon made a right turn, I felt obligated to continue at least that far. Maybe it would get easier.
Of course, where the canyon turned right, another deep gully came down from the left, and the main canyon was choked with boulders, with a high bank of loose rock to climb out of. And on top of that, just more talus colonized by spikes and thorns.
But of course, now I’d passed that milestone, the peak appeared to be a straight shot above me. Straight shot! Hah!
Now, instead of traversing a steep talus slope colonized by spikes and thorns, I was climbing one. I grabbed a second yucca stalk and now had two walking sticks, but they kept getting stuck between loose rocks or caught in shrubs. At first I regretted not bringing my trekking poles, then soon realized they’d get stuck even worse in this habitat.
Hoping the footing would be better higher to my left, below the rimrock, I kept clambering in that direction, only to be turned away by denser vegetation. And eventually, I found myself only a hundred feet or so below the apparent saddle that divided the apparent peak from the rimrock on my left.
The only juniper in this vicinity loomed to the right of the saddle, and I climbed toward it.
But once past the juniper, I found myself facing jagged ramparts of stone. And when I climbed up into them, I spotted a higher rise, quite a bit farther north of me. Shit. As usual, I was on a false peak.
I picked my way through this long ridge of rock outcrops, then down onto another scrubby talus slope toward the rise I’d spotted earlier.
But it turned out to be yet another false peak. As I traversed around it, I saw what I hoped was the real peak, rising quite a bit higher in the distance.
Finally reaching a saddle below the final peak, in a greener area featuring grasses and annuals, I suddenly stepped out into a small, level clearing, just big enough for a campsite. It was the only level place I found in the entire hike! But of course, a gale force wind was blowing across from the west.
Windy or not, I was elated to reach the peak, while trying to ignore the perilous descent I faced on my return. Fortunately, I had plenty of time, and walking sticks to lean on.
As expected, the view was amazing. I could see mountains I’d hiked and peaks I’d climbed to east, south, and west, up to fifty miles away, and a big dust storm was stirring up across the playa forty miles to the south.
Unusually, I got lost among those jagged rocks on the way down the summit ridge, but managed to get turned back at the end, to the head of the right canyon. And it wasn’t a sight I looked forward to.
Again, I tried to stay close to the rimrock on the west side, but had to zigzag constantly to avoid boulders and thorns. My yucca stalks kept breaking on the way down, leaving me with only one until I could find another the right size. This time, I wanted to stay high. The slope above the lower canyon also featured rimrock, and I figured I might be able to cross above the talus up there.
Higher up the slope, I found longer stretches of game trails that helped a little. This appeared ideal bighorn habitat, but the only clear-cut tracks I saw all day looked to be from deer, and the only scat from rabbits.
When I reached the lower canyon, I was able to traverse above some of the larger bare talus slopes. But the trade-off was denser vegetation in my way, and in some cases, deeper gullies to cross. I stayed high as long as possible, finally cutting under the last rimrock outcrop, where I spotted the old mine road a couple hundred feet below.
The descent never got any easier. As I mentioned earlier, this entire landscape consisted of loose rock sparsely colonized by perennials that mostly didn’t even offer good hand-or-footholds. In that final descent from the rimrock both my ankles were worn out and aching from trying to keep my balance. I’d fallen once, a while back, and now I was leaning on the yucca stalks whenever possible to stay upright.
Back at the vehicle, I immediately downed a couple pain pills. My foot was aching and my knee pain had returned after a couple months’ reprieve. It had taken me five hours to go less than 2-1/2 miles. What I’d done was both idiotic and exhilarating.
I remembered that some time in the past decade, when disabled and unable to hike, I’d assured friends that if necessary, I would “crawl on my bloody stumps” to reach my beloved desert. Meaning I would never give up. That’s what today had been about.
On the way out, I stopped to look back. And realized that if I’d simply remembered the western profile of the mountain, I would’ve known that the actual peak was far to the north of where I topped out of that canyon. And at home, checking the peakbagger route, I discovered they climbed away from the mine road below that first, low saddle, and followed the ridgetop high above the canyon I hiked.
Their footing would’ve been no different, but they would’ve climbed continuously at a lesser grade. My grade during the climb up that canyon averaged 40 percent – one of the hardest climbs I’ve ever done, if not the hardest.
Completing the Circumnavigation
Monday, March 2nd, 2026: 2026 Trips, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands.
All the treatments that were supposed to be helping my shoulder pain were just making it worse. I had to be in the city Tuesday morning for an MRI, but driving is another thing that hurts the shoulder, and I didn’t want to get up early, rush the three-hour drive, and then drive right back for an entire day of pain and discomfort.
Meanwhile, I needed to get out in nature on Sunday, as a replacement for my usual hike. So after studying the map and driving times, I decided to break the city drive up into stages. The first stage would be exploring the southern end of the sky island that I’ve hiked so many times from the north.
The northeast part, where I’ve hiked all the trails many times, is world-famous for its big interior basin surrounded by spectacular cliffs, caves, and waterfalls. The northwest part has thousands of anthropomorphic stone pinnacles protected in a national monument. I’d already hiked into the southeastern and western parts of the range, slightly less spectacular but still beautiful. What I hadn’t seen, because it’s the farthest from home, is the interior basin at the southwest end of the range, where the map shows half a dozen trails leading to canyons, ridges, caverns, and rock formations with intriguing names.
We’re in the middle of a late-winter heat wave. The high in the 4,000-foot basins was forecast to exceed 90. I set off in late morning under mostly clear skies with scattered high, thin clouds. Even from 25 miles away, I was surprised to see snow remaining on north slopes above 8,000 feet. I stopped in the mouth of the northeast canyon for lunch, took a pain pill, then headed south toward Mexico.
It was only then that I suddenly felt a weight metaphorically lift from my sore shoulder. On the open road with virtually no traffic, exploring new territory, facing a couple of days with no obligations, my mind and heart returned to the days of my youth, when carefree road trips with friends and lovers regularly set us free from the stresses of city life: finding work, submitting to authorities, struggling to pay rent and bills, getting abused and ripped off by those worse off than us.
The remote region along the border features vast high-desert basins with cattle ranches dating back 150 years, where Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and smugglers and illegal immigrants now stream north in the dark of night. I’d driven this highway once, more than twenty years ago, but now I studied the south end of the sky island with eyes newly informed by my intimate knowledge of the rest of the range. From the highway, it looked only slightly less rugged than the cliffs of the northeast.
I was looking for a dirt ranch road that leads to the interior basin. The road I found was as wide as a boulevard, smooth-graded, and absolutely straight for miles.
Then it made a dogleg past a big ranch compound, dipped across a dry creekbed – where it clearly washes out in any decent rain – and entered what I believed was my planned destination, the interior basin. Except that the beautiful, rocky hills surrounding it were not the high mountains shown on my map.
Later, I realized that the big valley I reached first drains a completely separate watershed, and the road I took north from the highway mainly accesses that first valley, which is spectacular in its own right, and features intriguing trails I hadn’t even considered. Thus, I ended up discovering two spectacular interior basins for the price of one.
Here, the road got narrower and rougher and meandered back and forth, up and down at an elevation of about 5,500 feet past those beautiful rocky peaks that loomed 2,000 feet higher. And eventually, at the north end of this first basin, the road crested in a saddle.
Imagine my excitement when I reached that pass and first glimpsed the forested crest of the range on the other side! I could even identify the 9,400-foot peak with the old fire lookout that I’d climbed in December, from a canyon on the west side. But the road snaked down a shallow north slope where forest mostly blocked my view.
I’d never adequately studied the topo map, and was surprised to find that this second interior basin actually drains west. Where the road passed above gullies, they all held rushing creeks, which surprised me after such a dry winter. I should’ve realized that in the current heat wave, this represented the spring runoff from rapidly melting snow on the crest.
Nearing the bottom of the basin, I passed a big fenced meadow which I knew would feature the ruins of a 19-century Army post. Neither of these big interior basins is occupied now – they appear totally wild from the road. But although the surrounding slopes are designated wilderness, the basins themselves are grazed by small, widely separated herds of cattle.
At the mouth of the interior basin, my road joined the main road that accesses the basin from the west. On that road, I crossed the big creek and headed up its canyon to see how far I would get. All six of the trailheads I was looking for are accessed from this road, but I knew that catastrophic flooding after the 2011 wildfire had destroyed the upper end of the road, and I hadn’t been able to find out exactly where the road is closed.
On this beautiful Sunday afternoon, with temperatures here much more pleasant than in the low valleys and towns outside the mountains, I’d passed only two vehicles in the past hour. I could see one party in the campground above the creek crossing, and I passed another party at the crossing of a tributary creek coming down from the north. So much water here on the south side of the range – far more than I’d seen in the north!
I passed a big sign saying “Beware of Bears!”, an abandoned ranger station, then a debris flow where flooding had filled a former lake with white rocks. And finally, as the canyon narrowed below rimrock high above, I saw concrete barriers blocking the road ahead.
A small city SUV was parked in front of the barriers, and as I passed it to turn around, I saw a guy sitting behind the vehicle, reading a book. I turned around, parked at a discreet distance, and walked over with the map I’d printed out, showing the roads and trailheads.
He said he’d hiked the canyon trail from here a couple of times, describing it to me, and I said this was my first visit here, mentioning I’d climbed the peak above from the west side a couple months ago. He appeared be in his 30s, and I noticed he was reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov. I realized the temperature was perfect – it felt like the high 60s here in the shade of the creekside oaks and sycamores, which in contrast to 90 in the nearest towns felt like heaven.
But this guy was literally sitting in the road, wedged between the tailgate of his vehicle and the ugly concrete barriers. I wondered why he hadn’t parked somewhere off the road – there were a couple of informal campsites in the oaks above where I’d turned around. I asked how long he was staying and he said he would camp in this canyon for a few days.
Then some kind of rock-crawling side-by-side ute carrying a couple of middle-aged women growled up, followed by a pickup with teenagers riding in the bed, and this choice of peaceful sites for reading European literary classics seemed even less wise.
I’d passed a couple of side roads that my map shows as access to other trailheads, but the online trail guide says these roads are washed out and may be impassable. It was all so beautiful and intriguing, it was hard to leave, but I wasn’t prepared for camping in bear habitat and wanted to reach town before dark, so I returned west on the main road down the canyon.
The creek was running all the way out of the range. And for the first time, I got a close look at a small but impressively rugged freestanding range to the southwest. This range is mostly surrounded by private land and has no roads or trails, which makes it all the more intriguing.
Finally I reached the long, mostly straight paved highway up the big agricultural basin between sky islands, leading to the sleepy, half-dead town on the interstate and the end of my day of exploration.
Bears or not, if I’m ever able to hike again, I’m going to have to find a way to explore the south end of that sky island – now that I know it’s beautiful on all sides, and much less traveled away from the famous north end.
Monday, February 23rd, 2026: Hikes, Mogollon, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Last week I drove to Tucson to get a second opinion on the shoulder pain that’s been waking me up throughout the night for the past two years, and to resume the physical therapy I started there in December.
The second opinion will require a minimum of two follow-up visits. And the result of this first visit is that my shoulder hurts more than ever, because the drive itself is hard on the shoulder, and physical therapy has always made the pain worse.
The past two Sunday hikes have also re-triggered the chronic inflammation in my left foot. With the shoulder in the foreground, I tried to ignore the foot pain. Today – in denial yet again – I decided to do a rocky hike that’s always been hard on the feet. It starts out easy enough, heading up a long valley toward the foot of the mountains, but then it climbs a set of rocky switchbacks to a saddle, where you enter another watershed hidden from the outside and traverse the back of the ridge toward a big canyon. I’d avoided this hike for almost three years, so my memory was rusty and I just focused on the positives: that view of the interior, and the pine park which would be today’s destination.
As usual this winter, the sky was mostly clear and the high in town was forecast to reach the upper 50s. Snow still lingers above 9,000, even on some south slopes of our high mountains, but today I would mostly keep below 7,000 feet.
You have to ford the big creek to reach the trailhead, and it was flowing pretty strong from snowmelt in the interior, almost reaching the undercarriage of my recently lifted Sidekick.
The first half of the trail, up the long valley, is completely different from the trail shown on every available map. This turned out to be important because it made my hike a mile-and-a-half longer than expected.
There were two other vehicles at the trailhead, which is remote and unpopular: a big pickup carrying an ATV, and a Subaru station wagon from Utah. I was impressed the Subaru had made it across the creek.
At the head of the valley you pass over a scenic rock dam and begin the first set of switchbacks, which seems endless. My foot seemed to be doing okay here. The switchbacks were decorated with frequent pink ribbons, which I assumed had been left recently by the Backcountry Horsemen, who have the permit for trail work. Their horses had left plenty of shit on the trail, probably from last fall, but I couldn’t figure out what the ribbons were for – they seemed completely random. As far as I’m concerned the trail needs no more work than they’d already done years ago, but the equestrians love to cut trees, cacti, agave, yuccas and nolinas way back from the trail. I even found spots where they’d hacked manzanita as much as eight feet off-trail.
The wire gate across the saddle was closed, but the ground inside it was all dug up by cattle – something I couldn’t remember ever finding here.
The traverse to the pine park also seems endless, and the farther I went, the more the trail was dug up by cattle. This east-facing slope holds a lot of moisture, so every time the trail cut back into a drainage, it got really muddy. I was frankly getting pissed.
Nearing the pine park, which is a level plateau, I came upon a guy with an off-leash dog – a violation of forest regs. I started bitching to him about the cattle, and he said he’d seen a “whole bunch” up on the plateau, around a pond that was holding water now. I assumed by a “whole bunch” he meant at least 8-12, and was even more surprised. I wondered if these cattle had drifted over through a gate left open by ignorant hikers, then become trapped over here behind the fence.
The stranger was carrying field glasses and a tripod and said he’d camped there overnight, scouting for deer pending a return in the fall to hunt. He said he’d only seen a couple does, and I said I couldn’t remember seeing deer on this side of the big canyon.
The pond is at the far upper end of the forested plateau, so I fortunately never even saw the cattle. I love this spot, and stretched out on a bed of pine needles for a brief rest in the sun.
But I was frankly feeling kinda sick – unusually fatigued, sporadically dizzy, mildly nauseous. Dreading the return hike, I cut my rest short and unfolded the trekking poles to hopefully reduce the impact on my sore foot.
But by the time I reached the saddle between the interior and exterior of the mountains, not only was my foot hurting, but I realized the trekking poles are hard on my shoulder. So I downed the first pain pill of the day.
Those endless switchbacks are so much harder on the way down! By the time I reached the little plateau below the rock dam, facing another two miles with the sun setting, I couldn’t believe the punishment I’d gotten myself into.
At that point, the only things I had to look forward to were the landscape colors highlighted by the setting sun, and the large covey of quail that’s always flushed from the grassy slope I traverse nearing the low point of the valley.
It’s a pretty drive out at sunset, but nothing could compensate for the pain that kept me awake most of the night, and the depression of realizing I’m simply going to have to give up hiking. It will take months to overcome that foot pain – maybe even a trip to the podiatrist in the Bay Area, and more ultrasound treatment. And that’s not even the priority – the shoulder comes first, and that will take months by itself. I always knew I’d have to give up hiking at some point, but I never believed it would come this early. I just have to be grateful for the sedentary passions that remain – music, art, and writing.
Sunday, February 15th, 2026: Hikes, Pinos Altos Range, Southwest New Mexico.
This Sunday’s hike needed to be nearby, and there are only three hikes near town that offer significant distance and elevation gain. All of them are forested, and only one has a distinctive destination – a peak – so that’s the one I planned to do. But it shares trailheads with a long ridge hike with better views, so at the last minute I set off on the ridge hike instead.
The full hike is over six miles one-way, ending at a “lake” at the west end of the ridge, which is really just a large stock pond. The first mile or so sees regular traffic, but despite being close to town, it hasn’t been regularly maintained, and blowdown and overgrowth have made this trail nearly impassable at times. Sometimes in the past I’ve been the first hiker in months or even years to go halfway, let alone reach the lake.
One attraction of this trail is that it mostly traverses the steep north slope, with views north over our vast wilderness. And in 2020, a wildfire killed much of that forest, improving the views. The last time I hiked all the way to the lake was three months after the fire, when I found an expensive pistol that someone had left under a pine on the shore.
Today, with my sore left foot, I was only hoping to reach the plateau at the halfway point – the high point of the ridge at a little over 8,600 feet – for an out-and-back distance of seven or eight miles. The sky was partly cloudy and the high in town was forecast in the mid-50s.
I was prepared for snow and should’ve expected it on that steep north slope, but I’d really hoped for an easier hike than last Sunday. When I did reach the first snow after the initial climb to ridge top, it was only a couple inches deep and had been tracked by a small woman and her huge dog since our last storm, a few days ago.
The next complication I should’ve anticipated was the deadfall. This long after the fire, dead trees of all sizes were constantly falling across the trail, many with their branches intact.
A hundred yards in, where the snow got deeper, the woman and the dog had turned back. Past there, the deeper snow, laid down in January, had been tracked by one bigger hiker, then their tracks had been smoothed by last week’s additional snowfall. Since much of the trail is in perpetual shade, the surface was packed and walkable in the morning, but I knew that on my return in the afternoon much of it would’ve melted and be trickier.
So even before reaching the first stretch of snow, I stopped to strap on my gaiters and assemble my trekking poles. The poles helped with the snow but were a handicap climbing past the deadfall.
As the ridgetop rises and falls, the trail occasionally crests in a saddle, and each saddle was swept by a cold wind from the southwest that dropped the effective temperature into the teens. I wore wool gloves at all times.
The north slope traverse zigzags continually out and back, and finally after about two-and-a-half miles I rounded the last shoulder before the steep grade to the high plateau. Here, the snow was up to 14 inches deep, and I could see that the hiker who’d laid tracks before last week’s storm had also been using trekking poles.
As expected, the plateau, with its parklike ponderosa pine forest, is exposed enough to be snow-free by now. But it’s also windy enough to get constant blowdown. Despite a little annual overgrowth that obscured the already faint tread in many places, I remembered it well and was able to reach the west end, where the trail drops precipitously toward the next saddle.
I was aiming for a tiny saddle just below the plateau that has a nice view west. By the time I reached that view, I’d climbed over, under, through, or around 50 fallen trees in 2-1/2 miles – nothing compared to the 500 per mile on the crest trail of our high mountains. But worth considering for those planning to hike forested mountains in this new fire regime!
Sure enough, much of the snow on the north slope had melted by my afternoon return, so that although it was easier going downhill, it was almost as slow as the morning’s ascent. The sun did come out, enhancing the view and the contrast of drought-killed vs intact pines in the forest below.
Past the final snow patch, rounding the last shoulder at the east end of the ridge, I came upon a male spotted towhee in a little trailside tree, doing his mating display of wing flapping and tail spreading. And I got my last view of the high range to the east.
It ended up taking me 7 hours to go 8 miles, and my foot was hurting even more than last Sunday. I wondered if I would need another 18 months of twice-daily ultrasound treatments like in 2017 and 2018….
