Max Carmichael's Blog

I started out planning to traverse the exposed slope of a spectacular rocky canyon not far from town. But I got a late start, and as I approached the turnoff, I realized doing that hike now would push my lunch back until mid-afternoon. So I decided to keep driving north and have lunch in the alpine village across the Arizona border, then do a hike from the volcanic plateau in the afternoon.

Once the highway entered the mountains, I began to pass big burly pickup trucks, hauling heavy-duty full-length trailers, each carrying a side-by-side 4-seater UTV. One after another after another, dozens of them heading south, to the point where I was laughing hysterically each time I met one on this road where I used to drive a half hour at a time without meeting another vehicle.

All the pickups were different makes and colors – it was no kind of organized convoy – what the hell are these guys doing moving all these UTVs south in the fall? It is hunting season – maybe they live in the south, and are returning from hunts in the north, all at once on Sunday.

But after my long drive north through those dark forested mountains, cresting one pass after another, the village grill turned out to be closed, with no explanation. I could turn back, to less interesting options a half hour down the road. Or I could drive 40 minutes farther up onto the plateau, to the lodge that claims to open at noon but rarely sticks to a schedule.

I decided on the latter – any excuse to visit that plateau. Reaching 9,000 feet, with some aspens flaming red, I began to pass road cyclists struggling through the thin air in their garish skin-tight nylon outfits. A sight I hadn’t seen here before.

More cyclists were waiting on the veranda and inside the lodge, where I was the first diner at 12:15. As usual, the laid-back staff was multi-tasking – taking orders, cooking, cleaning rooms, doing paperwork – but my burger, served a half hour later, met my needs. While waiting and eating, I watched and overheard the cyclists – half young and half my age or older. Some were from Minneapolis – rich doctors, as is common in this expensive pastime. The clacking sound of their cleated shoes on the wood floor preceded them, and when I looked up, the first thing I noticed was that they walked bent sharply forward at the waist like “dunking birds”, from riding bent over for hours on stiff old joints. Impressively, they were making a loop of almost 300 miles and god knows how many thousands of feet in elevation, beginning and ending in Safford, and crossing all those high mountain passes in between. Impressive if you call operating an expensive machine on paved highways an achievement.

The trails along this eastern rim of the plateau all head down into the “lost world” – the broad, wild canyon of a tiny river, a hard-to-reach area known to few outsiders. I’d hiked the upper half of a nearby trail last spring, and wanted to get another taste of this unique habitat.

The trailhead, accessed by a long, meandering track through parklike ponderosa pine forest, was only occupied by a quad bike when I arrived. The trailhead log was such a bizarre jumble of dates that I couldn’t even tell what year they referred to. Air temperature was in the mid-60s in the forest, but I found that walking kept me plenty warm even in shorts. The first half mile emerged into and led gradually upwards through burn scar to the western rim of the big valley at 8,300 feet.

My topo map showed the trail dropping a few hundred feet onto a long east-trending ridge, similar to my previous hike here. I’d previewed it without zooming in, and the landmark where I planned to turn back appeared as a sharp bend south.

As before, the trail started in forest and became rockier and more exposed as it descended onto the ridge. On an open saddle, I had spectacular views up and down the big, wild valley, but I could also see the massive die-off in progress in the ponderosa pine forest, similar to what I’ve seen elsewhere in my corner of the Southwest, new in the past season.

From here the trail followed the ridge top, like a gentle roller-coaster over thin soil and a lot of bare rock. The trail and the “meadows” around were choked with cosmos, my old nemesis – an annual with tiny daisy-like flowers that produces burs that stick to and are carried widely by clothes and animal fur. On my way up one of these gentle rises I suddenly faced a tall, slender man in garish, skin-tight nylon running down the trail toward me.

He stopped and asked me if I’d “seen anything”. I smiled and said I’d only gone a mile so far, and he exclaimed, “Wildlife! Have you seen any wildlife?”

I laughed and said it was mid-afternoon, so the animals were all sleeping. He said he was not familiar with this habitat, he lives in Durango, Colorado. I asked him what kind of wildlife he was expecting, and he said “Oles!”, the way Cockneys pronounce “Holes” without the “H”. There followed a long, frustrating exchange, which ended in him spelling “W – O – L – F” twice before I realized he had the remnants of, perhaps, a German accent, and had trouble with our consonant “W”.

I explained that people here hike all their lives without seeing a wolf, and described the megafauna he did have a chance of spotting – if he ever decided to live here year-round. He said he’d just arrived from the nearest county seat – a tiny village –  over in New Mexico, where he’d explored a certain obscure, almost totally unknown creek it had taken me almost 20 years to find on maps, and which I was still only dreaming about exploring. We had an enthusiastic conversation, but it was only later that I regretted not questioning about his travels.

After the first mile the little-used trail mostly disappeared, and I found my route mainly by means of sporadic sawn logs and vague corridors through rocks, cosmos, and brush. Then I came upon an obvious switchback, which had not appeared on the map, where the trail clearly began a steep descent onto a lower ridge marked with a big cairn. I didn’t think I’d gone far enough, and the paper map I had didn’t show enough detail. I descended a few hundred yards, captured my position on GPS, and decided to head back.

Returning, I had all that pine mortality in my face. I’d never seen anything like it. But with my knee brace, hiking uphill was easier, especially on the hated volcanic cobbles.

The sun was setting rapidly – it’s October – and the final descent from the rim to the trailhead seemed to take forever, as I pondered what this solo Germanic trail runner from Colorado was doing, accessing this trail on a “redneck” quad bike. Even less likely, how had he learned about this obscure trail all the way from Colorado, when it had taken me almost 20 years to learn about it from 2-1/2 hours away? And strangest of all, how had he learned about that creek, that only runs a few miles from an extremely remote dirt ranch road, through a box canyon that few have heard of and no one can access without prior arrangement at a remote, obscure Buddhist retreat? Box canyon and creek show up on no guidebooks and virtually no information is available online. Was he confused, talking about something completely different? The bigger the data, the less we know…

Since I injured my knee in May 2024, I’ve been looking for hikes that don’t require me to climb very much. But one of the reasons I moved here is that we’re in the mountains.

Before the injury, elevation gain was my main goal, and the hikes I did most often went from canyon bottoms to the crest, with elevation gains ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 feet. So I’ve avoided all those familiar hikes for more than a year.

I’m currently trying to limit myself to roughly four miles out and back, and while reviewing options yesterday, I realized one of those hikes actually has minimal elevation change during the first three miles. Past the two-mile point it involves a lot of bushwhacking and rock-hopping, and the farthest I’ve ever been able to go is seven miles, with 4,200 feet of elevation gain.

The last time I’d done it was January 2024, when I was stopped by deep snow on a high saddle at the four-mile point. I was curious to learn how much rain that watershed had seen during this weak monsoon.

It turned out that the long gravel road to the trailhead had been washed out or buried under recent debris flows in dozens of places. It was barely passable in my 2wd pickup truck (the Sidekick needs a new engine).

Eventually the road climbs to the ridge. Considering the remoteness and the condition of the road, I was surprised to find another vehicle at the trailhead. I hoped to run into the other hiker(s) to find out how far they’d gone and what they’d seen in some of my favorite habitats.

The weather was perfect – in the low to mid seventies, with drifting cloud shadows. The trail starts out following the remains of an old road servicing long-abandoned mines. It doesn’t enter the wilderness until about a mile in, and I’ve run into cattle on that lower stretch. As I got closer to the creek I could hear it rustling over the rocks.

Past the first crossing, I remembered the lower part of this trail had been destroyed by a flash flood a few years ago, and finally rebuilt in late 2023. In this steep, narrow canyon a trail is virtually unmaintainable, and much of the upper trail consists of picking your way through debris flows and over logs.

I used to call this canyon “the jungle”, and it didn’t disappoint. My first landmark would be the old cabin, but I missed it in the dense vegetation. I was looking for the point where the canyon makes a 60 degree turn east – that would be my two-mile point. But with the dense riparian forest and overhanging cliffs, I actually missed the turn and went beyond it, to the major side canyon. I couldn’t remember whether this was before or after the turn in the main canyon, and my national forest map wasn’t detailed enough, but it had taken me an hour and a half to get there, so I figured I’d gone far enough.

The knee brace masks any pain, and I felt like going farther, but knew I shouldn’t. Returning was easier, and finding the cabin, I was surprised to see how much it had deteriorated inside in only a few years. Nothing has been removed, it’s just messier.

Past the first creek crossing, the old road climbs, and I got some nice views. I was sorry not to see the other hiker(s), and wondered if they were backpacking. I sure miss getting back into that wilderness, one of the wildest in the world.

On the road out, I passed two youngish women in a side-by-side – probably from the small group I’d seen camping near the highway. Americans are far, far too affluent – the hot thing among blue collar families now is to own a huge pickup truck, a massive fifth-wheel “camping” trailer, and a side-by-side or rock bouncer – almost as expensive as your house, all bought on credit. You drive the whole setup just off the highway and live in it while exploring the back country in the little utility vehicle.

I also got a better view of the mature ponderosa pines in the lower canyon, which have all died recently. I’m guessing a series of debris flows have suffocated their roots – I’ve seen that happen elsewhere in the aftermath of big wildfires.

We still had a few hot days ahead, and I’d decided to make the long drive north to the volcanic plateau for a level hike through aspens, fir, and spruce. But on my way out of town I pulled over, realizing I really wanted to do the shorter drive southwest to the range of canyons. I didn’t know what hike I would do there, but the drive – on the Interstate and straight, lonely highways – would be so much easier.

I arrived at lunchtime and had a delicious brunch in the cafe first. Then as I drove back into the basin I encountered crowds of birders, and realized I would need something remote and unpopular.

The gnarly road to my favorite trail, lined with big loose rocks, passes a side trail that I’d partly hiked from the opposite direction last year. It’s a boring trail that I’d always avoided before my knee injury – it just goes from road to road, traversing the western slopes of the basin, without any sort of interesting destination. Its only redeeming feature is the occasional views east over the basin.

Storm clouds were gathering over the range, so I might even get lucky and get rained on!

Before heading over here, I’d considered this trail, but rejected it because it would have too much elevation change for my knee. But at this point, what does it really matter?

The remote, boring trail was overgrown with agaves and catclaw acacia. It hadn’t been maintained in years, and there was no evidence anyone had hiked it this year. I walked in and out of dark cloud shadows and narrow ravines. The trail was lined with beautiful wildflowers, some of which looked new to me.

At the halfway point, I rounded a bend and saw a big outlying ridge across a deep ravine – I knew the trail would start climbing that ridge on switchbacks. But it seemed to take forever, first to cross the ravine, then to climb the long switchbacks. In the meantime, I was treated to thunder and the sight of rain, three miles east across the basin.

The whole mountain range was teeming with butterflies – mostly black – but they were too shy to photograph.

I was wearing the knee brace, which masks the pain, but I was sure I was going to suffer later when I took it off. I’ve got it set to allow 45 degrees of flexion, and with that, I can hike normally except on steep stretches. But without the brace, I can’t stand to put any weight on the knee while it’s bent. This is how it’s been for almost 17 months now.

What a boring trail! But what a beautiful day, in a beautiful place. In the past I would’ve stayed overnight, but I have to watch my expenses now that the whole family depends on me.

After sixteen months and three tries, our local doc’s attempts to fix my knee have failed again. I can’t waste more of my precious life on failures. Time for the big-city options, an hour’s flight or up to a five hour drive away.

In the meantime, I’m no longer worried about making it worse. What limits me is the harder the hike, the longer I’m immobilized with pain afterward.

The hike I chose for this Sunday was in the national monument over in Arizona. I wasn’t looking forward to the crowds, but the habitat would be spectacular, the distance manageable, and the elevation changes should be okay for my knee.

This trail starts on the crest, drops down through the rocks into a series of small, narrow canyons, then loops back up to the start. Pulling into the parking lot, I had to pee really bad, so I stepped behind a tree and checked to make sure nobody could see me.

Five minutes later, as I was placing the sunshade in my windshield, I heard yelling and noticed a car passing me, leaving the parking lot. I walked out, asking “What did you say?”

The small SUV was already past, but a middle-aged matron with beehive hairdo leaned out the window and yelled, in a nasal East Coast accent, “If you gotta pee, go behind a tree where nobody can see ya!” I laughed, but I started the hike feeling like everything was against me – my knee, my doctor, the square tourists in this formerly wild place that had been sanitized by the empire into a recreational enclave.

So much disappointment saps your motivation. As I passed one group of out-of-shape tourists after another – cheerily agreeing with them all that it was a beautiful place and a beautiful day – I asked myself again and again what I was doing there. The miles of stone stairways winding through the rocks, result of Herculean labors by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, actually made the trail harder to negotiate with my knee injury. Our hallowed National Park Service has even provided catchy names for natural features, handed down from English imperial history. I compulsively shot photos for a Dispatch, without really seeing what I was shooting.

I normally hike in remote locations where I’m totally alone and am often the first visitor in weeks, months, or even years. Here, with tourists both in front and behind me, I felt pressured to just finish the damn hike. The rocks became overwhelming, and the only saving grace was the plants – especially the grasses, which were thriving in our late monsoon.

As the trail began descending a side canyon, I could hear a small waterfall hidden in the rocks below. Soon I came to a trickle of water, and finally, to a pool I could cross on boulders. The side canyon emptied into the main canyon and I came to a trail junction. My loop continued onto a traverse across the slope of the main canyon. This part of the loop was much less traveled – even overgrown in places – and here, I became fixated on the grasses.

Nearing the turnoff where the trail left the main canyon to climb back to the crest, a young couple caught up with me – the old cliche of a tiny girl with a huge guy to keep her safe. As they were passing, the boy asked “Have you seen anything cool?”

Surprised, I asked him to repeat, and when he did, I replied “Are you kidding? Everything here is cool!”

That got me started wondering what wasn’t cool – the stone stairs? The tourists? The fact that it’s a national monument?

Natives talk about the time when animals were people. Before humans, animals had to figure out how to live, by trial and error. Then when we came along, the animals became our mythical teachers.

Long ago I came to realize that everything is alive. Everything has its own form of awareness, and the ability to interact with the rest of us.

This place reinforces my notion of rocks as living beings, more than any place I can think of. It’s spectacular, but it can also feel a little spooky. As you recognize human features in the rocks, you realize we’re outnumbered here. Way outnumbered by this looming crowd. Barring some mutual apocalypse, they’ll be here, watching, long after we’re gone.

The lonely traverse up the main canyon, away from the stairs and the tourists, had somewhat lifted my bad spirits. Parts of the trail had reminded me of favorite rocky, shady spots on hikes in the Pinalenos, the Arizona White Mountains, the Mojave Desert, even taking me back to the Sierra Nevada of my youth. Lush, intimate pockets in a vast, monumental landscape.

Our weather’s getting cooler – at least for now – but it still wasn’t cool enough for low elevation hiking. And since my knee is still (hopefully) recovering, I needed a level hike – which are hard to find at cooler elevations. But to narrow my choices even more, I wanted a decent lunch spot somewhere along the way. I’d already done the northwestern option last Sunday, and the northeastern option offered a couple of untried lunch spots that didn’t excite me at all.

But looking at the map again, I realized the northeast route offered the possibility of a shady canyon hike at over 7,000 feet, accessed via one of our most iconic backcountry roads. The map shows a trail running less than a mile down the canyon, but I figured I could keep walking to get my mile in. The Forest Service has a web page for that trail mentioning “alcoves, rock outcrops, nooks, and crannies”, but all I was interested in was the elevation and shade.

Not a cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see. But I was encouraged to find the river running – and actually in moderate flood. Amazing that in town we can still be in severe drought, while only thirty miles east they’re having a sustained wet monsoon.

Leaving the highway and climbing to the mesa, I found abundant wildflowers and lush grassy slopes all around, and actually began to get excited about the coming hike, despite the boring sky. This road starts out well-graded gravel, but as it dips into canyons it gets rockier – and it’s popular, so you gotta watch those blind curves and be ready for big pickups going too fast and tourists going too slow.

I parked in the tiny campground in the dark, narrow canyon that had seen a lot of debris after past wildfires. I saw a couple other vehicles back in the trees, but no people. The campground track had once crossed the now-dry creek, but floods had made it undrivable. There was no trailhead so I just followed what was left of the vehicle track until it ended and I found a trail sign.

Taking flower photos slowed me down a lot. I came to a spot where the creek held a little water in bedrock, then reached a cairn where the trail began climbing. I checked my map and found this should be the spot where the canyon trail branches off. But there was no tread through the new growth of annuals, so I just started finding my way down the banks of the creek.

Within a hundred yards or so I found the barest vestige of a trail – maybe just a game trail. It soon petered out, but short stretches would reappear at random. No worries, I’m pretty good at find the best route, and I couldn’t go wrong in this narrow canyon.

I saw some rock bluffs along the dry creek, and a formation on a slope above, but after a half hour I still hadn’t reached the “alcoves” etc.

Finally I saw something off through the trees that might be an alcove. And from there on, the slopes on both sides of the canyon became rockier and rockier, until I came to a narrows with an overhanging rock wall.

This is where the party began! I laughed, remembering how I had disregarded the name “Rocky Canyon”, thinking it would just offer mild temps. Little did I know it would turn out to be one of the most spectacular short hikes in our entire region.

Of course, the rocks were still mostly hidden behind trees, and up slopes that were a struggle in my knee brace. But even the canyon bottom was a beautiful, magical place.

No trail in this narrow, rock-walled stretch of canyon – I mostly stepped precariously from boulder to boulder in the creekbed, protecting my knee as best I could.

I’d spent more than an hour so far, on what was intended to be a one-mile out-hike, but I had to keep going until I ran out of rocks. In the end, it took me an hour and a half, and when I checked the map I found I’d hiked almost two miles and dropped over 400 vertical feet. No matter, I was in heaven – and the weather was perfect. I even had a breeze.

With less stops for photos, it only took me an hour to get back to the campground. Looking up, I spotted a few clouds through gaps in the canopy. The last remaining camper was just leaving, but others were arriving in a huge pickup.

Monsoon clouds were beginning to fill the sky as I drove up onto the mesa and headed back toward the highway. I had a late lunch at the less boring of the two untried spots – I was the only customer, not a good sign. But the huevos rancheros were actually pretty good, so I’ll be back.

I invited my neighbor along for this short hike in one of our most spectacular canyons. We seem to be entering another active phase of our Southwest monsoon, and impressive clouds were spreading over the high mountains as we drove north. But the creek, normally running, was mostly dry.

I only went about a mile up canyon, and by the time I was halfway back the sky was pretty threatening. We both welcomed the rain, but this narrow stretch of canyon wouldn’t offer many escape routes during a flash flood.

The rain hit as we walked from the vehicle to the cafe for lunch, and continued steady all the way home – one of our best rains this season.

This one’s for my mom. Just a stroll through a nearby canyon that’s normally one of our wettest places year-round, but is now bone dry, late in monsoon season.

I needed another short, level hike to continue my knee rehab. There are several of those within a half hour of home, but after last week’s three-day getaway, I had returned to problems that were just getting more acute and less surmountable.

I discovered that my favorite backroads cafe had reopened, and after studying the trails, realized that a short “nature trail” in the canyon bottom would be perfect for my knee. When I’m in shape, I avoid these easy, dumbed-down hikes, but now…

So I headed across the border to Arizona again, for an escape and a decent lunch as much as for a hike. Our frustrating monsoon was in remission, only a few small clouds lurked on the horizon, and the afternoon high there was forecast to reach 90.

It got hot there in the canyon bottom, with the paved road, and tourist cars, sporadically visible through the trees, just across the creek. But I immediately began noticing tiny marker labels at the foot of trailside trees, and became obsessed with finding them all – so that I had to periodically force myself to back off and scan the habitat around me, and up to spy the looming rock formations.

On this hot day I was alone, until on the way back I encountered a knowledgeable young couple who confessed they’d become equally obsessed with the labels – and had noticed, as I had, that whereas labels identified yuccas, sotols, beargrasses, cholla cacti, and even grasses, none of the abundant agaves or prickly pears had been labeled.

In the trailside plants and labels, several aspects attracted my scrutiny.

First, I was both amused and delighted that in many cases, they’d chosen to label potentially hard-to-identify specimens like seedlings or plants that were damaged or mostly dead.

Next, I have a tree guide, and for years I’ve been struggling to identify the trees here, from the canyon bottom at 5,000 feet to the crest at almost 10,000 feet in elevation. So I was glad to see some of the harder-to-identify trees labeled via widely varying specimens.

And since I’ve barely scratched the surface of shrubs here, I was pleasantly surprised by labels on some of those.

Finally, especially after seeing the Apache pine, I began to wish they’d included Apache names for these…

My doctor had unlocked the knee-immobilizer brace three weeks ago, recommending I take it easy for a couple weeks, then start doing occasional short hikes. But I re-injured it somehow a week later and iced it for another week. And now, on this road trip, with one of my favorite trails nearby, I decided to finally try it out.

It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful hike anywhere. There are two routes to the peak, converging up neighboring canyons, with a “crossover” trail between them at bottom. I’ve been hiking parts of it for many years. Four years ago I finally did the full 18-mile loop, at the peak of a wet monsoon, finding a hallucinatory diversity of fungi. And two years ago I hiked the best part of it in snow, which if anything made it even more spectacular.

But today I could only do the first mile, and I was hoping that would get me to a view of the unique, iconic sandstone formations up on the ridge.

This is the most popular trail on the plateau, and even on a weekday the parking lot was nearly full. But everyone was spread out and I was alone almost all of the time. I did meet a man my age on the way back, starting a final hike before surgery.

Halfway in, the trail leaves the tiny river and begins climbing. To protect my knee, I followed an informal trail that led directly up the valley toward the interior meadows. It was these meadows that finally freed my mind of the anxiety that had driven me here. I was at peace, just looking and breathing, if only temporarily.

When my dad died 16 years ago, I actually kept his backpacking rod and small tackle box with a decent spinning reel, but I haven’t fished since I was in high school. And most of that was with Grandpa, in Midwestern rivers and ponds, for small fish like perch and bluegill that Grandma fried at home. I still prefer inland freshwater fish like that over any kind of seafood or anadromous fish.

But this week I was heading to a fishing-centric retreat in search of something more elusive – recovery from stress I simply couldn’t handle at home.

The drive north was an adventure in itself, through a couple of cloudbursts in some of my favorite country.

I’ve been visiting this remote mountain resort for fifteen years, first discovering it on a ski trip to the nearby slopes run by Apaches. It’s a narrow valley carved by a tiny Western river out of a volcanic plateau. The plateau was discovered early by cattle ranchers, and the surrounding forests by loggers. The valley, which extends only about three miles before dead-ending, lies at 8,300 feet, stays cool all summer, and has become a popular hot-weather retreat for folks from Phoenix and Tucson.

There are bed-and-breakfasts and scores of cabins for rent, but I stay in the only motel, with eight small rooms with varying numbers of beds and an attached convenience store – the only one in the valley.

Gas, groceries, and other necessities can be found in predominantly Mormon towns up to a half hour away, but the valley has a legendary historic restaurant, an excellent cafe for breakfast and lunch, and other options which come and go. I especially like the quaint museum honoring an early Native American painter and his family.

It’s a resort, and lots of palatial vacation homes are hidden in the forest above the valley, but it retains a modest family orientation, rooms and cabins are affordable, and I’ve always felt welcome there. One of the main draws, apart from trout fishing, is the nightly ritual of elk – a large herd – coming out to feed in the roadside meadows. And there are often Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep grazing along the highway into the valley.

The plateau, averaging 9,000 feet in elevation, extends about 20 miles east to west and about 30 miles north to south, and the northern two-thirds of it consists of gently rolling grassy meadows punctuated by low forested ridges and clear lakes.

At its western edge, the plateau rises to its highest point, a sprawling 11,400 foot mountain lined with spruce-fir-aspen forest that spawns three major rivers. On the morning of my first day, I headed there from the valley on a dirt forest road.

From the foot of the mountain, the southbound road curves east into the meadows. The grassy meadows covering the rest of the plateau extend farther than the eye can see, and hence seem to be endless. Others have suggested that country like this is common farther north, in Colorado or even Utah, but I’ve never seen or heard of a plateau that sits like a table in the sky like this, without a wall of mountains to contain it. And here, it rises directly from the southern desert.

At the center of the plateau, I turned off on another road that heads to the northern rim.

And once back on the east-west highway that skirts the northern edge of the plateau, I decided to check out a trailhead I’d used once, on a fork of the river. It turned out that a wildfire in May had damaged the trailhead and campground and the road was closed.

On my second day, I did an experimental hike – the first with my recently-unlocked knee brace. And on the third morning, I headed home – back into the nightmare.