We had agreed to explore this area more today. Weather was ideal, close to 70F and cloudless. The dogs hadn't been walked in a while and were looking forward to a day in the forests.
I had no trouble finding this road. I had been here with the dogs last November and wanted to show Kevin the trails: Drive to Patagonia, turn north on 4th Avenue at the Wagon Wheel Saloon, then left again at the T-intersection. The sign for Squaw Gulch Road was a few miles north on this road passed the secluded homes on either side of the road.
Last November hunters and ATVers were sharing the trails with me. Today there was no one. Even the discarded beer bottles along FR 143 were minimal.
The stockpond I parked at last year was now empty. But the good news is that there was little trash off the trail. That meant that hunters and ATVers hadn't been around for a while. The bad news is that the creek bed was as dry as it was in November.
I drove Essie further up the road this time, finding a nice trailhead two miles from where we turned off on FR 143. We parked at the intersection of FR 144 and FR 4097 with a nice view of the valley below.
The dogs were ahead of us the entire time, frolicking in the grasslands. From a nearby hillside I admired the "amber waves of grasses" as the grass swayed in the wind that was slowly getting stronger as the afternoon waned. We hiked up FR 144.
FR 144 came to an abrupt end at a fenceline with a "NO TRESSPASSING" sign posted. We turned around here and walked back via the dry creekbed where pools of water refreshed the dogs. We could see abandoned mines higher up in the hillsides.
Back at the car we now hiked up FR4097, a rockier and badly eroded trail. The sign warned of a Dead End, and we quickly came across the massive landslide that took out the once wide mining trail. We climbed up over large boulders, ducked under low-lying mesquite branches and stepped over narrow streams of water and hiked up to another abandoned mine near a box canyon.
This was an old lead mine. Lead ore was all around. I picked up a few smaller lead-laden rocks to show Kevin how heavy the metal was.
The view back toward Patagonia revealed more of a vista toward Mexico. We were totally alone. This is what we like: solitary wilderness in an area that the Spaniards mined and explored back in the 1600s.
Kevin even found the abandoned shitter in a nearby rock cutting. The old wooden seat was still quite visible.
"You should sit on that wooden toilet for a photo!" I said.
"I didn't bring my crossword puzzles" replied Kevin.
At this point the canyon came to an end as the rock walls closed in from all sides. In wetter seasons this is where a small but surely powerful waterfall would crash down into the narrow canyon. Had we climbed further up we would eventually reach the southern side of Josephine Saddle, but with Kevin still suffering from that nasty cough I chose not to go further.
We walked back to the truck the same we we came, hiking a total of 3.2 (!) miles in the four hours we were out exploring. We never saw another person on the trail or even on the road until we came back to Sonoita Creek where birders had a feast watching their passion through binoculars.
The dogs were spread out in the backseat and didn't make a ruckus until we were back home.
We agreed that we will be back here again, perhaps to explore trails further north toward Madera Canyon. But we also want to go back to Dos Cabezas again and hike up the creek to the saddle. (Maybe I'll see more coati again?)
Southern California is getting blasted with a severe storm again. Northern and Eastern Arizona will get hit with rain late tonight or tomorrow; we may get some rain ourselves. The mountains today were very dry, dryer than they were in November. (I was expecting to see more rain from recent snow melts.) We need rain in our hills! Temperatures will dip tomorrow because of the front off California but by mid week we should be hitting near 70F again. Nighttime temperatures are also rising, which means I can soon start sowing more vegetables!
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AZ meth labs and other drug-related news: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/02/17/20090217meth0217.html
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