Miller Peak Via Ramsey Canyon

My first hike of the season, the 9460-foot Miller Peak in the Huachuca Mountains. 12 miles round trip and only about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. Unfortunately, I showed up with my 950-foot Des Moines lungs so the air was a bit thin at 9,461 feet. 

My good friend and hiking pal, Ira, right.

Joe's Canyon-Yaqui Trail to Mexico

Last hike of the season, a return to Joe's Canyon Trail, in the Coronado National Monument, with a side trip down the Yaqui Trail to Mexico. No need for a passport to cross over here. What's amazing about Mexico is how free from ugly development it is. It's quite unlike the Arizona desert, pock-marked by the detritus of quashed, ill-conceived 19th- and 20-century aspirations. 

This is what we should be erecting on the border.

Note the laser-straight border cut through the manzanita, bear grass, mesquite, and cacti clear to the horizon. 

Cochise Stronghold

Hiked the beautiful Cochise Stronghold Trail yesterday with the Mule Team, a short six-mile hike through some serious orogeny. Here’s some commentary I had with my Facebook pal, Steve:

Steve: This is not the famous 'Laramie Orogeny,' of course, which is one of my favorites. On account of the sound of the words. Say them out loud. I don't know about you, but I get an undefined but real pleasure out of it. All right, maybe that's abnormal. I don't care.

Me: Well, how do you feel about subduction?

Steve: Never experienced it firsthand, but I understand it's absolutely tectonic.

Me: It is rather up-lifting. 

The Chiricahuas With Friends

Took our good friends Mark and Judy to the Chiricahua National Monument an hour and a half northeast of here yesterday for a hike through Echo Canyon and Massai Point. Beautiful weather and warm temps.

The Chiricahuas were formed ten to fifteen million years ago, when tectonic plates spread and subducted, lifting up mountains and dropping valleys, while erosion formed the canyons and exposed the rock. The rock was then eroded by wind, rain, ice, and sun. And finally, lichen (the green that covers many rock faces), which contains a mild acid that eats into the rock, across the expanse of geologic time, forms these amazing structures.

Judy's glam shot.

Me, Patty, and Judy.

Mark and Judy, glad for a respite from the Iowa cold.