All Good Things, letter 6: Pinaleno Mountains, Arizona
All Good Things is a collection of letters I wrote to my dear friend Caleb Bouchard between Summer 2020 and Spring 2022. It was published as a small chapbook by Analog Revolution Press in 2022. I’ve compiled the letters here, with additional photos, for you. So make yourself a nice cup of tea, and enjoy.
November 17, 2020
Dear Caleb,
My last two letters were written 80 and 257 miles into this trail. Now I’m 620 miles in. I intended to write to you far more often, but this trail has thoroughly kicked my ass. Two days ago in particular was the worst day I’ve ever had on a trail. Okay, maybe second worst. In 2017 the Frye Creek fire burned over 30,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest around the Mt. Graham Wilderness Study Area. This burn included Segment 11 and half of Segment 10 of the Grand Enchantment Trail. I'm hiking west bound, so I've been hiking the segments retro-numerically. Since the Ash Creek Trail of Segment 11 was scorched to bits, the GET guidebook provides the Ash Creek Bypass alternate route to avoid the newly hazardous old route. The Ash Creek Bypass adds about 16 miles to the segment, taking the distance between resupply points from 77 miles to 93 miles. Or, from a comfortable four days of hiking, to a far less comfortable five days of hiking. As part of the Ash Creek bypass, I got to walk past an idyllic Gibson Creek while making the 7,000 foot climb (maybe the single largest elevation gain I’ve ever done) up the side of Mt Graham. Mt Graham is one of Southern Arizona's 'Sky Islands' and stands a whopping 10,700' tall. On my second day up the climb --my progress slowed by an extra 20 pounds of food and water-- my route took me onto the Noon Creek Ridge Trail. The funny thing about the Noon Creek Ridge Trail is that it happened to burn in 2004 in an equally devastating wildfire to the 2017 Frye Fire. Since then, it has been abandoned to the wild, untouched by trail crews. This is bad news for GET hikers.
If you ever spend much time in areas burned by wild fire (the American West is obviously bespeckled with them), you can tell how many years have passed since the burn. Most wildfires that kill trees don't turn them completely to ash. They dry the trees out, dry the soil out, and kill them by dehydration. Most trees that survive the initial blaze, don't live to see the next spring. Forests then consist of groves of standing, dead trees. As snow melts, water saturates the soil. Any other year this would result in spring, but instead, roots rot and weaken as they begin to decompose. When summer storms hit, seasonal winds rip across the forest, felling trees everywhere with terrifying crashes.
After a few years of this, the mountainside erodes rapidly. With no root system in place, soil and stone crumble down, redefining the mountain's shape and surface alike. Basically, I had a terrible time crawling on my knees beneath thorns and briars, climbing over fallen trees that shift beneath my feet more often than not, and falling flat on my face over and over again. I can take a lot of punishment, but when the barrage of impenetrable obstacles lasts for more than three or four hours, it’s enough to make anyone want to quit hiking and catch a plane back to somewhere they can spend a lot of time on a couch in the air conditioning. By the end of it, I was covered in blood and more furious than I’ve been in a very long time. That day I managed to move at less than half a mile an hour. It was horrible and I wanted to give up. Then I lost my external battery (you know, the one I need to charge my phone so I can navigate) and went back a mile looking for it. Eventually I made it to the next trail junction, trudged through some more thorns —this time shin-deep in snow—and completed the more-than-a-vertical-mile climb to the crest of the Pinaleno Mountains. Once there I followed paved roads until the sun went down, found a flat spot by the side of the road, and called it a day.
This whole ordeal would’ve been perfectly within the realm of expected challenges when hiking a route like this. As a reminder, the Grand enchantment Trail is not a trail. It is a route carefully pieced together using existing infrastructure like trails, ranching roads, and cattle tanks wherever possible. It still requires some serious grit, a rare amount of dead-reckoning, and the ability to just figure things out when the going gets tough— which is usually. When I decided to attempt this route, I accepted responsibility for leading myself into these wild places. I understood that no one was going to come to my rescue, and it was up to me to get out of any place I got in to. I say all this to underscore that I fully expected there to be miserable moments on this route. I expected to carry water up to 30 miles at a time, to pull some late nights making miles to get from one resupply point to the next in five days in stead of seven. But none of those expectations prepared me for what I faced two days before the grueling climb up Mt. Graham.
It was Sunday, November 15, 2020. My route had led me through the Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area, up and down washes, arroyos, and canyons. That day had involved a little more scrambling and climbing than most of the route so far, probably because I missed a couple turns, but I’ll never really know. The cottonwoods turned back into saguaro as I came to a tract of Bureau of Land Management property and my path joined a dirt road for the rest of the distance I’d planned on hiking. The sun was getting as low as my water reserves, so I pulled out my databook to check the next reliable water source. Six more miles to the next source, not ideal considering I had finished my last sip of water at 4pm and it was now 5:30. With a heavy sigh, I accepted my situation, watched the sun set, donned my headlamp, and set out to hike another two hours by moonlight to make it where I could finally cook some dinner. I stopped briefly at a vista overlooking the city of Safford, AZ population: 10,000. I checked to see if I had any phone service. None. At least the road would make for some quick miles, and the temperature was quickly dropping now that the sun was resting behind the horizon.
It got dark fast. The dirt road had dropped below some hills and ran parallel to the ridge of Weber Peak, and passed through a steel gate that looked just like the hundreds of other steel gates I’d passed since departing from Albuquerque a month ago. After a few miles of an unusually straight road, my headlamp shone on something I’d never quite seen before. It wasn’t exactly a wall, but it functioned as one. As high as I could see by the light of my headlamp was a pile of rocks. It extended as far as I could see to he left, as far as I could see to the right, and came to a clean end right in front of me. Right across the road I’d been following. I pulled out my phone to check my route —yep, I was on the right path. There were no turns to have missed, no junctions, intersections, off-route connections— nothing. I considered briefly climbing up the impossible bastion of talus before me, that is until five steps up when I dislodged a boulder the size of a barrel of whiskey, fell to the ground, and scrambled backwards to avoid being pummeled by the cascade of rocks that followed. This pile wasn’t stable, it hadn’t formed by erosion. There was no scree, no small rocks, no dirt to fill in the gaps and add some stability to it all. I stood up, brushed myself off, and turned perpendicular to the road to start climbing straight up the northeast face of Weber Peak.
As I gained elevation, I heard a symphony of yips and cries from a pack of coyotes. At least I wasn’t alone, I thought to myself, and dug my trekking poles into the loose gravel of the mountain, sidestepping the barrell cactus and chollo that peppered the slope. It wasn’t long before I came to another dirt road heading more or less the same direction as the previous one I was following. Great, this should be simple. As soon as I turned to head down the road I became painfully aware of my situation. I hadn’t noticed until now, the low roar that had crept up below my heavy breath. I hadn’t noticed the light pollution that was hiding behind that talus pile. No, not talus pile. Tailings pile. I was headed straight into the heart of a massive strip mine. Now, dear reader, you’re probably thinking “Okay, a there’s a big hole in the ground, so what?” If you’ve never seen the sort of copper mines they have in southeast Arizona, I cannot help you comprehend their scale. Terraced pits that put Mordor to shame. Gaping scars of earth nearly a mile wide, and just as deep. Loaders bigger than your house spiral down the pit like ants. These mines operate twenty-four hours a day under strict security, due to the severe hazards present. in the last town, I hitched a ride in with the wife of a diesel mechanic who works on the Caterpillar 793 Haul Trucks. These trucks weigh nearly 900,000lbs and have a payload capacity of 265 tons. She told me whatever I do, to not pick up any rocks and not to trespass anywhere near the Morenci mine, that Freeport-McMoran presses charges on any unauthorized visitors. It’s a safety thing, just stay away.
While this wasn’t the Morenci mine, I was reasonably sure all the same rules applied. And here I was, in the dark, marching directly towards a mine with a bright and shining beacon strapped to my head. Not the greatest circumstance I’ve found myself in. Oh yeah, and I had no water, hadn’t had dinner, and wasn’t even sure at this point that the cattle tank I’d been heading for even existed any more. So I switched my headlamp to it’s red light setting. This gave me just enough light to walk safely, without being quite as conspicuous. I had no idea what my plan was, should I wave someone down, tell them I was lost, beg for mercy, and try to hitch a ride into town? Something told me I didn’t quite have the security clearance to hop on one of the loaders. I was scared, I’d done plenty of marginally illegal-but-harmless things while thruhiking 6,000 miles around the country, but never quite felt as vulnerable and in over my head as I did in this moment. Hitchhiking in states where it’s “illegal"? No big deal. Stealth camping behind gas stations? Perfectly normal. This had an added level of gravity I didn’t exactly want to discover the consequences of.
I decided to keep heading straight up the mountain range. At the very least, it would give me a better view of any security officers on patrol with their infrared lasers, motion-detecting dispatch drones, and heat-seeking missiles. I didn’t know what I was up against, but being above the roar of the mine was certainly better than walking straight into it. Again, I felt like Frodo. Maybe I never should have left the Shire. An hour later I was nearing the crest of the ridge when I cam across a third road, still parallel to the others. By now, I was nearly 5000’ feet above the desert floor, and at least 2,000’ above the mine. I felt safe-ish. I had accepted by now that I wasn’t going to find a magical mountain spring gushing out of side of Weber Peak. I just wanted to see around the other side of this mountain to get the lay of the land and make a plan from there. The road eventually wrapped around the southeast side of the ridge, and I could see the Safford skyline again. Another 100 yards and the road came to an abrupt stop. It just ended. there was a steep drop down to the road riddled with loaders, definitely a scramble, covered in cacti, and not happening in the dark. Again, not with a headlamp strapped to my head so that every truck operator could see me as I fell to my prickly demise. I checked my maps, it was about 10 miles to Safford from where I stood. It was 8:30pm. No dinner. I laid out my bedroll, cleared some rocks, and pretended the hum of industrial resource extraction was actually a chorus of crickets, cicadas, and bullfrogs. I was thirsty as hell, I slept like hell, how the hell did I get myself into this mess?
I woke up at 6am, shoved my sleeping bag back into my pack and took a long, careful look at the scene below me. At the base of the cliff I was on, stretched a long ramp a hundred feet wide, miles long, and leading from the rim of the mine out of sight to wherever the loaders were unloading. Down the center of the ramp ran a gravel median as tall as the loaders themselves. That is to say, too tall to climb in the brief gaps between trucks. I did, however, notice a little gap, like a gun sight, at one point in the median. It was the only shot I had to make it through. I could time my crossing of the west-bound traffic, but I would be jumping out in front of the eastbound traffic blindly. There was no way to know what was coming. It was a total crap shoot. Beside the base of my cliff was a large parking lot and a portable toilet. I watched as a standard white pickup truck pulled into the lot and a little man in a white hard-hat walked into the porta-john. I needed to pass maybe twenty feet from that toilet. The door was facing the down-climb I had just begun. I waited for him to come out. The sun was getting higher, the desert floor was getting hotter, but safford was not getting any closer. Fourteen minutes passed before he finally emerged, climbed in his little truck, and drove away. I scurried down the cliff face, dodging prickly pear and yucca on the way. I crept up to the shoulder of the west-bound side of the ramp and waited for a particularly long gap between trucks. I made my break for the gun sight in the median.
Of course by the time I had scrambled up one side, the was a loader a mere 50 feet away and headed for me. I had already been spotted, so I had no choice but to dart in front of the loader—better to be seen by one than two or three by waiting. The other shoulder dropped off in a very loose pile of sand and scree. I was running down it as fast as I could, falling really. By the bottom of it, I had snapped a trekking pole, lost a water bottle, tore my Carhartt pants, scraped my leg, and got a nosebleed. Just what I needed to help with my dehydration. I knew I’d been seen, I was positive I was radioed in somewhere, and that squads of security patrols were on their way to apprehend me. There was some sort of administrative building just above the rim of the arroyo I’d landed in. I followed the drainage through a culvert, and along a stone wall. I took approximately one minute to catch my breath, stop my nose bleed, and try to convince myself I was going to be okay. Out of the pan and into the fire. Eventually the drainage leveled out with the road. the desert floor was flat, there was no hiding, all I could do was make a b-line for Safford and avoid the roads that would surely carry me away to the seventh level of trespasser hell. I squeezed under one chain link fence, then another, hoping I was indeed passing out of the fenced in area and not into a merely different high-security area.
Ten miles generally takes around four hours. Cross country travel tends to slow that. Severe dehydration doesn’t help. Water was all I could think of, I was weak, dizzy, cotton-mouthed, and reasonably panicked. It was 10AM and I still had five miles to go. The heat of the day was setting in, and my prospects were pretty dire. I could find water in the desert, but it wasn’t here. I checked half a dozen map layers on my phone for a spring symbol, nothing. No surprise, this is Arizona. I was dragging my feet, contemplating filtering my own urine, when I heard a different kind of engine roar. This one was much higher pitched, and varied in it’s throttle. I looked to my left to see a plume of dust trailing in from the distance. I started yelling. “Help! I need water! Necessito Agua, por favor! Hello!” To my astonishment, a Volkswagon baja bug pulled up to me, real deus ex machina stuff. I asked the two men inside if they could give me a ride into town. They looked at each other, they looked at me, still bloody and ragged, then they looked down at the interior of the beetle. There was a bucket seat for the driver. That was it. The passenger was just squatting where a second seat should have been. The passenger scooted over, I tossed my pack in, and shut the door behind me. The driver explained in broken English that he couldn’t take me all the way into town, because his vehicle wasn’t street legal and the cops don’t like him an awful lot. He could get me to the edge of town, about four miles. I asked if they had any water with them and the passenger handed me a quarter-full 16oz water bottle. I downed it immediately. It had been nearly twenty hours since I had any water at all. A personal record I had no interest in ever besting.
My two friends dropped me off near some houses next to the Gila River. It was grey with silt, and probably heavy metal. I checked my phone for the shortest way across the river and identified a bridge about half a mile away. I considered knocking on doors to ask for water, or just helping myself to someone’s spigot. It felt different asking for water now that I was in civilization. It’s easy to ask for help in the middle of nowhere, it’s weirdly embarrassing and a lot hard to explain when you’re just standing on a sidewalk. I was determining the most direct route to the bridge when I saw it. A little blue circle on the map with two water geysers coming out of the top: the symbol for a spring. I headed straight for it, three blocks away, and sure enough there it was. A puddle, flowing out of one grove of bushes and into another grove of bushes. Water and shade? Pinch me. I dropped pack, filtered a liter, chugged it, filtered a second liter, chugged it, filtered a third, and sat down in the shade for half an hour. Then I got up, crossed the bridge, walked into a tacqueria, ordered six tacos and drank a liter of Pepsi. Thruhiking is jarring sometimes.
All good things,
Ryan
