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.
This morning I received the news that my neighbor and fellow hiker Lloyd Glaus had died. What follows is a redacted entry from an earlier pre-Typepad version of this weblog in which I reported on a memorable trans-Superstition hike we took together over ten years ago, on 29 October 2007, when Lloyd was 75 years old and I was 57.
....................
How long can we keep it up?
I mean the running, the biking, the hiking and backpacking? Asking myself this question I look to my elders: how do they fare at their advanced ages? Does the will to remain fit and strong pave a way? For some it does. Having made the acquaintance of a wild and crazy 75-year-old who ran his first marathon recently in the Swiss Alps, uphill all the way, the start being Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the awesome Eiger Nordwand, the North Wall of the Eiger, I invited him to a little stroll in the Superstitions, there to put him under my amateur gerontological microscope. Lloyd's wife Annie dropped us off at the Peralta Trailhead in the dark just before first light and we started up the rocky trail toward Fremont Saddle.
Eight and a half hours later she kindly collected us at First Water, the temperature having risen to 95 degrees. Lloyd acquitted himself well, though the climb from Boulder Basin to Parker Pass left him tuckered. And he got cut up something fierce when we lost the trail and had to bushwack through catclaw and other nasty flora.
But he proved what I wanted proven, namely, that at 75 one can go for a grueling hike though rugged country in high heat and still have a good time and be eager to begin planning the next trip. Some shots follow. Click to enlarge. Weaver's Needle, the most prominent landmark in the Superstition Range and visible from all corners of the wilderness, but especially well from Fremont Saddle, our first rest stop, is featured in several of them.
This is how I will remember Lloyd, and this is how I suspect he would want to be remembered -- with his boots on in the mountains.
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:
I'm no climber, but I love walking in the mountains. On a solo backpacking adventure in the magnificent Sierra Nevada some years back I overheard a snatch of conversation:
There are old mountaineers, and there are bold mountaineers, but there are no oldbold mountaineers.
Ueli Steck, the great Swiss climber, is dead at 40, having fallen near Everest.
I have repeatedly asked myself, why I do this. The answer is pretty simple: because I want to do it and because I like it. I don’t like being restricted. When I climb, I feel free and unrestricted; away from any social commitments. This is what I am looking for.
I have a better answer. Steck climbed because he was very, very good at it, and we humans love doing what we are good at. Freedom from social commitments can be had in far less perilous ways.
I am reminded of something the great marathoner Bill Rodgers once said when asked why he ran and won 26.2 mile races at a blistering sub-five-minute-per-mile pace. "I like to be be fit." (I quote from memory) But of course one can be very fit indeed without running such a punishing distance at such a punishing pace.
Do as I say, not as I do. Stay out of the rattlesnake infested inferno known as the Superstition Wilderness in summer! 18 June 2016:
A 25-year-old Phoenix man died while hiking on the Peralta Trail near Gold Canyon, according to Pinal County officials.
Anthony Quatela III, 25, was found dead after county search-and-rescue personnel responded to a heat-related emergency call just after 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
Quatela was hiking with a friend who also suffered from a heat-related illness but is expected to recover, officials said.
The friend told deputies the pair had been hiking since 7:30 a.m. and were on what they called a "day hike." After a few hours, they ran out of water and Quatela began showing signs of heat illness, according to Sheriff's Office reports. The friend called 911 for help, officials said. Temperatures reached 111 degrees in the Valley on Saturday.
I often hike in the Killer Mountains in the summer, sometimes alone. But I observe the following precautions: I hydrate throughly before leaving the house and carry at least a gallon of water and enough gear and food to get me through the night if that should prove necessary; I carry a whistle and bright bandannas to attach to my hiking staff for signaling; and I stick to the itinerary that I leave with my wife, e.g., Black Mesa Loop, 9. 1 miles, out of First Water Trailhead, counterclockwise direction. And of course I stay on the trail. Don't go looking for the Lost Dutchman's gold. There ain't no gold in them thar hills, but you could easily fall down a mine shaft. Naturally you must start such a hike at first light and be done with that ankle-busting 9 mile loop by about 10:00 AM. Only a jackass with a death wish hikes in the middle of the day in these mountains in summer.
Here is a tale of three Utah fools who died several summers ago near Yellow Peak near the Black Mesa trail. Here is Tom Kollenborn's account of when and where and by whom the bodies were recovered.
Here are my Five Ways of roasting your ass to a crisp in the Sonoran desert in summer.
The Never Hike Alone warning found in most hiking books is not just a piece of CYA boilerplate required by publishers. It is good advice. I have violated it numerous times in unforgiving country in quest of my inner Thoreauvian, but then I am extremely cautious. But I don't go quite as far as Henry David's harsh, "I have no walks to throw away on company." It's a balancing act: the wilderness explorer seeks solitude but he also hopes to return to hike again. A competent partner will raise the probability of that.
The following disclaimer is my favorite, 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?
If you lose the trail, or have the least doubt that you are still on trail, stop. Do not plunge on. Retrace your steps to where the trail was clear and then proceed. Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.
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.)
As a 'Zone Man,' I am well aware of the dangers of dehydration and heat stroke especially when out for an infernal hike. Although a U.S. gallon of water weighs 8 1/3 lbs, those are pounds I don't leave home without. Some will be surprised to learn that even with water there can be too much of a good thing.
The danger is increased if you drink pure water. Since my reverse osmosis water purifier delivers water that is around 95% pure, I add electrolyte replacements such as Gookinaid to my water or else bring along salty snacks.
In fact, the sort of greasy, salty, sugary crud that you shouldn't eat at home makes for good trail food.
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:
Know your capabilities before you sign up to go hiking. Leaders are encouraged to screen prospective hikers to make sure that each participant can finish the hike. Screening is important, because someone who can’t finish a hike puts himself in danger and ruins the enjoyment for all.
In the screening a leader might ask “What is the most challenging hike you have done in the past year?” Answer this question for yourself, using the guideline below. Then sign up for hikes that you know you can finish.
Neighborhood walk, mall walk, or park nature trail.
"D"
Trail hike of at least 3 miles, at least 500' of climbing.
"C"
Off trail hike of at least 3 miles, at least 500' of climbing.
"C"
Trail hike of at least 8 miles, at least 1500' of climbing.
"B"
Off trail hike that lasted over 6 hours, plenty of climbing.
"B"
None, but I’m on the varsity football team.
"B"
Trail hike of at least 16 miles, at least 3000' of climbing.
"A"
All day, off trail, in a rugged wilderness. God only knows how many miles we walked or how much climbing we did.
"A"
Arizona Trailblazer hikes are rated using the ABCD system.
If you aren’t sure of your abilities, start with an easy "C" hike. Then don’t overdo it when you advance to the next level of difficulty. Avoid skipping levels.
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.
Those who must wrest a living from nature by hard toil are not likely to see her beauty, let alone appreciate it. But her charms are also lost on the sedentary city dwellers for whom nature is little more than backdrop and stage setting for what they take to be the really real, the social tragi-comedy. The same goes for the windshield tourists who, seated in air-conditioned comfort, merely look upon nature as upon a pretty picture.
The true acolyte of nature must combine in one person a robust and energetic physique, a contemplative mind, and a healthy measure of contempt for the world of the human-all-too-human, or to transpose into a positive key, a deep love of solitude. One thinks of Henry David Thoreau, who famously remarked, "I have no walks to throw away on company." Of the same type, but not on the same lofty plane: Edward Abbey.
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.
. . . 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.
Do as I say, not as I do. Stay out of the rattlesnake infested inferno known as the Superstition Wilderness in summer!
I often hike alone in the Killer Mountains in the summer. But I observe the following precautions: I hydrate throughly before leaving the house and carry at least a gallon of water and enough gear and food to get me through the night if that should prove necessary; I carry a whistle and bright bandannas to attach to my hiking staff for signaling; and I stick to the itinerary that I leave with my wife, e.g., Black Mesa Loop, 9. 1 miles, out of First Water Trailhead, counterclockwise direction. And of course I stay on the trail. Don't go looking for the Lost Dutchman's gold. There ain't no gold in them thar hills, but you could easily fall down a mine shaft. Naturally you must start such a hike at first light and be done with that ankle-busting 9 mile loop by about 10:00 AM. Only a jackass with a death wish hikes in the middle of the day in these mountains in summer.
Here is a tale of three Utah fools who died two summers ago near Yellow Peak near the Black Mesa trail. Here is Tom Kollenborn's account of when and where and by whom the bodies were recovered.
At the moment, one Kenny Clark of Gilbert, AZ has been missing since Sunday out of that same First Water T-head. May the Lord have mercy on him.
Here are my Five Ways of roasting your ass to a crisp in the Sonoran desert in summer.
Up for a hike?
Addendum (7/6): Mr. Clark was found dead this morning, Friday, around 2 AM in Garden Valley about a mile and a half from the First Water trailhead where his car was parked. Well, at least he died with his boots on. He was found off trail. That was one mistake. Stay on the trail! The other was not leaving an itinerary with his wife. According to a radio report, this is the second time the poor woman has had a husband die on her while hiking.
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!
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.
One advantage the early riser has over his opposite number is that he is better placed to enjoy certain celestial and atmospheric phenomena. One morning the moonset over the hills behind my house was unusually entrancing. The moon was at its fullest and the sky at it clearest. The Morning Star, that overworked example of so many philosophy of language dissertations, was in the vicinity of the moon, at least phenomenologically. The conjunction put me in mind of the Turkish flag which depicts Venus and a crescent moon in similar proximity. It was on such a crescent-mooned night that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) began the Kurtulus Savasi (the War of Independence) that brought into being the Republic of Turkey. Or so I was once told by a Turkish girl.
And then a day or two later I was out hiking at first light. The trail took me down into a chilly streambed. Climbing out of the drainage was like walking into a warm house: the temperature differential was twenty degrees Fahrhenheit if it was two. It takes a hiker, one accompanied only by his shadow, to appreciate such phenomena properly. The trail runner and the mountain biker are working too hard and are too much claimed by the hazards under foot and wheel to attend to the subtle. And the hiker who brings company along will be snubbed by Nature who jealously hides her charms from the unworthy and the inattentive. Nature: "You bring society into my serene precincts? Then enjoy your society, you can't have me."
As for the windshield tourist -- he may as well be on another planet.
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."
It astonishes me that there are able-bodied people who cannot appreciate the joy of movement in nature. I don't expect people to share my pleasure in solo wilderness adventures. Most people are incorrigibly social: it's as if they feel their ontological status diminished when on their own. With me it is the other way around. But I can easily understand how many would feel differently about this.
I once proposed to a woman that she and her husband accompany me and my wife on a little hike. She reacted as if I had proposed that she have all her teeth extracted without benefit of anaesthetic. She seemed shocked that anyone would suggest such a thing. Finally she said, "Well, maybe, if there's a destination."
A destination? Each footfall, each handhold, each bracing breath of cold mountain air is the destination. Did John Muir have a destination when he roamed the Range of Light? Was Henry Thoreau trying to get somewhere during his crosscountry rambles?
Modern man, a busy little hustler, doesn't know how to live. Surrounded by beauty, he is yet oblivious to it, rushing to his destination. If one does not have the time to meditate on the moonset, celebrate the sunrise, or marvel at a stately Saguaro standing sentinel on a distant ridgeline, it is a serious question whether one is alive in any human sense at all.
You may end up at your destination all right -- in a box, never having lived.
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.
There is the beauty, the silence, the peace, the nonsocial reality of nature, but there is also the shift away from the mind back to the sweating, toiling body on earth. Exercise in an artificial environment is not the same, nor is 'windshield tourism.' You should take your Nature straight, in a direct encounter, boots to the trail, not mediated through glass.
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.
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)
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 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.
The Cloudview Trailhead is the one nearest to my house. It is a bit hard to get to as one must negotiate a number of turns. One fellow didn't like people driving onto his property in search of it so he posted a sign: Not the Trailhead! Some time ago I notice he had replaced his sign with a new one depicting an arrow that pointed in the trailhead's direction.
Therein lies a moral: how much better to be positive than negative! The first sign said where the trailhead is not. The second one did that too (by implication) but also pointed out where the trailhead is.
And while we are on the topic of the power of positivity, why does Colin Fletcher, the grand old man of walkers, and author of the backpacker bible, The Complete Walker, refer to trailheads as roadends? I say good man, be positive! It is not the end of the road, but the beginning of the trail!
And while I'm we have Fletcher's tome in mind, it is not walking, it's hiking as we say this side of the Pond: a walk is what I take to fetch a newspaper, or what I would take to fetch a newspaper if I were to read them, whereas a hike is on another level entirely. We need to mark this distinction, do we not?
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.
What do Till Eulenspiegel and Heraclitus have in common? I thought about them near the end of a recent hike. I am an uphill specialist. I love the upgrade, the pull, gravity's testing of legs and lungs, the depth of breath, the honest sweat. The downclimb is less to my liking. Fearing a fall, I am too cautious to go with the flow.
So my mind turned to Till Eulenspiegel, described by Theodor Reik as follows:
German folklore tells many tales of the peculiar behavior of the foolish yet clever lad Till Eulenspiegel. This rogue used to feel dejected on his wanderings whenever he walked downhill striding easily, but he seemed very cheerful when he had to climb uphill laboriously. His explanation of his behavior was that in going downhill he could not help thinking of the effort and toil involved in climbing the next hill. While engaged in the toil of climbing he anticipated and enjoyed in his imagination the approach of his downhill stroll.
The "foolish yet clever lad" put me in mind of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus. Philosophically considered, it matters not at all whether one is climbing or descending. "The way up and the way down are the same." (Fragment 60) The interdependence of opposites is a rich and fascinating topic. We shall have more to say about it later.
Recent Comments