Dale Tuggy and I explored some new trails in a four and one half hour ramble out of the Cloudview Trailhead, 30 March 2019. Weather exquisite, companionship excellent, conversation both deep and wide-ranging. Physical condition at the end: righteously tuckered and ready for re-hydration. In a word, beer.
My e-mail to Jeff and Dennis:
Weather forecast looks favorable. The Sage of the Superstitions will take you boys on a pussy cat hike and introduce you to Parker Pass. I don't believe you two have been out this way. Out and back, 4. 6 miles. Little elevation change, but a number of creek crossings. If we feel like it we can explore an unmarked side trail.Sunrise at 7:06. Please be at my house at 6:30. No hike if rain.
Weather proved more than favorable. Cold but clear after a few days of rain. Distant ridges flecked with snow. Ethereal wisps of cloud wreathed some peaks. Streams running strong; one even babbled in a language indecipherable. Numerous stream crossings tested our agility. Not too much mud and dreck, just enough to add interest and texture. The hike commenced at the First Water trailhead at 7:15 AM. A leisurely climb brought us to the pass at the stroke of 9:00. A half-hour at the pass for coffee and snacks, and then we mosied on down, making it back to the Jeep at 10:45. I calculated our pace to be about 1 and 1/2 miles per hour. Nothing to crow about, of course, but not bad for old men in rugged country.
Access road in very good shape despite all the rain. Didn't even need the four-wheel drive, but used it anyway to give it some exercise and keep the fluids viscous and happy.
A bum knee sent me to the hot tub yesterday afternoon for a long soak. There I struck up a conversation with a 20-year-old grandson of a neighbor. He hails from Minnesota like seemingly half of the people I meet here this time of year. "Which town?," I asked. "Red Wing" was the reply. And then I remembered the old Dylan tune, "The Walls of Red Wing," from his topical/protest period, about a boys' reform school. The kid knew about the correctional facility at Red Wing, and he had heard of Bob Dylan. But I knew that Dylan could not be a profitable topic of conversation, popular music appreciation being a generational thing.
So we turned to hiking. He wanted to climb The Flatiron but his grandmother said, "not on my watch." The wiry, fit kid could easily have negotiated it. So I recommended Hieroglyphic Canyon and Fremont Saddle, hikes to which his overly protective granny could have no rational objection.
Music is a generational thing, or at least popular music is. But such pursuits as hiking, backpacking, hunting, and rafting bring the men of different generations together. The old philosopher and the young adventurer came away from their encounter satisfied.
Here is Joan Baez' angel-throated rendition, and here is that of the man himself. Here I am in Peralta Canyon on the descent from Fremont Saddle:
Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015. We are headed back to the trail head via the First Water Creek bed.
Dale Tuggy is in town and we met up on Thursday and Friday. On Good Friday morning I took him on a fine looping traipse in the Western Superstitions out of First Water trail head to Second Water trail to Garden Valley, down to Hackberry Spring, and then back to the Second Water trail via the First Water creek bed. We were four hours on the trail, 6:55 - 10:55, both of us wired up (in both senses of that term) for one of Dale's famous podcasts. One of the topics discussed was the Buddhist anatta/anatman doctrine which we both respectfully reject. I believe that Dale concurred with all of the following points I made and with some others as well:
1. The nonexistence of what one fails to find does not logically follow from one's failing to find it. So the failure to find in experience an object called 'self' does not entail the nonexistence of the self.
2. So failure to find the self as an object of experience is at least logically consistent with the existence of a self.
3. What's more, the positing of a self seems rationally required even though the self is not experienceable. For someone or something is doing the searching and coming up 'empty-handed.'
4. There are also considerations re: diachronic personal identity. Suppose I decide to investigate the question of the self. A moment later I begin the investigation by carefully examining the objects of inner and outer experience to see if any one of them is the self. After some searching I come to the conclusion that the self is not to be located among the objects of experience. I then entertain the thought that perhaps there is no self. But then it occurs to me that failure to find X is not proof of X's nonexistence. I then consider whether it is perhaps the very nature of the subject of experience to be unobjectifiable. And so I conclude that the self exists but is not objectifiable, or at least not isolable as a separate object of experience among others.
This reasoning may or may not be sound. The point, however, is that the reasoning, which plays out over a period of time, would not be possible at all if there were no one self -- no one unity of consciousness and self-consciousness -- that maintained its strict numerical identity over the period of time in question. For what we have in the reasoning process is not merely a succession of conscious states, but also a consciousness of their succession in one and the same conscious subject. Without the consciousness of succession, without the retention of the earlier states in the present state, no conclusion could be arrived at.
All reasoning presupposes the diachronic unity of consciousness. Or do you think that the task of thinking through a syllogism could be divided up? Suppose Manny says, All men are mortal! Moe then pipes up, Socrates is a man! Could Jack conclude that Socrates is mortal? No. He could say it but not conclude it. (This assumes that Jack does not hear what the other two Pep Boys say. Imagine each in a separate room.)
The hearing of a melody supplies a second example.
To hear the melody Do-Re-Mi, it does not suffice that there be a hearing of Do, followed by a hearing of Re, followed by a hearing of Mi. For those three acts of hearing could occur in that sequence in three distinct subjects, in which case they would not add up to the hearing of a melody. (Tom, Dick, and Harry can divide up the task of loading a truck, but not the ‘task’ of hearing a melody, or that of understanding a sentence, or that of inferring a conclusion from premises.) But now suppose the acts of hearing occur in the same subject, but that this subject is not a unitary and self-same individual but just the bundle of these three acts, call them A1, A2, and A3. When A1 ceases, A2 begins, and when A2 ceases, A3 begins: they do not overlap. In which act is the hearing of the melody? A3 is the only likely candidate, but surely it cannot be a hearing of the melody. For the awareness of a melody involves the awareness of the (musical not temporal) intervals between the notes, and to apprehend these intervals there must be a retention (to use Husserl’s term) in the present act A3 of the past acts A2 and A1. Without this phenomenological presence of the past acts in the present act, there would be no awareness in the present of the melody. But this implies that the self cannot be a mere bundle of perceptions externally related to each other, but must be a peculiarly intimate unity of perceptions in which the present perception A3 includes the immediately past ones A2 and A1 as temporally past but also as phenomenologically present in the mode of retention. The fact that we hear melodies thus shows that there must be a self-same and unitary self through the period of time between the onset of the melody and its completion. This unitary self is neither identical to the sum or collection of A1, A2, and A3, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from them. Nor of course is it identical to any one of them or any two of them. This unitary self is given whenever one hears a melody.
The unitary self is phenomenologically given, but not as a separate object. Herein, perhaps, resides the error of Hume and some Buddhists: they think that if there is a self, it must exist as a separate object of experience.
I began the year right with a two-hour ramble right out my front door over the local hills. Very cold temps ramped up the usual saunter to a serious march. I always go light: short pants, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, bandanna, light cotton gloves. Rain that turned to snow overnight gave Superstition Mountain a serious dusting.
And I always take a notebook and a pen in case I get a really good idea. Haven't had one yet, but you never know.
Walking in the wild, alone, is a pleasure to keep one sound in body and mind. "Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever." (Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle.)
Click on image to enlarge.
Peter's girlfriend Carolyn wanted to go on a hike, but Peter the biker is no hiker. So the guide task fell to me. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. The day's high was 113 F. with monsoon humidity.
Yesterday's killer hike, commencing at First Water Trailhead at 7:30 AM, took us to the top of Black Top Mesa (not to be confused with cholla-forested Black Mesa, also accessible via First Water). It is a leisurely saunter over Parker Pass and across some now-almost-dry streams until you arrive at the Bull Pass upgrade which is not only steep but slippery as hell. At Bull Pass, a cairn marks an unofficial spur that leads to the top of the mesa and some fine views. It is easy to miss it and end up on a very different (false but seductive) spur that peters out only after one has been well-seduced. (Been there, done that.) It got warm and our start was late, James having driven up from Tucson, so the two old men spent 8 1/2 hours on the trail including leisurely rests and a half-hour lunch atop the mesa. We were out of water and well-trashed by the time the death march was over and we climbed back into the Jeep with visions of Fat Tire Ale dancing in our heads. Mileage is about 12 round-trip with accumulated elevation gain of about 1600 feet. Details here. Weaver's Needle from the top of the mesa:
James sucks it in and strikes a pose:
Not happy to see us (left-click to enlarge):
Thirsty hiker takes a drink at the junction of the Dutchman's and Coffee Flat Trails. Note the 'eye' of the needle. Left-click to enlarge.
My hiking partner James L. begins the descent into Coffee Flat. The magnificent formation in the distance is variously referred to as Castle Rock (Tom Kollenborn) and Cathedral Rock (Jack Carlson). Left-click to enlarge.
My Jeep from the Arizona Trail:
It was going to be either a Harley-Davidson or a Jeep Wrangler. I took the three-day motorcycle course, passed it, and got my license. But then good sense kicked in and I sprang for a 2013 Wrangler Unlimited Sport S. I'm a hiker, not a biker. And I value my long-term physical integrity. 'Unlimited' translates to 'four door.' The longer wheel base makes for a comfortable freeway ride. The removable hard top adds to security and means a quiet ride. The new with 2012 Pentastar 3.6 liter V6 24 valve engine delivers plenty of power through either a 6-speed manual or a 5-speed automatic tranny. But it is still a lean, mean, trail machine that will get me easily into, and more importantly, out of the gnarlier trailheads.
I bought it the day after Thanksgiving and I've had it off road twice. Drove it up to Roger's Trough Trailhead in the Eastern Superstitions on Sunday where James L. and I trashed ourselves good on a seven hour hike to and from the Cliff Dwellings. Don't try to access this trailhead without a high clearance 4WD vehicle. There was one steep switchback that definitely got my attention and left me white-knuckled. And then on Wednesday, a serious off-roader showed me some Jeep trails northwest of Superior, AZ. Using walkie-talkies, he gave me a little tutorial on how to negotiate narrow, rocky trails without getting hung up or rolling over. It comes standard with a roll-bar, though. I hope not to make use of it. And I don't reckon I will be putting the front windshield down, either. Might come in handy, though, for shooting in the direction of travel . . . .
The Superstitions are not called the Killer Mountains for nothing. Many a man has been lured to his death in this rugged wilderness by lust for gold. A few days ago, what appear to be the remains of Jesse Capen were finally found after nearly three years of searching. Another obsessive Dutchman Hunter in quest of a nonexistent object, he went missing in December of 2009.
I've seen the movie and it ain't bad. And of course any self-respecting aficionado of the legends and lore, tales and trails of the magnificent Superstitions must see it. Tom Kollenborn comments in Lust for Gold I and Lust for Gold II.
As I wrote in Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold,
. . . to live well, a man needs a quest. Without a quest, a life lacks the invigorating "strenuosity" that William James preached. But if he quests for something paltry such as lost treasure, it is perhaps best that he never find it. For on a finite quest, the 'gold' is in the seeking, not in the finding. A quest worthy of us, however, cannot be for gold or silver or anything finite and transitory. A quest worthy of us must aim beyond the ephemeral, towards something whose finding would complete rather than debilitate us. Nevertheless, every quest has something in it of the ultimate quest, and can be respected in some measure for that reason.
John Muir (The Mountains of California, 1894, Ch. 1) on California's Sierra Nevada mountain range:
. . . the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
Would we have this beautiful description if John Muir had heeded the injunction, Never hike alone!? Note his use of 'mountain-chains' near the end of the passage. That is a term that has fallen into desuetude if it ever saw much use. It is an exact equivalent of the German Bergketten.
The best guide to that region of the Sierra Nevada known as the High Sierra is R. J. Secor, The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes and Trails (The Mountaineers, 1992, 2nd ed. 1999). It is a beautifully written book. Here is a taste:
The High Sierra . . . is the best place in the world for the practice of mountains. By the practice of mountains, I am referring to to hiking, cross-country rambling, peak bagging, rock climbing, ice climbing and ski touring. One of my goals in life is to go around the world three times and visit every mountain range twice. But whenever I have wandered other mountains, I have been homesick for the High Sierra. I am a hopeless romantic, and therefore my opinions cannot be regarded as objective. But how can I be objective while discussing the mountains that I love? (p. 9)
My kind of guy. During one of my High Sierra backpacking trips I met a man who knew Secor. Secor the climber smokes cigarettes! To be a climber you have to be all legs and lungs. Take that, you tobacco-wackos!
The following photograph is from Edwin Farrell's Sierra Nevada Gallery:
Here are some shots from last Sunday's Superstition Wilderness 7.6 mile point-to-point hike from First Water trailhead to Canyon Lake trailhead. A delightful hike that starts out easy as one meanders out on the soft and flat Second Water trail though Garden Valley. But then it gets rocky. By the time you come to the junction with the Boulder Canyon trail, you're in deep with plenty of ankle-busting rocks and lung-taxing upgrades. This hike has a lot to offer: easy walking, challenging climbing, solitude, history (one passes right by the Indian Paint mine,) great views of Battleship Mountain and Weaver's Needle, and even a couple riparian areas. The two young whippersnappers depicted, Larry and James, acquitted themselves creditably. I made 'em work.
Yesterday's hike was almost over. The light was failing as we gingerly negotiated the last steps of the treacherous downgrade of Heart Attack Hill. Suddenly my hiking partner let out a yell and jumped back at the unmistakable sound of a diamond back rattlesnake (crotalus atrox). It was a perfect hike: physically demanding in excellent company with a dash of danger at the end.
James L., fanatical hiker, who I have been introducing to the Superstition Wilderness. A native Arizonan, he has no problem with hiking in the summer in this rattlesnake infested inferno. I hope not to have to make use of his nurse practitioner skills. The knife hanging from his belt suggests he might, in a pinch, be up for some 'meatball surgery.'
James and I encountered this tarantula on the Dutchman's trail near dawn, last Wednesday. And then a bit farther down the trail, and smack dab in the middle of it, we spied a baby diamondback rattlesnake:
Weaver's Needle at daybreak from the Dutchman's trail near Parker Pass. We were doing the Black Mesa Loop out of First Water trailhead in the counter-clockwise direction. Covered the 9.1 miles in 5 1/2 hours. Not bad considering the monsoon humidity and a high of about 108 deg. Fahrenheit. Last year in July three Utah prospectors died near Yellow Peak which is on this route. We passed right by the black basaltic rock on which they expired, rock that can reach a temperature of 180. See Another Strange Tale of the Superstitions. For the rest of the story see Tom Kollenborn, A Deadly Vision.
This is a 9.3 mile hike out of the Peralta Trailhead, Superstition Wilderness, Arizona. I have done it countless times in both the clockwise and counterclockwise directions. The route sports about 1260 feet of elevation gain according to David Mazel (Arizona Trails, Wilderness Press 1991, p. 47) We commenced hiking at 6 AM on the dot and finished at 11:35. The dialectics slowed down the peripatetics. Clockwise takes the hiker up rather than down what the locals call "Heart Attack Hill" when they are not calling it "Cardiac Hill." I much prefer the uphill to the downhill, heart stress to knee strain, though we have it on the authority of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus that "The way up and the way down are the same." (Fragment 60) A second advantage of the clockwise route is that fewer fellow hikers are encountered. Human nature being what it is, the path of least resistance is preferred by the many. The fewer of the many encountered the better, or so say I. Here is the elevation profile in the easy counterclockwise direction:
Eschewing the Peripatetic approach to philosophy, Peter L. deemed us "crazy" for hiking in the desert in summer. (High was near 100 Fahrenheit on the day in question.) Hiking is a "delectable madness" as I seem to recall Colin Fletcher saying. The first shot depicts the young philosopher Spencer Case at Miner's Summit standing before Miner's Needle while the second shows what the locals call "Cathedral Rock."
The Bear Canyon Trail (Old Mt. Baldly Trail) is one way to the top of Mt. Baldy (Mount San Antonio) in the San Gabriel Mountains. My childhood friend John Ingvar Odegaard (the heftier of the two guys depicted below) and I got nowhere near the peak, but we did saunter up to Bear Flat in a manner most leisurely. We had the trail to ourselves except for a young mother with baby in papoose and an angry rattlesnake who was not glad to see us. The trail to Bear Flat is a mere 1. 75 miles one way, but fairly steep, gaining 1260' from the trailhead at 4260'. The trail was delightfully soft, unlike the rocky, ankle-busting tracks I am used to in the Superstitions, and proceeded mostly under an arboreal canopy of oak and other trees. But the trail opened out here and there onto some nice vistas. From one, we could see all the way down to the ancestral Odegaard cabin in Baldy Village.
The Superstition Mountains exert a strange fascination. They attract misfits, oddballs, outcasts, outlaws, questers of various stripes, a philosopher or two, and a steady stream of 'Dutchman hunters,' those who believe in and search for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. This nonexistent object has lured many a man to his death. More men than Alexius von Meinong's golden mountain, for sure. Adolf Ruth, for example, back in the '30s.
Such appears to be the case once again this last week. Three Utah prospectors, their brains addled by gold fever, entered this wild and unforgiving inferno of rocks and rattlesnakes unprepared and appear to have the paid for their foolishness with their lives. Here is the story.
Or at least that is the story so far. But there has to be more. Why July when the temperature approaches 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the monsoon humidity adds a further blanket of discomfort? It is not as if they haven't been here before. A couple of them were rescued last year.
And how do you get lost, if you are not totally stupid? The central landmark of the entire wilderness is Weaver's Needle depicted in the first shot above. It is visible from every direction, from the Western Sups to the Eastern Sups. To orient yourself, all you have to do is climb up to where you can see it. And then head for it. To the immediate west and east of it are major trails that lead to major trailheads.
And why was no trace of them found despite intensive searching with helicopters and dogs? It is possible to fall into an abandoned mine shaft. But all three at once? Their plan, supposedly, was to search by day and sleep in a motel at night. But then they wouldn't have gotten very deep into the wilderness and the chances of finding them dead or alive would have been pretty good.
Maybe it was all a scam. Maybe they never entered the wilderness at First Water. They left their car there and hitchhiked out in an elaborate ruse to ditch their wives and families and their pasts. But I speculate. (If a philosopher can't speculate, who the hell can?)
I've hiked out of First Water many times, winter and summer. I know a trail that you don't and is not on any maps that leads to Adolf Ruth's old camp at Willow Springs. I've got half a mind to take a look-see . . .
I didn't make it to the top of Picket Post Mountain this morning as planned. (Near Superior, AZ 25 miles east of where I live.) You could say I wimped out about half way up: it was windy and cold and overcast, with nerve-wracking drop-offs. Steep I like, precipitous I don't. I was alone, couldn't raise wifey on my cell phone, and the final pitch which required the use of hand-holds would have been difficult with my walking stick. We'll leave the peak-bagging for another day. But I did explore a good stretch of the Arizona trail which runs from the Mexican to the Utah border as a warm-up before tackling the mountain.
On the way down the mountain, encountered this character who proved to be very interesting. A fortuitous meeting in a two-fold sense: by chance, and fortunate. (Interesting that 'fortunate' carries both a descriptive and an evaluative meaning: chancy and good.) I told him I'd take him for a hike in the Superstitions the next time he's in town.
The following shot looks roughly north-northwest. The prominence smack dab in the middle on the horizon is Weaver's Needle, the central landmark of the Superstition Wilderness. Superstition Mountain is on the far left and Buzzard's Roost on the far right.
In a society made litigious by an excess of lawyers, the need for various CYA maneuvers is correspondingly great. One such is the disclaimer. I particularly enjoy the disclaimers found in well-written hiking books. Rare is the hiking book that doesn't have one these days. The following is from local author,Ted Tenny, Goldfield Mountain Hikes, p. 4:
The risks of desert hiking include, but are not limited to: heatstroke, heat exhaustion, heat prostration, heat cramps, sunburn, dehydration, flash floods, drowning, freezing, hypothermia, getting lost, getting stranded after dark, falling, tripping, being stung, clawed or bitten by venomous or non-venomous creatures, being scratched or stuck by thorny plants, being struck by lightning, falling rocks, natural or artificial objects falling from the sky, or a comet colliding with the Earth.
Still up for a hike?
The infernal hike of 28 August 2005 began at 5:20 AM at first light, that phase of dawn at which one can just make out the trail and its hazards. Sunrise was about forty minutes off. If one hopes to survive a desert hike in August, especially in environs as rugged and unforgiving as the Superstition Wilderness, one does well to start at first light and be finished by high noon. I once finished such a hike around two or three in the afternoon with the distinct impression that I had pushed the envelope about as far as possible.
It is a curious sensation to feel oneself being slowly roasted in five different ways.
There is first of all the air temperature. Today's for example was 112 degrees Fahrenheit at its high. At any temperature above 90 the human body starts to absorb heat through the skin.
Then there is conduction. One gains heat by contact with the ground, rocks, ledges, anything one touches while hiking or climbing if the object is hotter than 90 degrees.
In third place comes convection. Hot air blows against the skin and imparts heat to the body. Even a slight breeze at 112 degrees has quite an effect.
Fourth, there is solar radiation. Once up, Old Sol beats down unmercifully, which is why I wear a long-sleeved white shirt and a broad-brimmed hat. My legs remain exposed, though, since hiking in long pants is unbearably confining.
Finally, there is metabolism. The internal organs and the muscles at work generate body heat.
I finished at 11:10 with the day's high of 112 degrees Fahrnheit fast approaching. I was well-roasted and dehydrated, but very satisfied with the five hours and fifty minutes I spent hiking over washed-out, overgrown, ankle-busting trails.
I concur with Colin Fletcher: Hiking is "a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion." (The Complete Walker III, p. 3)
A while back I made a steep ascent to a lonely saddle above Carney Springs in the Superstition Wilderness. On the way up I passed a couple of hikers who were headed down. Topping out at the saddle, I saw that they had left their mark: orange peels lay upon a rock for all to see.
I imagined a little conversation with the offenders touching upon several points, to wit, (i) whether the weight of orange peels is less than, equal to, or greater than the weight of the corresponding orange; (ii) whether citrus trees and their fruits are part of the flora indigenous to the Superstition Wilderness; (iii) whether orange peels are among the dietary needs of javelinas, bobcats, mountain lions, and Sonoran white tail deer; (iv) whether trash inspires others to leave trash; (v) whether the offenders would leave orange peels to decompose on their living room floor; (vi) whether concern for other wilderness users is any part of their moral scheme.
Recent Comments