Sunday, April 5th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
I usually start researching options for my Sunday hike later on Saturday, after finishing my chores. It was easy this time – there’s an area on the state line with ranch roads that might get me to a spectacular box canyon, and afterwards, the restaurant in the Mormon farm town.
But on Sunday morning I realized it was Easter, and the restaurant would be closed. It took me another hour and a half, squinting at maps and scratching my head, to come up with another option – in an area I seldom visit, in the opposite direction. It’s in the foothills of our eastern mountains, between the two big wilderness areas, and I’ve always thought of it as a long drive. But when I checked the drive time, it was actually less than that area on the state line.
It’s a trail I’d never considered, because when I’m in good shape it doesn’t offer a challenge, and I doubted that it would feature anything else of interest. It merely connects a reasonably spectacular trail, at higher elevation, to a spectacular canyon hike, at lower elevation. But it looked like the perfect distance and elevation gain to continue my knee and foot recovery.
I’d hoped to hike in Arizona, at lower elevation, because today was forecast to be cooler – in the mid-60s in town. This connector trail would be up to 3,000 feet higher, but the sky was mostly clear. From the backcountry highway in the long, narrow valley, the dirt road climbs to the mesa, runs mostly straight north, then deteriorates to one rocky lane while descending into a rugged, shaded canyon.
What appeared to be an extended family group had taken over the tiny campground beside the creek in the canyon bottom. The dirt road crosses the creek dozens of times and washes out in every good rain, so it has a high berm of boulders that are constantly bulldozed out of the way.
After about two-and-a-half miles the road leaves the canyon and climbs to the next mesa, where you immediately come upon the trailhead. I’ve never seen anyone else here, and today’s trail started out nearly invisible.
Like last Sunday, it was in the 60s when I hit the trail, but hiking would keep me plenty warm without a sweater. The trail varied between obvious and nonexistent, but as usual I had no trouble figuring out the route. It climbed steadily at an easy grade in and out of drainages on this east side of a high ridge, passing several modest rock outcrops. I studied every patch of dirt in the trail, and the only tracks I could identify were from javelina.
The ridge was completely forested, so views were rare. I was looking forward to the view west from the ridgetop, across 50 miles of wilderness. But when I finally reached it, I could only glimpse narrow slices of landscape through the tall pines and firs.
The trail followed the ridgetop for about a mile – a pleasant, mostly level stroll. I wasn’t sweating, but flies were starting to bounce around my face.
Finally the trail began descending the west slope of the ridge. Descending steadily, I was surprised to encounter pinyon–juniper-oak forest first, then ponderosa pine forest, then pinyon-juniper-oak again, then ponderosa again, over and over until I reached the trail junction at the bottom – breaking all the rules of habitat and elevation.
As soon as I started down that west-facing slope, the flies swarmed me so bad I had to dig out my head net. I couldn’t figure it out – I was barely sweating, there was no livestock anywhere near here, and the only surface water was in occasional pools in the canyon far below.
I’d planned to turn back at the trail junction, but I was so frustrated at never getting a view out of the forest, I continued on the trail into the canyon, hoping to get a view of its rock bluffs.
After about a quarter mile, I did get a view down-canyon, but this was only a tributary – not the main rocky canyon. It would have to do for today.
With its gentle grades, this seemed the perfect hike to work on both foot and knee. Yeah, it was frustrating not to be able to see out of the forest, but it was a very pretty forest.
As I’ve written elsewhere, this is part of the national trail from Mexico to Canada, so it was built well generations ago. But nobody uses it anymore – all the through hikers detour to the big river twenty miles west of here, because the official trail no longer has dependable water sources.
The drive is actually more spectacular than that trail.
Monday, March 30th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Ida, Southeast Arizona.
Since my knee injury, two years ago, I’ve tried, over and over again, to treat it and recover from it. Sometimes under a doctor’s orders, sometimes by trial and error.
Currently, suffering from residual pain in my left foot and right knee, I’m back in trial and error mode – trying to find ways to get out in nature while allowing both knee and foot to recover. That means doing less challenging hikes, in the hope that eventually, I’ll be able to increase the challenge yet again.
Last week’s hikes, at 4 and 5 miles and over 800 vertical feet each, were at the limit of what I can do and recover from quickly now. But after years of long, spectacular hikes, it’s hard to find easy ones that can motivate me. There are easy hikes near town, but I’ve done them hundreds of times, and they’re boring at best.
For Sundays, since short hikes won’t get me deep into wilderness, I need other incentives – spectacular drives, restaurant food. Of the five two-lane highways leaving town, only two offer both. Last Sunday I’d driven north and west, today I would drive south and west.
Leaving in mid-morning, I’d reach the cafe at the entrance to the mountains in time for brunch. Another hour climbing on a rocky dirt road would get me to the crest.
The temperature was in the mid-60s, with scattered clouds above, when I left home. Weeks of wind across the playa had filled the sky along the border with dust, and more clouds were moving in from the west. I had trout, scrambled eggs, and salad at the cafe – I know, life is hard – then headed toward the crest.
After only a couple of miles I came up behind an immaculate Jeep Rubicon tricked out with all kinds of racks and jerry cans, oversize off-road tires, ornamental brake lights built into the spare tire, and spacers that gave it a ridiculously wide track. The driver was holding it to 15 mph where I could go twice as fast, so he soon pulled over for me.
Then I hit a bad rocky stretch and realized I should deflate my tires – they were probably overinflated due to recent warm weather. But I didn’t want to have to pass that guy again, so I raced uphill for a few miles, then pulled over. But sure enough, by the time I’d deflated my tires, the Jeep had passed me – still going only 15 mph – so he had to pull over a second time to let me by.
Now I was on the final ascent, and soon the habitat transitioned from pinyon-oak to pine-fir. After passing the Jeep I was surprised to see no one else. At the saddle on the crest I turned onto the dead-end crest road and passed spectacular views until I reached the side road which climbs over the crest and down to the abandoned campground in the shaded, well-watered pine park at 8,200 feet.
This is one of my favorite spots in the Southwest. The forest trails are too rough for trailers, and I’ve never seen anyone camping here.
The sky was mostly cloudy now, the air temperature in the high 60s, but I knew hiking would keep me warm. I’d been wondering about this trail for years. The only trip report I’d read said it was badly overgrown with thorny locust. But despite being hidden far off the beaten path in this remote, lonely spot, it surprised me with a new trail sign and appeared well-maintained.
Under tall pines, the trail descended into the convergence of drainages for the basin, then traversed the right side of this shallow canyon. I kept seeing blue paint blazes on pines far back from the trail, wondering what they were for – hopefully not logging.
I noticed movement up the slope and spotted two whitetail does. Finally the trail began climbing a rocky slope, below talus, and I came upon stands of blooming ceanothus, incredibly pungent, sweet with a touch of tang like cinnamon. Then the trail rounded a shoulder and I was entering another watershed.
I now faced dramatic yellow rock outcrops across this new canyon. The trail entered a burn scar, and I studied stretches of bare dirt but could see no human tracks. Rounding the head of the canyon I began traversing and climbing an even rockier slope below the outcrops, with a more and more spectacular view south under darkening clouds. I was looking over the western wilderness I’d barely penetrated, a few months ago, and was hoping to explore eventually.
Finally I reached the saddle below the peak the trail is named for, and entered my third watershed of this hike – three watershed views in little over a mile! This view, over the northern crest of the range, was the prize.
From the saddle, the trail traversed a very steep slope below the peak, into open pine forest. My plan was to reach a branch trail that leads to a spring on the west side – I expected that to yield 4 miles and less than 700 vertical feet out-and-back.
On that traverse I found clear indications that a trail crew had been here recently – hence the great condition. But big snags had continued to fall across the trail and were difficult to climb over with my bad shoulder, foot, and knee. And I still saw no human tracks – until finally, within a quarter mile of the spring trail, I found small sneaker prints, probably from a woman who had climbed from the lower trailhead and turned back here.
My map showed that the spring trail started where the main trail began a much steeper descent. I found that spot easily, but the spring trail had apparently become overgrown and disappeared.
The climb back to the saddle would be a test of my foot. As usual, I tried to adjust my gait and use my toes to keep pressure off the ball of the foot. It didn’t seem too bad on such a short hike.
That traverse is a beautiful forest hike, and the upper part of it, through burn scar, is dramatically steep and rocky.
By the time I’d returned to that high saddle, I was elated and surprised to feel like this was one of the most spectacular hikes I’d ever done. But I’ve done amazing hikes – in the highlands of Guatemala, California’s Mount Shasta, Utah’s Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion, the Grand Canyon – not to mention my beloved Mojave Desert.
And recently, I’ve been doing short climbs of rocky peaks. Maybe what makes these short hikes so spectacular is that they’re so far off the beaten path, and so seldom visited. This landscape can’t match the magnificence of those famous “postcard destinations”, but these places are all mine, for weeks, months, or years at a time, in between the rare visits of others.
One side effect of that obscurity is no phone service. You lose your cell signal entering the mountains, and after four hours in Arizona, even on the crest of the range, my phone still showed New Mexico time.
The final stretch, out of the middle watershed into the shallow canyon below the pine park, went quickly. I always hate to leave that dark, rolling basin below the cliffs and talus slopes of the crest, with its towering old-growth pines, abandoned dirt tracks, and concrete picnic tables, but I’m not prepared to camp alone in bear habitat…
Apart from a Jeep SUV parked at the crest trailhead, I still hadn’t seen another vehicle in the past four hours. But a mile below the crest, I came upon the tricked-out Rubicon for the third time, returning down the road, still trundling along at 15 mph and still pulling aside to let me pass.
And nearing the research station in the bottom of the basin, I passed a Mercedes overlander in the small creekside campground. Those things will set you back $200,000.
The hike had taken longer than expected, it was dinnertime when I reached the cafe, and I got a room to avoid driving home in the dark. I was still surprised at how few visitors I’d seen in the mountains on such a beautiful weekend day.
In the morning, on the long, lonely two-lane north, I thought of my California friends, who also love the solitude of the desert but are stuck living in vast metropolitan areas. For twenty years now, I’ve lived on the edge of a huge wilderness area, and every weekend I get to drive these lonely roads to obscure, seldom-visited places of beauty like that pine park in the sky. I would sure love to share this with my friends.
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.
