Wednesday, July 1st, 2026: Hikes, Santa Rita, Southeast Arizona.
After my ordeal back east, I was in a big Southwestern city letting other people cook and clean for me. I’d gone two weeks without a hike, but it was the hottest time of the year, and the only truly high-elevation hikes – 8,000 feet and above – were concentrated in a small area directly accessible from the vast metro area. I’d waited for a weekday, but online trip reports for weekdays mentioned overflowing trailhead parking, crowds at saddles, and climbers using power drills to drive bolts inside wilderness areas. This is what cities do to nature – overwhelm natural habitats with their insatiable demand.
A server in the restaurant mentioned the famous canyon in the slightly more remote mountain range to the south. She said it was less crowded, but I’d been there, and a map check showed all the trails starting in the tourist village at the end of the paved road, below 5,500 feet. I guess people who live below 2,500 feet consider that high-elevation, but it was still going to end up subjecting me to afternoon temps in the 90s, on heavily-used trails with western exposure.
I kept studying the maps, and finally found a trail on the much more remote eastern side – accessed by a rough dirt road – that appeared to get me to the 8,000 foot crest with just the right distance and elevation gain. According to Google Maps, the driving time would be only 15 minutes more than the crowded options. And according to the Arizona hiking website, nobody had reported hiking it in June since 2008.
I’d only seen the eastern side of the range once before, in winter 2002 on my first trip scouting for a community to relocate to from the Bay Area. A friend in the nearby city had taken me to see a quaint village southeast of the range, and on the way, pointed out some special high-desert native grasslands.
Now, as a twenty-year native of the region, I saw more. Where the highway south left the Interstate, I saw a vast, fairly recent upper-middle-class suburb climbing to the foothills of a small but scenic range that topped out just over 6,000 feet. Pulling over and getting out to access something in back, I found that here, only 1,500 feet higher than the city, it was significantly cooler, with a sweeping view and only a half-hour commute. The wonders and blessings of suburban sprawl.
In a high-speed train of tailgaters, the highway looped through grassy hills over a low pass where I got my first view of the crest I was hoping to reach. Down into a valley where I found and turned west on the canyon road, dotted with dispersed campsites, and eventually to a huge ranch with expensive infrastructure and different breeds of cattle and horses in different pastures, and seemingly embedded in the ranch, something called “Boulder Crest Foundation” with a fancy iron gate and new, imposing residential buildings.
Past there, the graded gravel road became rough and rocky. The maps and other info I’d studied all disagreed on where the road ended and the trail began – apparently a road used to continue up the canyon to an abandoned mine – so I was surprised to find the road suddenly dead-ending at a dry creek crossing, with a definitively signed trailhead and gate.
At 9:30 am, despite the remoteness, a well-maintained late-model 4Runner had beaten me to the trailhead. The elevation here is just below 5,800 feet, nearly as high as my home, and the ambient temperature felt like the 70s, with a cool breeze pouring down the canyon. Heading up the south bank of the dry creek, I could barely tell the creekside trail used to be a road, as it is still shown on my GPS mapping platform.
A trail description from last fall mentioned a “link” trail connecting this with the next canyon south, and I soon came to that junction. There are few flowers in this habitat at this time of year, but I was surprised to encounter big Apache pines at only about 6,000 feet – their elevation range is lower than the more familiar ponderosas, which they can be confused with at a glance. That encouraged me to focus on trees for the rest of the hike. Ponderosas were missing here, but two different species of pine with medium-length needles left me puzzled.
I never saw evidence of the old mines, but about midway up the very well-maintained trail I came to a boulder-choked convergence of side canyons where the trail began switchbacking up the north slope toward the crest. Although the entire canyon was forested, openings in the canopy subjected me to what was going to be a hot day, so the recurring breeze from above was more than welcome.
My forays across the state line have taught me to respect this Sky Island habitat. From 6,000 feet upwards I was surrounded by Douglas-fir, Apache pine, pinyon pine, the two species of mid-length-needled pines I mentioned, alligator juniper, four species of oak, madrone, manzanita, yucca and agave, and a half-dozen prominent species of arid-habitat shrubs. The lower canyon had featured abundant sycamores and willows and one Fremont cottonwood.
Nearing the crest on nearly 20 switchbacks, I entered the first obvious burn scar, where I found two flowering shrubs I recognized from the crest I’d hiked in New Mexico three weeks ago, almost 200 miles to the northeast. The wind blew stronger and stronger from the saddle above, until it whipped the big pines and thundered like a freight train.
I’d been planning to stop, hang out, then turn back at the saddle. It faced north, and would’ve had a great view if it weren’t for the standing snags. But in an old burn scar, it was no place to dawdle. I could turn right and climb to what appeared to be a shady pine grove a few hundred feet higher. Or I could turn left onto the crest trail. That was a no-brainer.
A short distance up the crest trail I encountered a guy about my age heading down – the 4Runner driver. He was doing a loop, which he said was probably ten miles total, using the link trail to climb the next canyon south, then across the crest to return down the trail I’d just climbed. That would’ve been an easy hike for me two years ago, before my knee injury, but I’d recently learned I wasn’t ready for ten miles quite yet.
I studied some new trailside trees – which now included Gambel oak – and soon arrived at a higher saddle, which was likewise fairly bleak. But a sign pointed right toward a side trail that looked like it might lead me across the crest to the west, where I hoped to look down the popular northwestern canyon and across the desert beyond.
The new trail traversed a steep, rocky slope which had burned at high intensity. Less traveled and less well-maintained, it was often slippery with loose rock, and the farther I went, the less hopeful I was of getting over the crest. Finally the trail began to switchback downwards and I gave up and turned back.
Back at the saddle, I decided to continue up the crest trail, which traversed above the canyon I’d already climbed, for a more expansive view east. Maybe I could reach another saddle with the longed-for view west.
But I figured I’d already done more than four miles, which would yield a total of eight for the day, and having taken a couple weeks off, I didn’t want to abuse my lower body.
The morning wind from the crest was fading as I headed down in early afternoon. Those switchbacks were steep, and my lower legs were burning and my ankles crying by the time I reached the gentler grades along the dry creek.
It was also much hotter down there now. I’d filled my plastic water reservoir with ice before leaving, and it was still cool, but I discovered a slow leak, so I began transferring the remainder to my hard plastic bottle and drinking it faster.
After hiking those burn scars on the crest, which remained unforested, I was paying more attention to the low outlying ridges. I could now see they’d all originally carried pine forest, which had been completely burned off and replaced by oaks and junipers.
In the last couple of miles the heat was hard to bear, my lower legs were worn out, my chronic foot injury had been triggered, and I was repeatedly stubbing my toe on rocks, tripping, and stumbling.
Back in my room, I found I’d actually gone only 7.4 miles total, with 2,500 feet of elevation gain, topping out below 8,200 feet, in 6.5 hours. None of the maps had correctly shown the access roads or the link trail. In all, I considered the hike a bust, offering noplace where I could hang out and enjoy the habitat or views, and taking a painful toll on my lower body.
Boulder Crest Foundation, on that big ranch in the lower canyon, appears to be a get-rich scheme for evangelical Christians exploiting “warrior heroes” with PTSD. They use a patented “science-based” therapy validated by a board of psychologists at obscure Christian colleges and universities nationwide.
The low pass on the highway south is the home of Empire Ranch, established by young East Coast entrepreneurs during the trendy late 19th-century cattle boom and now romanticized by the BLM as a tourist showplace of the “ranching lifestyle”. More recently it was the site of a massive wildfire started by fireworks at a gender-reveal party on public land. Welcome to Arizona.
Monday, June 29th, 2026: Places, Special Places.
My Greatest Love
After my mother’s death last November, I reacted in shock, then fell into depression – what most people call “grieving”.
For the next month, I worked through it by writing about what my mother and I experienced together.
But in the new year, my job has been to ensure the security of my disabled brother, who lives back east in our mother’s house. That involved establishing a special needs trust to supplement his inadequate income, transferring the house to the trust, rearranging his accounts and the house accounts between him and the trust, and responding to an attempt by the Social Security Administration to defraud him out of a chunk of his disability income.
Meanwhile, at my home out west, our mother continued to haunt me. I had pictures of her in unavoidable spots, and I’d set up a shrine in my bedroom with her ashes and things precious to her at the end, which I mostly couldn’t bear to look at.
Even before her passing, I’d expected to write songs to her, about my feelings, about what happened, and to celebrate her life, and in between my chores, I began working on those songs. Beyond what I’d already written in December, songwriting forced me to figure her out, to crystallize and condense everything I’d learned about her, and what she meant to me.
Getting in touch with my feelings for my mother resurrected abundant memories of love affairs with women. I’ve been incredibly blessed to know, love, and be loved by many – but as a seeker, my path has always led onwards, past the safety and security of relationships, toward the solitary unknown.
I’d always treasured two of these as the great loves of my life: my soulmate in college, and the “Native princess” much later with whom I found the greatest passion. But writing songs to my mother taught me that she was truly the greatest love of my life. What a strange revelation! Some might even find it troubling – but anyone who’s been following our story will understand what I mean.
Finding the Farm
A decade ago, as she approached her 90th birthday, our mother created a page of final wishes. She wanted to be cremated, with her ashes returned on or near her mother’s family farm, the place that “made her who she was”. She described riding bicycles there in the summer with her girlfriends – a ten-mile ride on country lanes – where they helped Grandfather and Grandmother with the garden, the chickens, sheep, pigs, and milk cow, surrounded by green fields of corn that rustled in the wind, corn that from that rich black soil, month by month, grew taller than a man.
Her Grandfather was our great-grandfather – he died when I was only two years old. His will stipulated that the farm should remain in the family in perpetuity. But his heirs were all girls, none of whom married farmers. And as Grandma and her sisters passed away in the early 1990s, my mother’s cousins began pressuring her to agree to sell the farm, believing it would make them all rich. Eventually they wore her down, the farm was sold, and when the proceeds were divided up, they disappointed everyone.
Believing we would need the current owner’s permission to leave our mother’s ashes there, and fearing we wouldn’t get it, I spent weeks trying to get information remotely, from my home out West. What I found was a common story: the house had been parceled off from the cropfields. The house was owned by a trust, and the fields were held by the absentee owner of many farms in the area. Returning Mom’s ashes to the house made no sense – it’s been doubled in size with a rear extension, surrounded by a manicured lawn.
Likewise, the cropfields have been extended so that every square inch between the road and the river is plowed and cultivated. But the farm lies between forks of a river, and when I was eventually able to compare the parcel boundary with Google maps and satellite view, I could see that one corner of the parcel lies across one of those river forks, leaving what appears on satellite view to be a tiny triangular stand of riparian forest cut off from the main farm, mirrored by another stand directly across the country lane that accesses the farmhouse. I was then surprised to find a 360-degree view of that forest on Street View, and to learn that two years ago, when Google’s photos were taken, the canopy completely shaded the lane, there was cleared space on both sides to park vehicles, and the forested section of the lane couldn’t be seen from any neighboring properties.
Panic Attack
Traveling back east to honor our mother’s wishes was the great rite, the great ceremonial act I’d been preparing for, and dreading, since last November. This was to be the third cross-country trip I’d made to lead the ceremonial return of a loved one’s ashes – the first being in spring 2010 when my brother and I flew separately to a small town on the Oregon coast, where our father wanted his remains added to Whiskey Creek as it empties into the Pacific Ocean.
The second was in spring 2024, when Katie’s siblings asked me to preside over the return of her ashes to our cave in the desert. For that, I set two of her lyrics to music and sang them for the group, and was rewarded by the gift of a rattle from my Native friend, who also sings at funerary ceremonies.
I planned to make the trip east in June, and by May I’d finished four new songs to my mother. In her final wishes, she had given us simple but complete instructions: only family were to be present, I was to speak, each of us was to sing a song of our choice, and I was to read her favorite poem – Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”.
I had started and slaved over those new songs to perform at our mother’s memorial, and worked hard practicing them every day for weeks. But somehow I could never envision myself singing them at the actual site, there with my brother. Finally, I recalled my mother’s last year in institutions, where I’d repeatedly performed songs from my entire career – and her favorite, the one she kept asking me to repeat, was “Helicopter” – a lyric I wrote in the late 1980s and set to music in 2009. So I set the new songs aside.
Preparing for a trip often stresses me out, but as the day of departure approached, I realized my mother’s remains would now be leaving my home, never to return. We routinely talk about the soul leaving the body at death, but we also say that a person’s spirit remains in things they touched. I didn’t want to let go of my mother in any way.
So I found myself consumed by a panic attack during the nine hours of travel back east.
Waiting for the Apocalypse
I arrived after midnight Sunday, and the next day, my brother – who can barely walk – agreed to try to make the trip to the farm on Wednesday afternoon. He drives, and we agreed to take separate vehicles, since he seldom goes out and likes to maximize each opportunity with side trips to friends, fast food outlets, and railroad crossings where he can watch for trains.
On Wednesday morning, still feeling fragile, I packed for the trip in late morning, then checked the weather before going downstairs to rouse my brother.
The National Weather Service had issued an extreme weather warning, and the local news outlet was forecasting two apocalyptic storms – the first in the afternoon, with winds up to 80 mph, and the second in the evening, with tornadoes and hail over 2 inches in diameter.
So we canceled our trip to the farm. My brother stayed in bed, and I returned upstairs to pack emergency clothing, documents, and valuables. If the neighborhood siren went off or damage occurred, we would take shelter in my brother’s downstairs bathroom, the only windowless room in the house.
I spent the next twelve hours anxiously following the weather on multiple platforms. The storm cells forming one after the other in Kansas and Missouri advanced east across central Illinois, where tornadoes were spotted and damage was reported, but eventually, entering Indiana, they trended slightly south, ending up 20-40 miles south of us, where they dumped a lot of rain and blew some trees down.
Coming Home
Our mother’s house – my brother’s house now – is still full of her stuff, and another goal of this trip was to make progress distributing and disposing of it. I spent days sorting through clothing, books, and more than a decade of tax records. Boxing hundreds of pounds of documents and hauling them to UPS to be shredded. Boxing hundreds of pounds of books and hauling them to the library bookstore – my back and shoulder are still hurting. I found our mother’s wedding dress, and her mink coat, which needs to be cleaned and repaired – another trip – before it can be sold. I was able to get the title to her car transferred, but will need another trip east to actually sell it.
I made frustrating visits to my old refuges, the art museum and the Western museum, which are only shells of their former glory.
And on the day after the stressful storms, my brother agreed to make another try at the farm.
He left ahead of me, and I got lost at a city intersection which has been rerouted, so that I ended up about ten minutes behind him. But he slowed for me, and I caught up with him just outside our hometown, 40 minutes from the city.
We drove through our old hometown, likewise a shell of its former glory – changed from a thriving, self-sufficient farmer’s marketplace in the late 19th century to a sleepy, depopulated bedroom community dependent on the big city now. We drove out through familiar countryside where the best corn was now knee-high. To the country church where Grandma sang a solo at age 18, and we both turned off to discuss the final approach. From what we’d seen, flooding was possible – and of course, the forest could’ve been cleared since Google had taken the photos, and once parked, we could be spotted and interrogated by concerned neighbors.
The country lane did turn out to be flooded just before the turnoff through the forest – I drove through easily in my mother’s larger SUV, but my brother had to take it more cautiously.
We reached the patch of forest, and indeed it formed a long green tunnel over the road, invisible from outside. The forested area was much larger than I’d expected from the map – although the country lane was only wide enough for one vehicle, so it was a good thing we had space to park, and no one passed while we were there.
This was the way Mom and her girlfriends would’ve reached the farm on their bikes, 90 years ago in the 1930s. They would’ve treasured the shade after the long ride from town.
Funeral homes give you the ashes in a clear plastic bag, which is awkward. So I’d brought a stoneware pitcher from our mother’s house, and transferred the ashes into it on the spot. I unpacked the little travel guitar I keep in Mom’s house, and walked over to my brother’s car with the much-used-and-annotated Frost book. Getting out would be too difficult and dangerous for him, so he just rolled his window down.
We talked about our completely different experiences of our mother. I was born and spent my early childhood outside our dad’s small Ohio hometown, where our mom kept house while I played outdoors or walked to school. My brother was born seven years later, just before our parents separated and our mom took us to her small Indiana hometown. The divorce was amicable and we continued to care equally about both parents, but with our Dad in California, we typically saw him only once a year – sometimes for up to a month, but our mother and her parents were the ones who raised us.
After I graduated from high school, I moved away permanently, a few hours away to college, then out West, where I knew our mother primarily during her annual week-long visits to explore my cities, meet my friends and girlfriends, attend my parties and nightclub gigs, and join me on road trips to the coast, the mountains, and the desert. And when she became an artist and moved to her own big city, I visited her back, becoming part of her vibrant downtown community.
Meanwhile in our Indiana hometown, my brother’s life was derailed in adolescence by his accident. Struggling to recover, he spent parts of the 1970s and 1980s in suburban California with our dad, but ended up living most of his adult life in our hometown near our mom, moving into her city home during her last decade. As a small-town boy with mostly poor “redneck” friends, he was a fish out of water among her urban sophisticates.
So where I experienced our mom as a sort of peer, my brother knew her as a hands-on mother, a means of support, and a roommate – but partly a stranger, in her increasing passion for nature and the arts.
Here on the edge of the farm, he sang “The Lord’s Prayer” in his operatic baritone voice. I thanked him, and sang “Helicopter”. He’d never heard the song, and solemnly praised it. I read the poem, but could barely finish it for tears and sobbing.
I retrieved the pitcher and crossed the road toward an overgrown clearing several paces into the forest, calling out to our mother, welcoming her home.
Afterward, my brother and I embraced through the window, and he drove off past our great-grandfather’s farmhouse. I stood alone for a while in the silent green tunnel. I’d brought her home, but how could I leave her?
Sacred Ground
Walking out of the forest on the farm, I’d noticed a couple of crumpled beer cans, partly hidden beneath the annuals that carpet these riparian hardwood groves. My feelings were running too strong to think clearly, but I realized, on the drive back to the city, what the cleared strips along the lane there are for. It’s a “parking” spot, a remote, secluded corner of the county where young people go at night to drink and make out. That’s our mother’s final resting place.
So a couple days later – on the Summer Solstice – I drove back down, and spent a half hour walking the margins of the forest on both sides of the road and picking up all the trash. There really wasn’t much.
So close to the fork of the river, I’d worried the forest would be subject to flooding. But now I realized it’s on a terrace six to eight feet above the actual floodplain. And at the edge of the terrace, I found a trail, leading downstream away from the road, and upstream on the opposite side. Less than a foot wide, it looked more like a game trail – but I don’t remember ever seeing deer around here. I followed it a hundred yards into the forest, then it faded away. It was all mature native hardwoods – elms, maples, walnuts, with grapevines spiraling up into the high canopy – and I couldn’t see the end of it in any direction.
During the following week, I came to realize that by instructing us to come here and do this for her, our mother forged a new bond between us and this place, a bond that hadn’t existed before now. It had made her, and she brought us here to bind us to her home.
Our mother and father were both only children, and my brother and I are now the sole survivors of our family. Because of this, I became the final custodian of our family records, photos, and memorabilia. I’ve drawn family trees. I’ve looked for “home places” where the great-grandparents hosted family reunions, and I’ve visited rural cemeteries.
And now, I realize I would like to make pilgrimages to the graves – all the graves I can find, sacred places there in the hinterlands of the great Ohio Valley. As if I didn’t have enough to do already! Some people retire and don’t know what to do with themselves, can’t seem to get up off the couch. But I just keep adding to my list.
Monday, June 8th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Southwest New Mexico.
At 6,000 feet, we’re finally getting typical pre-monsoon weather – highs in the low 90s – so this Sunday I was looking for something higher and cooler. And after last Sunday’s short-and-steep, today I wanted something longer and gentler.
The crest hike in our eastern mountains is the only thing that would fit and still deliver interesting landscape and/or views. And it would be a shorter drive than what I’ve been choosing lately.
The eastern sky was almost completely clear, but I knew cumulus clouds would develop later.
I hadn’t hiked this trail in two years – since June 2024, the month after my knee injury, which turned out to be a mistake. The hike to the 10,020 foot peak is a little over ten miles out-and-back, with 2,000 feet of accumulated elevation gain. When I’m at my target of fitness, the peak is just the beginning of the complete hike, which continues another four miles north along the crest, for a total of 19 miles and 4,550 accumulated vertical feet.
But like most hikes, this one unfolds in a series of segments, and to maintain gradual recovery of my foot and knee, I was planning to turn back after the third segment, for a total of 8 miles and about 1,500 feet of elevation gain.
It’s the most popular mountain trail within an hour of home – seeing mostly urban hikers from the cities east of here – which is one reason I’ve been avoiding it. And today, on the first segment – the climb from the 8,200-foot pass on the highway, to the wilderness area boundary at just over 9,000 feet – I met a young backpacker returning from his ever-popular “night on the peak”.
The climb to the wilderness boundary is about two miles, and as usual, took me an hour. It’s actually the most scenic segment, passing back and forth across the crest, between dramatic rock outcrops, for seemingly endless views to both east and west. Despite a dry winter, we’d had several storms in recent months, and mountain crests typically get the most precip, so the flowers were about what I expected for early June.
The next segment spends about another mile traversing a sort of high cove on the east side of the crest, below a 9,600 peak and across converging drainages of a canyon below. The entire crest burned intensely in 2013 and 2022, and this segment passes through dense thickets of regrowth – primarily New Mexico locust and Gambel oak. But since the trail is the primary access to a famous fire lookout on the peak, it’s regularly cleared.
The third segment switches back to the west side of the crest and climbs to another saddle, a long, narrow, and windy rock outcrop favored by hedgehog cacti. This is where I planned to turn back.
But I was feeling great! Why not go a little farther? The point where the trail switches back to the east side is only another half mile farther and less than 400 vertical feet higher. It was a no brainer.
Of course, once I’d made that fateful decision, I was pretty much committed to climbing to the peak, because that’s where the habitat changes most dramatically, to alpine meadows and fir forest.
I was still feeling great when I finally reached the junction with the peak trail at just below 10,000 feet. I avoid the actual peak because I have no interest in the fire lookout. But normally I continue a quarter mile or so to the first beautiful meadow – and today I felt like I’d pushed my luck already. I hadn’t hiked this far since July 2024, and I knew it was a mistake – neither my foot or knee was ready, and I would pay tomorrow at home.
So reaching that unspectacular junction in the forest was both anti-climactic and regretful.
Returning down the highest segment of the trail should theoretically offer the best views to north and east. But all the standing snags mostly prevent that. Fortunately the naked eye can pick out peaks dozens of miles away that the camera can’t reveal. I always enjoy glimpses of the 10,200 foot summit of the range, twelve miles north, which I’ve also hiked, along with the crest in between.
I’d started the hike on pain meds, after waking with bad shoulder pain. At this point, bending my elbow to take pictures was painful. And by the time I reached that rocky saddle, my right shoulder was burning and I was struggling to protect my left foot.
The next segment, traversing the watershed of the east-side canyon, involves a gentle decline and was easier on my foot. I’d taken a second pain pill before reaching the peak, but it seemed to be wearing off. The peak above blocked the west wind, the dense shrubs maintained humidity without blocking the high-altitude sun, and that traverse felt like a hot day on the streets of New Orleans.
The final segment was hell. My packstraps were killing both shoulders, the right shoulder and arm were on fire, and my whole lower body was aching. You’re not supposed to drive on pain meds, it takes 45 minutes before you feel the effects, and the drive home is an hour. So I finished the hike and started the drive in considerable pain. Have I learned my lesson? Fat chance…
Monday, June 1st, 2026: Hikes, Log, Mineral, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
I was out of pain meds, but my doc was on vacation – so I’d been minimizing my activity level and trying to avoid using the right arm. But it was Sunday – I just had to do a hike.
Even after eight years of hiking the backcountry and wilderness areas within a 2-hour drive, there still remain many, many trails I haven’t hiked – some because they require backpacking in bear habitat, and others because they just haven’t appealed to me. One of the latter is a two-mile “shortcut” between the dirt road that crosses our high mountains, and one of our most spectacular canyons.
We owe Aldo Leopold an immense debt of gratitude for his foresight in obtaining wilderness designation for such a vast area, over a hundred years ago, when environmentalism as such didn’t exist and few Americans were concerned about habitat degradation. The more than 1,200 square miles of designated wilderness in my back yard include dozens of spectacular canyons, waterfalls, and caves – and because of the wilderness designation and lack of road access, most of those features are hidden from tourists and can only be seen via arduous hikes or backpacks.
Most of them are so hard to reach that even today, little or no information is available online, and the only way to discover them is by blundering into them blindly, on foot.
Today’s trail hadn’t seemed an option before – it was too short when I was in good condition, and it involved too much elevation gain when I was in recovery, trying to protect my knee and foot. But now, I felt my joints could handle it. Warm weather was forecast in town, and the trail is higher in elevation and forested, so there might be shade. And it enters that canyon well above the well-known lowest stretch, beyond which no one seems to venture anymore.
Our famous dirt road over the 9,000 foot crest begins at the edge of the ghost town, and today’s trailhead lies not much farther, in the bottom of a narrow canyon just beyond the last house, a ramshackle cabin purchased last year by somebody from far away who, like most city dwellers, apparently always dreamed of a cabin in the woods, oblivious to fire ecology and the flash floods that periodically wipe out roads like this. I heard them hammering away on their property as I set off up the trail, which begins by climbing up the ridge between this and the canyon of my destination, from about 6,800 feet at the trailhead to about 7,300 feet at the saddle.
Despite the elevation, it was open woodland, I was exposed on a clear, sunny day, and I was sweating like a pig, swarmed by even more flies than before.
This is the steeper, western side of our high mountains – hence the spectacular canyons – and the ridges, creeks, and road all climb from west to east here. The road actually tops out at the northern end of the 9,000 foot crest – the canyon I was heading for is the northernmost of our big west-side canyons, and the ridges beyond it are generally a thousand feet lower than the main crest behind me. I glimpsed them from the saddle, but the trail on the opposite side of the big clearing led immediately down into mixed-conifer forest with limited views.
I had a vague sense that it would be steep, but holy shit! – this turned out to be one of the steepest trails I’ve ever encountered. The average grade, descending that narrow side canyon to the bottom of the main canyon, is about 30 percent over a distance of 1.2 miles. The habitat alternated between mature mixed-conifer, shrub-and-grassland, and pinyon-juniper-oak. As a result, much of it was exposed, but little seemed to be recently burnt, so it was pretty as well as hot. I especially enjoyed a continuous stand of tall bigleaf maples when the trail entered the side canyon bottom.
The last 150 yards of the trail were at a minimum 40 percent grade – I have no idea how anyone could even build a trail at that grade, since you wouldn’t have stable footing to wield a tool – and I had to side-step down it. And at the bottom, a little below 6,200 feet, instead of views of spectacular cliffs or rimrock, all I found was a dense riparian jungle.
My trail ended in the jungle. The creek was flowing a short distance away, where I glimpsed some logs that had been sawn, decades ago, indicating a creek crossing on the main canyon trail. But when I crossed the canyon there, no trail awaited. So I headed back to the opposite bank, following a vague opening through the jungle that immediately ended in a dark thicket of seedlings.
These canyon bottoms are narrow, so there seemed no chance of getting lost. I began forcing my way through the vegetation, where I was soon stopped by the contorted trunk of a massive oak that had fallen across most of the floodplain. And with difficulty, trying to protect my injured shoulder and recovering foot and knee, I struggled under it into the jungle on the other side.
From glimpses I’d had across the creek, I believed that this, the south side of canyon bottom, was the correct side for a route up canyon, so I just kept forcing my way through the dense young trees and over the deadfall, and eventually reached a little clearing with the remains of a campfire circle predating our big 2012 wildfire. I was definitely on the right track!
And just beyond that, I reached the old trail, which had survived the post-fire floods and debris by climbing the south slope of the canyon. In fact, it climbed 70-80 feet above the creek for quite a distance – and despite it having good but narrow tread, I was amused to find the 3-inch trunk of a contorted oak that had literally grown across the trail at calf level, extending a dozen feet on the opposite side, since this trail last saw regular use. I might actually be the first person here since the 2012 fire.
Of course, the trail eventually descended back into the riparian jungle and disappeared. And after forcing my way farther through the jungle, I suddenly confronted the 4-foot-diameter trunk of a fallen Douglas-fir, with branches intact, forming an impenetrable barrier.
Fortunately the root cavity was just upslope, so I was able to scramble around the giant, and within a short distance came to an obvious creek crossing, where I saw an opening in the vegetation on the other side. I crossed, climbed the low bank, and followed a clearing, clambering between more deadfall, and entering a forested obstacle course of deadfall that I picked my way over to the next obvious creek crossing. I figured I’d gone a half mile, and the opposite bank offered more dark jungle. Ahead was a broad opening in the canopy where a stand of young ash trees had mostly died off, facing a broad scree fall on the north slope of the canyon. I figured that would be a good spot to log a GPS waypoint, and the gravel bank on the south side would be a good spot to hang out and wait for the satellite connection.
But of course, I was restless, and made my way upstream on the opposite bank for a more than a hundred yards farther, until through the trees I spotted what appeared to be a sizable clearing on the opposite bank. Could it be an old campsite? I fought my way across. It would’ve been nice – except for the usual danger of falling pine limbs – but there was no evidence of fire rings or trail there.
There’s zero evidence online that anyone has been up this canyon since 2012, and it would be pointless asking the Forest Service – they’re all newcomers who rotate out every few years. I found a shoeprint midway up the initial slope from the trailhead, but nothing in the saddle or anywhere on the descent, so I assume I’m the first to hike it since at least last year. The “shortcut” trail is sporadically blocked by oak seedlings, even in the first few yards, so despite its good tread, it remains unpopular – dead-ending as it does in a canyon-bottom jungle.
Since COVID, trail crews have been busy all over our wilderness, clearing trails I’ve never seen or heard of – I wonder why this ten-mile canyon bottom with a perennial stream, climbing from 5,400 feet at its mouth to 8,500 feet at its head, remains untouched? Not that I’m complaining – the wilder the better for me.
Returning to the side canyon trail was tricky – I attempted a detour around that big fallen Douglas-fir, and spent some time lost in the jungle. But I finally stumbled upon a sawn log – clear indication there was a trail there once – and continuing in that direction I eventually emerged at the bottom of my dreaded 40-percent grade.
Climbing steep grades without putting weight on the ball of your foot is a real challenge. But this is where I realized I was actually having fun. Yeah, covering distance on a groomed trail gives me a sense of accomplishment, and can provide faster access to remote, spectacular destinations. But that bushwhack through the jungle, routefinding and stumbling upon random evidence and stretches of abandoned trail, is the kind of hike I enjoy most.
My unexpected happiness made the long slog to the saddle less of an ordeal.
Another reason I’ve avoided this trail is that the out-hike mostly involves descending, and the return hike involves mostly climbing. So I was really looking forward to the final, relatively gentle, descent to the trailhead, after which I planned to grab a burger at the tiny shack in the ghost town.
I reached the vehicle exactly five hours after departure – which for a round-trip hike of five miles is very slow. But stops amounted to at least a half hour, that bushwhack was definitely slower than usual, and steep climbs likewise go slow as I try to protect my foot.
I reached the ghost town, which was mostly deserted, shortly after 4 pm, and realized it already felt like a long day – I would rather get home early, take a leisurely shower, and warm up leftovers.
Friday, May 29th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Pine Creek, Southeast Arizona.
Planning to end my birthday trip, check out of the hotel, and start driving home today, I was in a quandary. I was in no rush to get home, where more problems awaited me. Normally, on trips to the city like this, I try to fit in another restaurant meal and maybe a museum visit. But I was leaving on a Thursday, normally a hiking day, and the drive home offered potential hikes. In the end, I simply couldn’t decide between the options. I realized I just needed to hit the road, and let the drive clear my mind.
Back in the hotel room, an enroute hike was clearly a bad idea – it would require a long drive out of my way. I would end up with about six hours of hard driving, for less than three hours of questionable hiking. I might even need another night in a motel, a shabby one at that.
But on the road, my powerful desire to explore new territory overcame reason. I didn’t even stop for lunch – I had snacks left over from yesterday. I turned off the interstate and headed on long back roads toward that hidden canyon.
I’d passed this dead-end forest road once before – and I read about a hiker who’d driven a short distance on it, seven years ago. This is an incredibly obsessive hiker – someone like me who wants to hike every trail on the map. Coming from Phoenix or Tucson, he was in search of an abandoned trail, one of five parallel north-south trails that lead through the most remote part of the wilderness area in the less-visited west-central part of this mountain range.
The big-city hiker had driven less than a third of a mile on the forest road, finding it so rough that he “could walk faster than driving”. The road, with a locked gate eight miles in, was catastrophically washed out by debris flows after the 2011 wildfire, and is now only maintained by rare campers or hunters on UTVs. And apparently, none of the trails has been cleared since the fire – the big city hiker managed to bushwhack the route of the first trail, but found little remaining of it or any of its connecting trails.
I assumed I had a more robust vehicle, and indeed I was able to go much farther on the road – over a mile – but only by stopping frequently to spot lines across debris piles and past foot-high boulders. At first I followed a single recent set of UTV tracks, but eventually I was driving on ground no vehicle or hiker had seen in a long time. It was a fun test of my lifted suspension, but after a while I realized, like my predecessor, it would be easier to walk.
Much of the original forest road had been bypassed since the fire, due to debris flows or deep erosion. So far, I’d driven beneath a canopy of tall ponderosa pines, glimpsing rimrock high above eroded into dozens of hoodoos. When I finally parked, I expected to hike nearly another mile on what was left of the road, before reaching the trail the big-city guy had bushwhacked.
Since I hadn’t planned this hike, I hadn’t printed any detailed maps. And walking off, I forgot to bring any of the area maps I always carry in the vehicle. I remembered the trailhead as being easy to find, with the remains of a signpost, and I simply assumed I would find it along the road, somewhere near the mouth of the canyon.
The road did get worse, but I could’ve probably continued driving it. The creek was still running alongside, which was nice. I came to a closed gate that wasn’t even latched, and I never saw any sign of cattle. Then I came to a fallen snag that blocked the road, which I would’ve had to saw through to get my Sidekick past, and I was glad I’d parked and walked. And then I came to another big creek crossing – the creek was dry at this point – and the canyon widened into a valley.
The canopy stopped here, and I could see a big side canyon opening off to my left – the canyon of the abandoned trail. So from here on I needed to watch for the signpost.
Once I crossed the big dry creek, I was exposed between solid oak thickets – the 2011 wildfire had clearly burned at high intensity through here. I was traversing a floodplain or bank, and the oak on each side was on average a dozen feet tall, but I could often see the rimrock high above on both sides of the roadway. Someone on a UTV had ridden up here, I assumed from the locked gate far down-canyon – and I could occasionally see where they had cleared logs or branches away with a saw.
Lacking a map, I was puzzled about the trailhead. The big creek crossing had been the east end of the mouth of this side canyon, and the main creek was now far to my left, between me and the broad side canyon mouth. Canyon trails normally start where a road crosses the mouth of that canyon, so I wasn’t really expecting the trailhead along this part of the road.
And eventually, I reached another pine forest, and a big dry creek crossing. This had to be the main creek – the mouth of creek from the side canyon had to have entered somewhere that was now upstream of me, meaning the trailhead had to be somewhere upstream of the road. Through the pines, I could clearly see the slope of the downstream wall of the side canyon. I had completely passed the mouth of the side canyon, apparently along with the trail I was looking for. I was totally confused.
The only thing I could do was make my way upstream, hoping to find the confluence where the side creek came down out of the side canyon. But I only made it about a hundred yards before reaching a logjam, where I climbed a steep bank looking for a way up-canyon.
All I found was a truly impenetrable thicket.
So I scrambled back downstream, up the opposite bank of the main creek, into the pine forest, where I likewise found nothing that looked like a trail. I forced my way back to the road and connected my GPS unit to a satellite for a waypoint.
That night, with connectivity, online maps, my GPS waypoint, and the detailed 2019 trip report of the big-city hiker, I discovered to my chagrin that I had stopped and turned back a hundred yards short of the trailhead, which is located in a totally nonintuitive spot. The abandoned trail follows an old roadway which I might’ve noticed when I crossed the main creek after being stymied by that thicket, if I’d been oriented across the slope above instead of along the bank of the creek. I’d passed less than a hundred feet from the old roadway.
The sky had been mostly cloudy all day, but it was a hot trudge back past those oak thickets. In all, it took me 1.75 hours to walk less than three miles down that road and back to the vehicle.
And to add insult to injury, I drove off without logging another waypoint where I had parked. I didn’t think of it until I had crossed the big debris flow where the main canyon turns sharply south. So I parked in a clearing there and walked nearly a half mile back, connected the device, and waited another ten minutes. But unlike earlier, the system never logged a waypoint, so I ended up having to estimate my parking spot using the vehicle’s odometer and a formula based on the difference in tire diameters between stock and the much bigger tires I installed last year.
On the way back to the vehicle for the second time, I spooked a whitetail –moving too fast to tell the gender. And after I resumed driving up-canyon and around the bend into the narrows below the rock spire, I spooked a mature adult black bear, which ran upslope to my right. I stopped when I reached that point and watched it continue across and up the steep slope – this was my second sighting so far this year, and my first in this mountain range.
Dedicated backcountry campers have cleared and maintained six or eight campsites in the easier stretch of road above the big debris flow, even stocking some of them with saw-cut firewood, but the road has partly collapsed into the creek near its beginning at the access road. I can drive past it easily with my little Sidekick’s narrow track, but there’s no way you could safely get one of these new full-size pickups past it. Probably not even a new Jeep. And no vehicle wider or longer than mine could’ve negotiated the detours through the forest, farther down, which zigzagged sharply back and forth between tall pines.
In all, this is an impressively remote and hard-to-access canyon – a wildlife paradise. I was right to make it a priority, but I’m going to need more time and more fitness to explore it the way that guy from the big city did seven years ago. He claims to have made a 13-mile loop out of it, going up the abandoned canyon and down the nearer canyon I hiked partway up last year, in an 8-hour speed-bushwhack that I doubt I could manage even at peak fitness.
The drive out, and over the mountains to the cafe and lodge, was as nerve-wracking as ever. And as expected, I had to stay the night and finish the drive home in the morning. Hopefully I learned my lesson – whatever that means.
