Hiking the Gila

As I noted in my last post, I am going to play catch-up by publishing a few posts on what I have been doing down here in the New Mexico wilderness.

Here at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, I am tucked into the Gila National Forest that includes the first established wilderness (1924) in the U.S thanks to Aldo Leopold, a US Forest Service supervisor and who many know as the author of The Sand County Almanac.  Where I live is a mere 10 minute hike to the Gila Wilderness boundary.  Not much further away is the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, established in 1980.  Together, they total nearly 1,200 square miles of dense forests, rugged mountains, high mesas, pristine rivers and deep river canyons.  It is a hiker/backpacker paradise.  And that is what I have spent much of my time doing in the last two months (when not working.)  I thought I would describe through words and pictures what the hiking is like here in the Gila (that is Hee-La.)

Middle Fork Gila

One thing you learn early on hiking in the Gila is that you will be going up, down or wading through rivers.  And likely all three at some point during a hike.  The three forks that combine to make up the Gila River, the West Fork, the Middle Fork and the East Fork are major elements to be reckoned with in the National Forest and Wilderness.  They converge into the Gila River near the Cliff Dwellings National Monument which is also where Geronimo claimed was his homeland.  Much of the best hiking in the area requires hiking along and across this river and the three forks, whether heading out for a 10 minute, a 10 hour or a 10 day hike.  You quickly adapt since most hikes of any length include 30 to 50 crossings. The river has warmed up in the last month and dropped from mostly knee and thigh deep, rushing water, to ankle-deep, slightly cool gentle rapids.  But you still get wet feet so you have to plan for that.  Sandals with socks work – the socks necessary because you come out of the water and have to hike along sandy, gravely or rocky trails or steep slopes until the next crossing.  And changing to your boots each time is not an option.  What I call my toe shoes work great.  They are not ones you would see me doing pirouettes along the river in.  They are those funky, weird shoes where your toes fit in individual toe slots.  Weird on the streets of Columbus but great for a mix of river crossings, hiking and rock climbing.  Enough words…….now for some pictures of this hiking and the landscape and things I have seen along the way.

North Mesa – The Serengeti minus the giraffes come to mind when hiking on this high mesa

West Fork Gila

West Fork Rhyolite Cathedral Spires

Trail out of Hell’s Hole – a 1000 foot vertical climb

2011 Fire Damage on Woodland Park Mesa

Hell’s Hole Overnight

Hell’s Hole hike camp site

West Fork Gila hike

West Fork Gila

Bloodgood Rhyolite-West Fork Gila

Beaver West Fork Gila

West Fork Gila from Trail

West Fork Gila near confluence

Jordan Hot Springs – Middle Fork Gila

Cliff Dwellings from South Mesa

Adobe Canyon dry Arroyo

Pottery sherd in Adobe Canyon

Friendly Dragonfly

Black Bear near Little Creek Canyon

Gila River Canyon

King Snake – Is that “Red next to black, get back or OK Jack?”

Ancient Pictographs

Zone-Tail Hawk near Middle Fork

Ancient Granary along the Gila

Ancient Pictographs along the Gila

Strawberry Hedgehog Cactus

Entering Gila Wilderness

Short hike with friends

Mindy’s Southwest Visit

It has been a long time since my last post!  I guess I am getting a bit too settled in.  You adapt.  And it becomes your daily routine –  going to work at the cliff dwellings, hiking in the evening, backpacking on my days off.  Or driving an hour and a  half into Silver City to resupply.  Or traveling the area, exploring.  It all starts to become routine.  I forget that it is not my TYPICAL day-to-day life….in Columbus, that is.   Columbus….it seems so far away.  Actually, this is my TYPICAL day-to-day routine…..for now.  I keep in contact with my family via text and email and phone calls, but with my ‘busy’ life here in the west, I have ignored by blog and my friends who read my rantings.  So I apologize and plan to play a little catch-up.

Arches National Park

Mindy finally was able to get away from work and visit me out here, out in the west.  I want to post some images she took while here…..her impression of the Southwest.  I gave her the grand tour…… the Four Corner’s area – Utah-Colorado-Arizona-New Mexico.  I made sure she saw parts of all four states.  And I want to apologize to any of our friends out here that we failed to connect with during that visit.  Her time was short considering all that we wanted to cover.  And we will be back, I am sure.

Actually, though there were things that I wanted to share with Mindy, it was the sunshine and cloudless skies that she sought.  I think she saw plenty of that….and more.  I think these images show her love of the area.  She/we love Ohio and the “Midwest” including her home state of New York…..BUT…..sunny skies every day!  What is there not to love about the Southwest.  A bit dry, maybe.  Lacking the fall

Grand Canyon

colors of the Midwest, maybe.  All of our friends.  Sure.  But that intense blue of the sky, cloudless days, beautiful rock formations, the history of the native people….. I think she was hooked, as I am.  Albuquerque to Santa Fe in New Mexico, to Pagosa Springs and Durango in Colorado, to Moab, Arches and Natural Bridges in Utah to the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff in Arizona and back to Albuquerque.  I handed her the camera and this is what she saw…..(with a few pictures of her smiling face thrown in.)

Sante Fe

Sante Fe

Santa Fe

Santa Fe

Taos

Chimney Rock

Mesa verde

Mesa Verde

Natural Bridges Nat Mon

Natural Bridge Nat Mon

Canyonlands

Canyonlands

Canyonlands

Arches NP

Arches NP

Arches NP

Arches NP

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument – First Impressions

A twisting and winding hour and a half drive from Silver City, the nearest small town up into the Ponderosa Pine forest of the Gila Mountains and the Gila Wilderness Area (pronounced Heela).  And I thought I was isolated at Natural Bridges…….  But the area is beautiful and with great hiking and nice people, many of whom have worked or volunteered here for years and keep coming back, which is a good sign.  I feel settled in already after just a little over a week on the job.  The training is a bit more involved and intense here than at Natural Bridges since I am responsible for developing my own interpretive presentation………..a bit more to learn at a quicker pace.

I thought I would share a few first impression images from my first couple of hikes (an eight mile round trip up the West Fork and Little Bear Canyon Trails to the Middle Fork of the Gila River and a 5 hour hike off-trail cross-country to a nearby mesa) and my  first few days working at the cliff dwellings.  The area is a beautiful and the cultural significance of the landscape and the cliff dwellings is amazing.

The cliff dwellings were home to the ancestral Puebloan people of the Mogollon Region (pronounced mo-go-yon, all long O’s as in go and the ells as a Y).  They built the structures in the caves in the late 1200′s.  Evidence of  several other early American Indian groups living in the area have been found, though at the park we focus mainly on the cliff dwellers who built the structures in the caves.  Later, this area was occupied by the Apaches and was the area Geronimo claimed as his birth place at the headwaters of the Gila River.

Geologically, it is the location of two “super-volcanoes” that erupted millions of years ago creating two large caldera or massive sunken depression where the center of the eruption collapsed.  These eruptions were thought to have had a force 1000 times greater than the Mount St. Helens eruption in the 1980′s.  The Monument is located in the Gila Cliff Dwellings caldera, that is 15 miles in diameter, and is near the confluence of three rivers, the East, West and Middle Forks of the Gila River.  Though a somewhat dry, high desert and mountainous environment, the rivers greatly increased the biodiversity of the landscape.

Even with burnt trees and hillsides from recent forest fires, it is a beautiful area.  The wildflowers are beginning to bloom and the sun is shining most every day.  Now if we can keep the forest fires at bay (the fire season has begun), we look forward to a colorful spring and summer.

Natural Bridges National Monument in Retrospect

Sipapu Bridge

Leaving Natural Bridges and the canyonlands of southeastern Utah is hard to do.  I love those canyons and I made some good friends at the park.  Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southwest New Mexico is my destination, where I will work for the next 3 months……I hope it is half as fun and fulfilling as the last three months.

Looking back on my time at NABR, I am thinking of all the visitors that came and went……so this is a thanks to many of them that left memories behind.  Of course first need to thank Mindy for giving me this chance to expand my horizons.  While she is back in cloudy Ohio, I am enjoying the sunshine of the southwest.  Maybe thank you is not enough…….

My experience at NABR was a very international one.  It is not much of an exaggeration to say that half of our visitors were from other countries.   Those that I recall include – Germany, Israel, Russia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland, China, South Korea, France, Australia, Austria, England, Scotland, Canada and Mongolia.  And there were countless number of states from this country including Alaska and Hawaii.  I even traded contact information with a few visitors after we connected with our travel stories.  But with most, we got to know each other as best you can in a few minutes and will never connect again.  Yet they all became part of my experience and my lasting impression of NABR.  The following are just a few memorable vignettes of these connections.

There was the couple visiting from Colorado Springs, CO who had been to every National Park in the continental US, most of the eight in Alaska, one in Samoa and one in the Virgin Islands.  They were now working on the National Monuments.

One morning there was a young woman by her car cooking breakfast in the parking lot on her backpack stove.  Having graduated from the University of Wisconsin, she was now was with AmeriCorps in Las Vegas/Reno area working on the fire crew and cleared hiking trails.

The couple from Park City, Utah had family in our present hometown of Columbus, Ohio and were both where from the small town of Irondequoit near Rochester, N.Y. where Mindy grew up.

The couple from Alaska told me the best time to see the Northern Lights was in March or September and that I should go to Chena Hot Springs in Fairbanks or to Homer Alaska for the best viewing.

There was the fellow from Prague who when discussing the beauty and age of his city, told me about the pub that has been in operation in the same building since 1100 AD.

I talked to a couple from Australia about all of the things in their country that would kill you – cone web spiders that are common in their houses and brown snakes that will chase you.  They were impressed with the mountains since the highest elevation in their country was 5000 feet.  They said best time to visit their country is March/April or Sept/Oct.  And the flight to America is short compared to the 24 hour flight to Europe.

The couple from North Carolina had quit their jobs and were traveling around the US for a year.  They pulled a cool little camper that they had rebuilt (it was built in northeast Ohio in the late fifties).  They are WWOOFing around the country (WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms) a network of organic farms where you work and learn about sustainable living in exchange for lodging and food.  I am now following their travel blog.

Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs and pictographs

Hyo and his family were low on gas when they made it to NABR.  The nearest gas station being 45 minutes away, he was worried about running out of gas with his small child in the car.  After seeing him fret about this and the exorbitant cost of gas delivery to the middle of nowhere that he had called about, we ended up giving him several gallons of gas – enough to get to the gas station but also to make the drive to enjoy the park.  His appreciation was obvious as he introduced me to his family as I pumped the gas.  (Hyo, I did get your letter and you are very welcome and the return of the phone card was not necessary.  I hope you enjoyed your time at Cornell and your tour of the states.  And have a safe trip back to Korean.  And I promise I will contact you if I ever get to your homeland)

Mara from Brazil had been traveling alone throughout the US, sightseeing and camping.  We must have talked for an hour or so about traveling and places to visit in the four corners area.  We traded contact information to keep in touch with each others travels.  And Mara, I hope you enjoyed the Watch Tower and your hike at the Grand Canyon your camping at Gooseneck State Park (where I hope you put my firewood to good use with a large bonfire.)

The fellow from Scotland agreed with what his countrymen who told Mindy on her trip to Scotland, that our name is pronounced Kan-AIR-d and NOT Kan-ARE-d.  He also told me that since I was of Scottish descent, that I should celebrate Robert Burns Day on January 25 with a few shots of Scottish whiskey.  A good tip, I think.

These were just a few of the ‘friends’ that I made at NABR.  I am looking forward to those I meet at Gila.

Colorado River Rafting

To paraphrase a book about preparing for a Colorado river trip, ‘go out and buy some sand, add one cup to your bed, rub one cup into all of your clothes, preferably when they are wet, sprinkle sand on your food and your tooth-brush, mix sand in your water, and you are just barely prepared for what is to come.’   Sand becomes your life on the river.  It takes a day or so to begin excepting that reality, though you never really get used to the sound that gritty, sandy scrambled eggs make as it rings inside your head.

Of course, we were on a work trip so it was a bit different from the typical $3500 per head trip.  We helped set up the kitchen every night and tear it down after breakfast in the morning.  We helped cook.  We helped carry all of the equipment to and from the boats.  We set up our own tents.  And we worked.  Boy did we work.

We spent three rainy and snowy cold days hiking up, camping in and cutting large invasive Tamarisk trees in Nankoweap Canyon.  We spent a day hiking several miles up the steep and rocky Malgosa Canyon to cut more large Tamarisk trees and to do further up-canyon exploring for more trees.  We stopped at several additional canyons along the river to search for and remove other invasive annuals and perennials.    We were sandy, dirty, wet and cold.  No baths for 10 days so we were all pretty ripe.

All of that being said, it was an amazing experience!  We had three great and entertaining boatmen, one of which was a National Park Service employee and two from a river guide company.  They knew how to get serious and run the rapids; they knew much about the geology and history of the canyon; they knew how to get crazy and have fun; they were fun to talk to while they paddled and we loafed on the boats.

Breakfast starts at 6:30 am (6 am if you have breakfast duty) with a loud, GOOOOOD MORNING CAMPERS, COFFEE IS ON!  And the morning is hectic with cleaning up, tearing down the camp site and packing the boats.  Some days were very wet and some not.  Most were filled with lots of work and exploration stops with slow, lazy raft rides in between with a mixture of singing and poetry by the boatmen, much of which slightly or more off-color.  Nights were more relaxing after dinner with jokes, conversation, Melissa playing the guitar and Gayle the mandolin.  Oh and did I mention the beer, wine and whisky.

It was a long, fun, hard, sandy, bonding week and a half.  And then there was the hike out for three of us while new recruits joined the trip and they headed down for 10 more days.  The South Kiabab Trail is a killer.  One vertical mile and nearly eight trail miles.  It is like putting 40 pounds on your back and getting on the StairMaster for several hours straight.  Even hard to enjoy the spectacular scenery though I tried.  Not really much fun but a great feeling of accomplishment.

So, a good hour-long bath soak, a shower and a good night’s sleep in a cushy bed sans sand.  As a new man, I sit here in Flagstaff writing this blog post.  Below are a few pictures to give a sense of the beauty (and work) we experienced during the trip.

Boatman and crazyman Lorenzo

California Condor – considered one of the rarest birds in the world.

Sandbar and geology

Campsite

Preparing to unload for the night.

Campsite from a view

Drill hole where they started the Grand Canyon Dam. The Sierra Club led the fight to stop this craziness.

Evening Floating

Campsite with a view

Hiking up Nankoweap Canyon

Cutting Tamarisk

Nate (Tater) taking a break

Another campsite with a view

Geology everywhere

Nankoweap Puebloan Granary

Spectacular views from the Granary

The puebloan people knew how to pick a site

Climbing Malgosa Canyon

Catching a spring seep drink

Hiking rocky Malgosa Canyon

The life

The boatmen – L to R Nate (Tater)- Nate (Lefty) – Lorenzo

Hiking out South Kiabab Trail

Steep, winding South Kiabab Trail

Trail with a view

Flagstaff, Arizona

I am in Flagstaff preparing to meet with my fellow rafters in the morning.  We will be heading out for our 10 days on the river.  Apprehension mixed with excitement.  Having never been on a long raft trip before, I want to make sure I take what I will need while not taking too much, knowing I have to carry it the one vertical mile, 7.5 hours out of the canyon.  The excitement needs no explanation for anyone who has ever thought of taking a raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  10 days……without a shower….without a kushy bed.  But with some of the most spectacular scenery and geology that one could ever wish for, I speculate, which is all I can muster at this point.  I will report back with the reality of the trip in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, I worked only a half day. leaving the rest of the day to prepare for my trip.  Of course in anticipation, I had already loaded my backpack and was ready to go.  So I decided to explore.  I have had my eye on the Red Canyon Road for a while –  a twisting and turning-type road – the kind I look for on maps.  This red dirt BLM road is not more than five miles from where I am working at Natural Bridges NP. Public land makes up nearly 80% of  Utah, with 40% under the watchful eye of the Bureau of Land Management.  This fact has its fans and its detractors out here.  What I notice is the fact that you can drive down the road, see something, a river, a canyon, or an interesting rock formation, and there is a good chance that it is public land and therefore you can feel free to explore.  Just make sure you close the gate behind you.  I won’t go into the, to some, obvious negative aspects of loss of state control and revenue.  I love to explore…..so I love these public lands.

Red Rock canyon sits below Red Rock Ridge and is one of those public lands open for exploration.  So I headed off the main road, onto the red clay Red Canyon Road and into the unknown of this squiggly line on the map.  Four hours later I was on Rt. 95 heading back to Natural Bridges.  At times I wondered whether or not I would reach a point where I could go no further and would have to go back the way I came.  Red dirt and gravel for four hours of miles.  Steep drop-offs separated from the road by a foot-wide pile of gravel. Dodging fallen rock that littered the road.  Steep grades that challenged my Honda CRV.  Moonscape-like environments.  Yet there were beautiful views of deep, red rock canyons inches from my tires, steep red rock cliffs above, 60-year-old mine shafts and miner dwellings along the road and eerie silent hikes along the canyon rims.  Moss Back Butte, the Clay Hills, Natural Arch, Tables of the Sun Buttes.  I love living in a place where there is always something new to explore and where every exploration is a challenge.

I am actually happy to be here. My solemn expression reflects my scramble over boulders to get into this position after clicking the shutter.

Since my work schedule will leave little time for exploration once I return from my trip on the Colorado and before I head off to New Mexico, I was glad to fit in this last excursion of the southeastern Utah landscape.

Scenic Tour – Southeastern Utah

Henry Mountains

Rt. 95 Bridge over the Colorado River

My days in Utah are numbered.  I have another long six-day work week, then I am off to the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River for a raft trip.  After that, I will be back in Utah at Natural Bridges for another long six-day work week before I pack up and head for my ‘tour of duty’ at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southwest New Mexico.   So……with a couple of days off, I decided to head out for one last short tour of the area.  I headed northeast on Rt. 95 towards the metropolis of Hanksville – it is as big as it sounds.  A couple of gas stations, one where the store is actually built inside a large rock outcropping. There is Blonde’s Restaurant, which actually has a pretty good veggie omelette, a couple of hotels, I use that term loosely, though I stayed in one in the past and it was clean and inexpensive.  There are a couple other  native art shops that are probably open in ‘season’ and the rusting metal sculptures in front of an abandon, deteriorating building.  But the people are friendly and the location is near many beautiful areas, though the surrounding landscape is a bit desolate-looking.

Golden Eagle

Rt. 95, Rt. 24 and Rt. 12 are very scenic roads that I highly recommend if you are in the area.  That was my route plan though I ended up bypassing the long, slow and out-of-the-way Rt. 12 due to the lack of time and the desire to do some hiking along the way.  These three roads pass Natural Bridges National Monument, Lake Powell, Capitol Reef and Brice Canyon National Parks and takes you close to Zion National Park.  And the scenery in between these parks is just as spectacular and in some areas moonscape-like.  Just driving through the area is an experience.

I stopped at the bridge over the Colorado River, just where it enters Lake Powell, to watch a couple of Golden Eagles and a couple of Bald Eagles ‘play’ in the skies over head - truly amazing, unique and mesmerizing site.  I was able to grab an image of one of the Golden Eagles as they made their way closer to where I stood.  The wing spans had to be six to eight feet in length.

Colorado River view at Lake Powell (low water level)

In Hanksville, that I described above, I headed west on Rt. 24 towards Capitol Reef NP, where I stopped to stretch my legs.  I hiked up the Grand Wash – a several mile long, deep canyon that cuts through the 100-mile long Waterpocket Fold monocline – one of the main features that define Capitol Reef NP.  The walls of this Wash are often 500 feet high and less than 15 feet wide…..not a place to be during rainy season.  It was a beautiful day for a hike – cold but with a sunny, blue sky as usual.  As with many of the canyons in this region, if you keep your eyes open and know how to recognize indicators, you can locate a few of the ‘secrets’ hidden from view.  I found some very well preserved and artistic petroglyphs hidden on the face of the canyon wall.

Hanksville area moonscape

Weird stuff along the highway near Hanksville

Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park

Heading west and passing through Torrey, I turned north on Rt. 72 instead of the longer, more winding, Rt 12, one of the most scenic and winding roads in southern Utah.  I took it last year, but I was running out of time and daylight.  Rt. 72 took me through a wide, fertile valley – definitely a different landscape than most of this area.  It then headed up over an 8,000 foot high pass where fortunately a snow plow had recently clear a path just for me.  A different kind of beautiful drive that led me to Interstate 70 where I headed east towards. Rt. 191 and Moab.  This portion of I70 is not your typical interstate, boring highway.  First you are driving 75 mph.  and you are passing through some spectacular scenery, not the least of which is where the highway cuts through the San Rafael Swell, a 50 mile long anticline that is so formidable that there is only one road, I70, that cuts through its entire length.  It took the road engineers that long to cut a highway though so just image what this looked like to early settlers.

Petroglyphs in the Grand Wash

I made it to Moab and back to my ‘home’ in Natural Bridges.  A great last trip, though I am really going to miss this landscape.