Arizona Highlands

Highlands ARIZONA

Adventuring in Rim Country, White Mountains, Sedona, Flagstaff

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SEDONA

11 BEST FALL DRIVES

IN THE VORTEX RIM COUNTRY

TIME TRIPPING WHITE MOUNTAINS

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We’re taking the plunge We fell in love and had to share ountains live. They’re born in fire, rise in glory, crumble in weariness, die in darkness — then rise again in fire. The earth has its cycles — as surely as the living things it nourishes. The mountains are its bones, the rivers its blood, the storms its breath. We frail, fleeting ones live out our own brief season, utterly dependent on those cycles of the earth.

We know this, because we live here among the Arizona highlands — a great sprawl of mountains, rivers, lakes, vistas, cindercones, upthrust seabeds, technicolor sandstone, jagged lava, deep canyons, hidden springs, forested slopes, wavering meadows, secret paths and crystalline pools.

And here’s something else we’ve learned — you can fall in love with a mountain and with a place. We know. We’ve done it, head over heels with the highlands of Arizona, a six-millionacre expanse of forests and peaks, which extends from Flagstaff east to New Mexico for 100 miles on each side of the Mogollon Rim. From its high places run most of the state’s rivers and streams, nurturing a lush bewilderment of wildlife. We Homo sapiens have lived on its bounty for more than 10,000 years. Today, it shelters a happy scattering of forest communities and a weekend flood of desert escapees.

We have spent all our lives learning its moods, savoring its seasons and seeking its secret places. So now we thought we’d share. Granted, it might seem like a risky time to take the plunge and launch a new magazine. But love will do that to you — it makes you reckless.

So here’s our guide to the place we love. If you’ll give us some of your time, we’ll take you looking for a vortex in Sedona, a 200-mile view from the Mogollon Rim, clues to a violent mystery at Wupatki, a monster trout in Christmas Tree Lake, a riffle in Tonto Creek, a bugling elk along the Blue River and a place to catch your breath on Bear Mountain.

Then we hope you’ll help us with our next issue by sending us a line or two and maybe a picture of your favorite place in the highlands by writing us at azhighlands@payson.com.

So come along, we want you to meet the highlands.

You’ll like her — full of satisfying surprises, deep secrets and hidden wonders. She’s beautiful, adventurous, unpredictable, nurturing, stormy, endearing, challenging. She can throw lightning bolts, freeze your bones, soothe you with the sound of rustling leaves and sing you to sleep in the sunlight. And try as you might, you’ll understand no more than a fraction of what glitters in her eyes — but that’s all right.

Mountains are like that — they live, just like the highlands.

And if you’re lucky, you can hear her breathe as she sleeps and watch the pulse of life in her throat.

M

Highlands ARIZONA

To advertise in the Arizona Highlands Magazine, call Bobby Davis, Advertising Director, (928) 474-5251 ext. 105, or e-mail bdavis@payson.com

John Naughton, Publisher • Tom Brossart, Managing Editor • Peter Aleshire, Senior Editor 708 N. Beeline Highway • PO Box 2520 • Payson, AZ 85547 • (928) 474-5251 • azhighlands@payson.com No portion of the Arizona Highlands Magazine may be used in any manner without the expressed written consent of the publisher. Arizona Highlands Magazine is published by Roundup Publishing, a division of WorldWest Limited Liability Company. © 2009

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Arizona Highlands

5

Highlands ARIZONA

Adventuring in Rim Country, White Mountains, Sedona, Flagstaff

COVER STORY:

11 Great Fall Drives From Sedona, to Humphreys Peak, to Rim Country and deep into the White Mountains, we offer a glimpse of our 11 favorite fall drives.

Page 22

Tom Brossart

RIM COUNTRY

HIGH COUNTRY

Trip Through Time

Blessed Disaster

Forest Road 300 hugs the Mogollon Rim and offers a view of forever. Page 8

The ruins of Wupatki offer a paradoxical link between disaster and a population boom. Page 38

RED ROCK COUNTRY

WHITE MOUNTAINS

Bear Mountain Hike Comeback Tale Huff and puff until you get to the top of one of Sedona’s best buttes. Page 14

Apache Trout have eluded extinction in Christmas Tree Lake.

Page 47

RIM COUNTRY

RED ROCK COUNTRY

Fishing Holes

Into the Vortex

Lunkers lurk in Tonto Creek.

Page 18

An intrepid skeptic sets off to see God, fix his watch and understand red. Page 52

WHITE MOUNTAINS

Great Drives Blue River drive abounds in wildlife. Page 32

Tom Brossart

Taking the long view on Forest Road 300

by Peter Aleshire Tom Brossart

Three hours into my leisurely, rattletrap tour of Arizona’s most-scenic, most historic road, I came unexpectedly upon a glimpse of the apocalypse.

Peter Aleshire

Forest Service Rim Road 300 hugs the edge of the Mogollon Rim (top).

The line of cliffs marks the edge of the Colorado Plateau and faces west, which makes for spectacular sunsets (right).

Specifically, Forest Road 300, which once supplied a chain of military posts during the Apache wars, emerged from thick forest to the barely recovering devastation wrought by the Dude Fire.

The dense forest crowded with perhaps a 1,000 trees per acre, through which I’d been meandering for several hours, yielded abruptly to an otherworldly landscape of skeletal trees, blackened remnants of 500-year-old giants clawing at the skyline, set against a sudden, breathtaking view to the horizon.

Surprisingly, the scene proved oddly reassuring, since wildflowers flecked the waving undulations of vivid green grass with splashes of orange and red.

On one slope, a furry thicket of saplings had taken root, but other slopes remained wide open and covered with the returning grassland that once graced large stretches of the ponderosa pine forest.

Arizona Highlands

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Tom Brossart

Bear Canyon Lake (left) lies just off FR 300.

Forest Road 300 offers a route through history, threading the heart of a terrain that the Apache defended against all odds for three centuries before falling in the 1870s For anyone interested in the health and evolution of the forests which now nurture Rim Country, the silent passage through the slowly healing scar of one of the biggest fires in the state’s history will provide an absorbing stop on the fascinating, 100-mile path of FR 300, which closely follows the General Crook Trail, which used to linked Camp Verde and Fort Apache during the Apache wars of the late 1800s.

The route runs along the edge of the Mogollon Rim, a chain of 1,000-foot-high sandstone and limestone cliffs that marks the leading edge of the Colorado Plateau — thrust upward then eroded away as a result of the same continental shifts that produced the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. Along the way, the well-graded dirt road offers some of the most sweeping vistas in the state, lessons in ecology, a journey through time and an access to a whole chain of trout-stocked lakes.

The route offers a perfect day-long adventure out of Payson, with one loop starting in Payson and returning through Pine and Strawberry. Another day’s adventure would start in Payson and then go east on the road, through Show Low, the White Mountain Apache Reservation, Salt River Canyon and back to Payson past Roosevelt Lake.

Forest Road 300 partially overlaps the 250-mile-long General Crook Trail — a 70-mile stretch along the edge of the Rim. The well-maintained road, which even a passenger car can handle so long as the road isn’t wet or frosted with snow, offers a fascinating glimpse of the ecology of a ponderosa pine forest, especially if you head toward Pine through the scar of the Dude Fire.

When Crook arrived to make war on the Apaches in the 1870s, these ponderosa pine forests were dominated by gigantic, widely-spaced, 400-year-old trees and tall grass.

Low intensity ground fires burned through every five to seven years, clearing out the dead wood and seedlings.

These fires merely scarred the fire-resistant, thick-barked bases of the mature trees, whose lowest branches were 20 or 30 feet above the flames.

Tom Brossart

This swallowtail butterfly takes a liking to the Rim Country flora.

But once Crook and his military successors broke the resistance of the Apache, settlers moved in and transformed the ponderosa pine ecosystem.

Loggers went to work and soon cut down most of the fire-resistant, old-growth trees, and forest managers devoted themselves energetically to preventing fires. The resulting, densely stocked forest eventually begin producing mega fires — like the massive Dude Fire.

So that stretch of road through the burn area proved the most fascinating single stretch of the trip for me, mostly because it offers hope of a much healthier forest. Ecologists maintain that the presettlement forest was patchy — with some thick stretches, meadows, grasslands — and average tree densities of perhaps 50 giant trees per acre.

But Forest Road 300 also offers a route through history, threading through the heart of a terrain that the Apache defended against all odds for three centuries before falling to Crook’s war of attrition in the 1870s.

Ironically, Crook respected and admired the Apache more than any other commander — which made the bearded, unconventional, fearless Crook their most effective enemy. He relied heavily on Apache scouts, the only ones who could hold to the faint trail of a band of fleeing warriors. The Crook Trail played a crucial strategic role, as it supplied the network of forts from which Crook dispatched roving patrols of soldiers and Indian scouts that could remain on patrol for months at a time.

Although the Apache resisters remained expert at eluding the soldiers, the constant hunt kept them from accumulating the supplies they needed to survive. This war of attrition eventually broke their resistance, thanks largely to the logistics of the Crook Trail.

FR 300 leads past spots where key events in that conflict took place.

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The late evening sun highlights the beauty of a Rim Country meadow off Forest Road 300.

Tom Brossart

The route offers a perfect day-long adventure out of Payson with one loop starting in Payson and returning through Pine and Strawberry One such encounter took place, as Crook and Captain John Bourke rode at the lead of a detachment of soldiers.

Several arrows flashed suddenly past, launched by about 15 Apache warriors, who immediately took flight. The soldiers spurred their horses and cut off two of the warriors, forcing them to take shelter behind several boulders.

“There they stood; almost entirely concealed behind great boulders on the very edge of the precipice,” wrote Bourke, “their bows drawn to a semi-circle, eyes gleaming with a snaky black fire, long unkempt hair flowing down over their shoulders, bodies almost completely naked, faces streaked with the juice of the baked mescal and the blood of the deer or antelope ... with not the slightest suggestion of cowardice,” Bourke wrote.

“They seemed to know their doom, but not to fear it in the slightest degree.”

Seeing the soldiers closing on them, the warriors fired

12 Arizona Highlands

a final volley of arrows and then seemingly jumped from the cliff at their backs.

“We were all so horrified at the sight, that for a moment or more it did not occur to anyone to look over the crest, but when we did it was seen that the two savages were rapidly following down the merest thread of a trail outlined in the vertical face of the basalt, and jumping from rock to rock like mountain sheep. General Crook drew bead, aimed quickly and fired; the arm of one of the fugitives hung limp by his side, and the red stream gushing out showed that he had been badly hurt; but he did not relax his speed a particle.”

Bourke and Crook rode for hundreds of miles through those ancient forests, with Bourke usually sitting atop his “faithful mule” Malaria, a beast he described with the blend of humor and animosity affected by anyone who has plumbed the mind of a mule.

Lodging

The Rim Road offers the best views in Arizona, with numerous stretches that thread along the edge of the line of 1,000-foot-tall cliffs of the Mogollon Rim

Payson has plenty of rooms, restaurants and stores to stock up on supplies. You can also rent cabins and rooms and get dinner in Payson, at Christopher Creek and Kohl’s Ranch.

Directions “Malaria had been born a first-class mule, but a fairy godmother, or some other mysterious cause, had carried the good mule away, and left in its place a lop-eared, mangy specimen, which enjoyed the proud distinction of being considered, without dissent, the meanest mule in the whole Department of Arizona.”

Of course, a journey that consumed days and led through danger in 1871 now takes a couple of hours — more of a jaunt than a journey.

But it still offers some of the best views in Arizona, with numerous stretches that thread along the edge of the line of 1,000foot-tall cliffs of the Mogollon Rim, the leading edge of the uplift of the Colorado Plateau — and a perfect day-long adventure in an exploration of Rim Country.

Take the Beeline Highway from Phoenix to Payson. In Payson, you can take East Highway 260, past Kohl’s Ranch to where the road tops out on the Mogollon Rim. The wellgraded gravel and dirt Forest Road 300 crosses Highway 260 here.

If you want to end up in Show Low, continue on Highway 260 to Forest Lakes, then turn right onto FR 300. You will pass a turnoff to Black Canyon Lake then hug the Rim overlooking the Fort Apache Indian Reservation toward Show Low — about a 40mile distance.

If you want to take a long drive and end up near Pine, turn left onto FR 300 right after you top out on the Rim. You will pass turnoffs to Woods Canyon Lake, Bear Canyon Lake, Knoll Lake and several other small lakes in the

Tom Brossart

course of a scenic 35-mile drive before rejoining the pavement at Highway 87 outside Pine and Strawberry.

Once back on the highway, turn north to reach the junction of Highway 87 and West Highway 260. Turning west onto this portion of 260 you will begin dropping down into the Verde Valley. The community of Camp Verde is the site of the Fort Verde State Historic Park, where Crook was headquartered during the Indian wars in Arizona Territory. The park has several structures occupied by the Army in the 1860s.

The Rim area above Payson draws a lot of parched Phoenicians on summer weekends, but remains quiet during the week even in the summer. The Forest Service maintains campgrounds throughout the area, and the state regularly stocks the lakes with trout in the summer.

Payson has plenty of rooms, restaurants and stores to stock up on supplies. You can also rent cabins and rooms and get dinner in Payson, at Christopher Creek and Kohl’s Ranch, nestled at the base of the Rim. Forest Road 300 runs along the border between the Tonto National Forest and both the Coconino and Apache-Sitgreaves national forests, so Forest Service maps of each of those forests are useful. Or, you can get one of the excellent map books to plan your journey through time.

Take Highway 260 east from Payson 30 miles to where FR 300 crosses the highway.

If you go left onto FR 300, you will pass Woods Canyon Lake, Bear Canyon Lake, Knoll Lake and several other small lakes for about 35 miles before rejoining the pavement at Highway 87 by Pine and Strawberry.

If you want to wind up in Show Low, turn right off Highway 260 a little farther down the highway at Forest Lakes. You’ll pass the spur to Black Canyon Lake as you make your way along the Rim overlooking the White Mountain Apache Reservation en route to Show Low.

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The picturesque view from atop Bear Mountain Trail is worth all of the grunts and groans.

Venture out and up in Sedona 14 Arizona Highlands

Story and photos by Alexis Bechman

If you are looking for a hike with outstanding views of Sedona, look no further than Bear Mountain.

At its peak, you can see throughout the Sedona valley including the Palatki ruins to the west and the San Francisco Peaks towering above Flagstaff to the north.

Best of all, the steep hike lacks the crowds drawn to the easy, popular hikes like West Fork.

But all of this glory comes with a price.

You are going to have to huff up nearly 2,000 unshaded feet to reach the summit, which is the third highest point in Sedona.

Quite the workout if you are ill prepared and out of shape.

Several members in my party threatened to bail out on the hike half way through because the peak seemed to get farther and farther away. Just when you think you have reached the top, another saddle emerges and you realize that peak was a false alarm — the real summit is several miles still uphill.

However, don’t give up. The picturesque view from the top is worth all of the grunts and groans.

The trail starts out easy enough in a sandy red rock valley. It crosses several dry riverbeds and then slowly makes its way up a

You can see for miles ... rocky hillside. Continue the steep climb until you reach a rock chute. Use the wall to make your way up until you reach a small rock overhang (a good place to stop for a break and take in the view over the valley).

From there, it dips into a side canyon, hugging the side of the mountain until it eventually makes its way to several switchbacks. At the top of the switchbacks, it crosses over a mesa for about one-half mile.

If you look up here, you can spot the summit straight up to the northwest.

The trail then dips down through a wash and heads up again. The sandstone rock below is reminiscent of checkerboard mesa in Zion National Park.

From there, the trail reaches a saddle, which is another good place to sit and rest.

Some of my party opted to stop here and wait. For those who continue on, the trail then heads up, once again, eventually ending at a flat area. You may be out of breath when you reach the top, but you then realize it is downhill to the car.

Looking out north from Bear Mountain, a dark storm cloud builds.

Arizona Highlands

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Getting there From the Sedona junction of Arizona 89A and 179, go west about 3 miles on 89A. Turn north (right) on Dry Creek Road and proceed about 3 miles to Boynton Pass Road.

Turn west (left) and follow the road 1.5 miles to a stop sign.

At Forest Road 152C, turn west (left) and go 1.3 miles to the Bear Mountain Trailhead, which is the second trailhead on the left side.

Parking is shared with the Doe Mountain Hike.

Fees: $5 per day to park in the red rock country of Coconino National Forest.

Get permits at the Red Rock Ranger District Office, 8375 Arizona 179 (south of the Village of Oak Creek); Sedona-Oak Creek Canyon Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center, 331 Forest Road; North Gateway Visitor Center at Oak Creek Vista, off Arizona 89A north of Sedona.

Length: 4.8-mile round trip (About five hours).

Elevation change: About 1,900 feet (challenging)

Wende Bechman

A winded writer reaps the rewards of the steep climb to the top of Bear Mountain.

16 Arizona Highlands

For more information: Coconino National Forest, Red Rock Ranger District (928) 282-4119.

Rim Country Welcomes You! Just a scenic, 90-minute drive from Phoenix will take you to the majestic, mountain paradise known as Rim Country. The communities of Rim Country feature friendly people and wonderful tourist and recreation opportunities, including: • Zane Grey’s Cabin • Tonto Natural Bridge • Hiking and Mountain Biking Trails • Campgrounds • Lakes and Rivers with year-round fishing • Green Valley Park • And so much more

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Arizona Highlands

17

Looking for Lunkers on Tonto Creek

Story and photos by Peter Aleshire Spring-fed Tonto Creek gets a fresh stocking of rainbows every week

Standing at the edge of the long, dark pool of water, my options ted myself to the chilled waters of one of Arizona’s most beautiful, wild, and ecologically rich streams. This frothed past.

I could swim the pool and venture on into the wilderness or I could turn and work my way back up the rugged tumble of Tonto Creek toward Bear Flat campground and my waiting car. By nightfall I could be safely ensconced at the bar at historic Kohl’s Ranch, where Zane Grey refreshed himself between turning out the novels that defined the myth of the West. A simple choice: continue working the riffles, and pools and overhangs of the upper creek for the plentiful, predictable, hatchery stupid rainbows planted by the thousands every week, or wander downstream, wet, cold, and uncomfortable in hopes a wild monster would rise to my fly.

Sighing, I checked the seal on my dry bag commit-

18 Arizona Highlands

rugged gash of a creek slices through enough life zones to carry you from Mexico to Canada. It drains 1,000 square miles of western Gila County between the Sierra Anchas and the Mazatzal Mountains as it tumbles from the mixed conifer forests at 6,800 feet to Sonoran desert saguaros at its juncture with Roosevelt Lake at 2,135 feet.

Its first 10 miles provides one of the state’s busiest put-and-take trout fisheries with fish grown to pan size at the hatchery plunked down near where the creek originates in a year-round spring welling out of the base of the Mogollon Rim. Zane Grey wrote the novels that helped promote the gripping mythos of the American West in a small cabin near Tonto Creek’s headwaters.

The stream burbles past Kohl’s Ranch, down into

Below Highway 260, Tonto Creek enters a rugged wilderness that stretches all the way to Roosevelt Lake.

deepening canyons, and on through a beautiful campground at Bear Flat at the end of a breathtaking dirt road. The creek then heads on down into one of the most inaccessible wilderness areas in the state. The stream flows through the aptly named Hell’s Gate Wilderness for more than 20 miles, completely inaccessible by road. Several difficult hiking trails thread into the remote, craggy canyons, but anyone who wants to explore this middle section must surrender himself to canyoneering — boulder hopping, swimming pools, and sometimes using ropes to get down rock walls.

Tonto Creek eventually emerges from this stone wilderness near Gisela, where it levels out and begins to meander through less forbidding canyons.

Here it makes the transition to Sonoran desert.

Tonto Creek also boasts a wealth of native fish. One recent, three-year winter study of the creek by the Arizona Department of Game and Fish found that five species of native fish constitute about 94 percent of the total fish in the upper sections of the creek and 86 percent of the fish in the lower reaches of the creek.

Those native species included the longfin dace, Sonora sucker, desert sucker, speckled dace and roundtail chub.

They dramatically outnumbered the non-natives including red shiners, fathead minnows, largemouth bass, common carp, rainbow trout, green sunfish, yellow bullhead, smallmouth bass, channel catfish, mosquito fish, and brown trout. Only the bass and the trout were deliberately stocked in the creek for sports fishermen, the other non-native fish made their way up the creek from Lake Roosevelt — to which Tonto Creek connects.

The presence of large numbers of native fish in Tonto Creek is a testament to their survival skills and the Creek’s varied ecology. The creek subsides to a warm, spring-fed trickle during the low-flow months of winter

and before the summer monsoons. But it carries awesome flood flows when spring storms spur rapid snowmelt or tropical monsoons deluge the watershed in late summer. One such flood claimed the life of a reckless kayaker several years ago, after he ignored warnings of the locals and put into the froth.

The native fish have evolved all sorts of tricks to deal with the deadly whims of such desert streams. They survive wild fluctuations in temperature, seek shelter from floods, shift food sources readily, breed during optimum times of the year, forage readily in clear or muddy water, boast bodies streamlined to deal with flood flows, and adapt in countless other ways. Imported fish have pummeled the natives in places where we’ve altered natural conditions with lakes, dams, and flood-controlled rivers, but the natives hold out in relatively unchanged environments like Tonto Creek. Although the state releases

Arizona Highlands

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Native fish dominate in the lower reaches of Tonto Creek, with lots of rainbows stocked above.

more than 15,000 rainbow trout every week all summer in the upper stretches of Tonto Creek, few make it very far downstream, and almost none survive the vagaries of winter.

I’d spent many happy hours exploring the easily accessible stretches — the five miles of pastel-colored boulders below the hatchery, and the cactus-punctuated meander through rugged canyons below Gisela, but the unexplored, wilderness center of the creek continued to lure me. I confess that despite my admiration for the native fish, it was the rumors of giant, wild brown trout lurk-

ing in the deep pools and white riffles of that center section that set the hook. These wary descendants of escapees from earlier stocking efforts populated the fishermen’s tales.

So I set out with only with a fly rod, a sleeping bag, and a few things stashed in a water-proof dry bag, determined to test the legends. I stumbled, splashed, and boulder-hopped into rapidly escalating solitude downstream from Bear Flat, quickly leaving even the rumor of civilization behind. For the first half mile or so, I stayed comparatively dry — and passed two other fishermen. But the

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Having the time of my life on the banks of Tonto Creek ... wish you were here!!

RESERVATIONS: 800-521-3131 East Highway 260, Payson, AZ 85541 • (928) 478-4211 • www.ilxresorts.com

20 Arizona Highlands

first deep, sheer-walled pool that couldn’t be climbed around presented me with my own, small, dark Rubicon.

Below the pool, I pushed on for maybe a mile downstream — although distances are almost impossible to estimate while toiling over boulders, across pools, around thickets, and in and out of the streambed. The pools and riffles forced me to continually stop to break out my fly rod, dipping into the surface of the water with my fluff of a fly like a delicately sipping dragon fly. The image of the giant brown trout, holding behind a boulder, hidden in the seams of a riffle or lurking at the edge of a whirlpool at the head of a great pool drew me steadily downstream.

Finally a perfect camp site convinced me to stop where a bend of the river had left an old bench of grass and sand, liberally supplied with driftwood.

After stashing my stuff, I fished through the last linger of light. The murmur of the creek braided the silence, accentuating it like a sliver thread stitched in black velvet. I’d seen no one since swimming that first pool, save the rock squirrel, the cliff chipmunk, the Mantled Ground Squirrel, the deer, the tracks of raccoon, skunk, and fox, the spadefoot toad, the collared lizard, the skink, the gopher snake, the Rufous-sided Towhee, the Dark-eyed Junco, the Brownheaded Cowbird, the Pine Siskin, the Yellow-rumped Warbler, the Mountain Bluebird, the jay, the raven, and the wren — and the half dozen mysterious gleaming fish shapes.

Working my way upstream, I gradually seeped into that dream-time state in which it no longer mattered whether any fish rose to my lure. The line uncoiled, and the caddis fly landed like a sigh at the perfect edge of an eddy of water, close up against an overhanging ledge.

The water boiled suddenly: The great, gleaming, nose of a huge trout broke the water and took my fly, like a high priest of wild places. The trout and my fly disappeared with a great swirl of water. Somewhere down there in the protective depths of the pool he turned, twisted, and slipped off my hook.

I reeled in my line, caught between emotions. Momentarily, I mourned the savor of the meal by firelight.

But the moment was replaced by a surge of joy, knowing that a great trout lurked there, safe again in his world.

Getting there The creek lies about 17 miles northeast of Payson off Highway 260.

Lodging: Kohl's Ranch offers luxury cabins on the banks of the creek, plus horseback rentals. For reservations: HC-2, Box 96K Payson, Arizona 85541, or call 928-478-4211.

Just up the highway, you can also get a cabin creekside at the Christopher Creek Lodge.

Dining: Kohl’s Ranch has a good restaurant or you can try the nearby Christopher Creek Steakhouse. Payson has a full range of restaurants including Gerardo’s Italian Bistro, Fargo’s Steak House and El Rancho.

Camping: The Forest Service operates several great campgrounds in the area, including Bear Flat. Alternatively, you can camp anywhere in the forest — depending on fire restrictions.

Things to do: Visit the fish hatchery at the head of Tonto Creek, which stocks all the Rim Country lakes and streams, go horseback riding at Kohl’s Ranch or hike some of the state’s most scenic trails, including Horton Creek and the Highline.

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11 Great Fall Drives

Story by Peter Aleshire Photos by Tom Brossart

We reveal 11 stunning routes to explore the meaning of fall and wallow in the refraction of cottonwoods aspen, willows and walnuts

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drift of dead leaves rustled in the breeze that shivered up out of the shimmer of autumndressed sycamores, walnuts, ashes and cottonwoods huddled along the banks of Cherry Creek below.

My Jeep sat hidden down in the riot of color below, 15 miles into my search for the deep logic of autumn.

Toiling up a slope of the Sierra Anchas off Cherry Creek Road toward the lure of a cave, I concluded my quest to locate the 11 best fall drive in the high country was a pretty dumb idea — for who could possibly winnow so much beauty to so small a number?

More to the point, who can in a few weeks drive enough rustling backroads to make a defensible judgment? And who can count on the vagaries of falls? Will we have the late, dry summer and bright, cool autumn that produces the best display of color.? Or will we suffer a cloudy fall with warm nights that dulls autumn’s pallet?

Worse yet, will a quick, early freeze and a sudden wind cut off the colors in their first blush?

Still, I could not resist the chance to wander through the six-week extravagance of fall, that starts in the cottonwoods of the Verde Valley at 5,000 feet and concludes on the aspen graced mountainside above Flagstaff or deep in the White Mountains at 10,000 feet.

What is it about fall?

Why does any hike or drive in the season of dying leaves seem to yield such a perfect moments? The mystery seizes me every fall, compelling me to set out on a quest as persistent as the turn of the seasons.

Perhaps it’s the temperature, cold enough to make you aware of the air in your lungs and the great, exuberant heat of your blood – but not cold enough to force you to bundle up.

But surely it’s more than the temperature.

I settled on a rock to consider the matter, taking in the view of the creek, its undulation up the canyon marked by the trembling yellow, gold and brown of the deciduous trees along its course. Here and there, a maple or some other out-of-kilter tree displayed a stunning out-

Rim Country Forest Road 300 This spectacular road hugs the edge of the Mogollon Rim all the way from Show Low to Strawberry. The road mostly threads through ponderosa pine forests, with patches of aspen and detours to a series of lakes.

Take a high-clearance vehicle, preferably with fourwheel-drive. The historic road crosses Highway 260 atop the Rim some 30 miles east of Payson. If you go to the east, you’ll pass Willow Springs Lake and en route to Show Low and a junction with Highway 60. If you go west, you’ll pass Woods Canyon Lake on the way to a junction with Highway 87 north of Pine. The drive offers patches of aspen and 100-mile vistas from the edge of the 1,000-foot-tall cliffs of the Mogollon Rim.

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burst of red, a reproach to the restraint of the yellows and golds.

Was that it — the emotional impact of color, working on my senses like the pallet of a brilliant fashion designer? Perhaps. But then, the biological basis for beauty has always baffled me.

After all, from a tree’s point of view, this annual change of costume is all about balancing energy accounts. Fall breaks out along a certain temperature contour, which depends on either elevation or latitude.

Down low or close by the equator where snow never falls, trees need not fear the killing frost and so can spend the whole year using the green chlorophyll in their leaves to produce energy from the fall of photons from the sun.

Up high or farther north, winter comes so soon and lingers so long that trees must make leaves that can withstand the constant freeze, like the tough needles of pines — which produce less energy but can withstand even a deep winter.

Trees can afford the indulgence of fall colors only in that land between low and high, which includes much of the great, rugged sprawl of Arizona’s highlands. Here, the summer lasts long enough to reward the investment in big, flat, thin leaves loaded with chlorophyll, which can produce energy that fuels rapid growth while the long days linger.

But come winter, those big, cheap, easily grown leaves prove more trouble than they’re worth — so the trees shed them.

But why the hallucinogenic splendor in the process — like an army marching to its doom with red coats, osFlowing Springs trich plumed helmets and regimental bands?

Just a bit of chemistry, as it turns out.

This short, well-graded dirt road In the summer, the tree loads its leaves with chlorophyll, which absorbs just west of Payson offers a drive and re-emits the wavelengths of light our eye sees as green. This great, bursting, alongside the East Verde River, with life-giving vibrancy of chlorophyll overwhelms other elements in the leaves, thick galleries of cottonwoods and making them all look green to us. willows that turn golden starting in The cottonwoods and sycamores and aspen make their preparations to shed mid to late October. The East Verde those leaves from the moment they bud in the spring. All the nutrients that boasts many informal campsites flow into the leaves pass through a layer of cells at the base of the leaf called the and trout-stocked fishing holes. abscission, or separation layer.

You can also get access to the East But as the hours of sunlight dwindle toward winter, the swelling of a corkVerde off Houston Mesa Road, like substance seals off the passageways through the abscission, dooming the which heads north off Highway 87 leaf. just west of Payson and along the Cut off from a supply of water, the chlorophyll breaks down, leaving behind paved Houston Mesa Road, which glucose and waste products. These elements have existed in the leaf all along, crosses the East Verde twice. but no longer overshadowed by the green chlorophyll, they turn the leaves gold,

Rim Country

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yellow and brown. In orange leaves, carotene dominates.

In yellow leaves, xanthophyll rules. In brown leaves, it’s the tannins.

To turn a leaf purple or red, however, involves a slightly different process. In this case, the dying leaves produce an anti-oxidant called anthocyanin, which imparts a red hue.

Scientists still don’t understand why the tree would invest energy in producing a whole new set of compounds in leaves doomed to die soon. Perhaps these compounds ensure that the leaves remain on the branches a little longer, to enable the tree to salvage more useful compounds from the leaves before discarding them.

Some plant scientists suggest that these compounds in the fallen leaves actually soak into the ground and prevent other plants from growing thickly around the

base of the trees, giving them a competitive advantage.

On the other hand, one recent study suggested that the anthocyanins play a role in protecting the tree from insects.

But the sycamore cares not for beauty, having no eyes to regard itself. So why does it stir this surge of wonder in us in the course of its preparations for winter?

Shaking my head, I take a deep breath of moist, cool air scented with anthocyanins and damp earth before heading back up the slope through a slashing barrier of manzanita, oak brush and catclaw, determined to draw blood as toll for my passage. But I have a goal worth the bloodshed, an alluring overhang at the base of an 800foot sandstone cliff that has drawn me up off the road.

Torn, panting, puffing and decidedly less ethereal in my viewpoint, I claw my way finally to the base of the cliff and the great, cavernous overhang.

Rim Country Cherry Creek Road The Sierra Anchas overlooking Roosevelt Lake offer several rugged backroad drives. From Globe take State Route 288.

Turn north onto Cherry Creek Road (FR 203) then drive along the creek, with its glory of cottonwoods, sycamores, ash and walnut.

Best to make the drive in a high clearance vehicle, preferably with four wheel drive. After passing through some homesteads, the road climbs the back side of the rugged Sierra Anchas. Washouts have cut the road halfway up the mountain, well short of Young.

The 800-year-old ruins await me there, just as I’d hoped.

The ancient farmers had fitted the flat, sandstone rocks together so skillfully that it seemed they might at any moment emerge from the brush and start on dinner. They left their fingerprints in the mud mortar. The roof of the dwelling had partially collapsed, but the thatch of reeds sealed with mud remained.

The people who made these dwellings had for nearly 1,000 years built cities and great irrigation works on along the banks of the Salt River far below.

Toward the end of their long tenure, they moved away from the river bottoms to build these fortresses hidden in remote canyons. No one knows why. It seems likely they were reacting to conflict or invasion.

So I stand in the ruins they left, like drifts of dead leaves after the abscission has sealed them off.

They must have stood often in this same spot, marveling at this same senseless beauty.

Suddenly I understand my pilgrimage through the dead leaves as the seasons change. For we frail humans are blessed and cursed with both the certain knowledge of winter and the replenished hope of spring. We seek it in hope and fear — renewal amidst the ruins. Holding at once in our minds that cold, clean breath, tasting of damp earth, and also the ruins of those who came before, now smelling of dust and dry reeds.

Sedona Hwy. 87 - Oak Creek Canyon The winding highway between Flagstaff and Sedona runs up the heart of Oak Creek Canyon as it climbs from 4,240 feet to 6.900 feet. The winding, 28-mile route is paved the whole way, so it’s an easy, obsessively scenic drive.

Most of the route hugs Oak Creek, with its abundance of deciduous trees, including apple, oak, cottonwood, sycamores and walnut.

The lower elevation means fall starts later than up among the aspen – let’s say from early October through early November.

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Verde Canyon Railway All right – so it’s not a drive. Instead, you can sit in the open air viewing cars and study the banks of the Verde River, marveling at the huge cottonwoods and willows. The 3,225- to 3,550-foot elevation means the fall colors start in October and often last into November.

White Mountains Springerville to Alpine

mation, contact the Alpine Ranger District : P.O. Box 469.

Alpine, AZ 85920 (520) 339-4384.

Escudilla/Terry Flat Drive

The paved, 26-mile-long (one way) highway varies in elevation from 6,965 to 8,030 feet and offers some of the most beautiful views in Arizona, not to mention intermittent doses of fall color. You’ll mostly see aspen on the flanks of Escudilla Mountain, which means you’ll get the most color from midSeptember to mid-October.

This 27-mile loop drive starts and ends in Alpine, but between the stop and start lies one of the prettiest, high-elevation drives in the state. From Alpine, drive 6 miles north on U.S. 191 (formerly U.S. 666). Turn west on FR 56 and follow it up and around Hannagan Meadow Loop Terry Flat Loop This drive through one of the prettiest sections of the White and back to Mountains winds past lush the highway. meadows, thick forests and The drive stands of aspen. Drive south should take 1 23 miles from Alpine to to 2 hours past Hannagan Meadow via U.S. huge mead191. Turn right (west) after ows, quivering 4 miles on FR 576 onto FR groves of 24. Follow this road 7 miles aspen and to FR 25 and turn left to U.S. abundant wildlife. Best to give the trip the whole day so 191 then left again and go 5 you can wander down some of the hiking and biking trails miles back to Hannagan that connect to the loop. The gravel roads will accommoMeadow. You can find lodgdate passenger cars except during wet weather. The drive ing in picturesque cabins at offers vistas from the slopes the state’s third highest Hannagan Meadow Lodge mountain. or stay in Alpine, which is about 30 miles north. For infor-

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Flagstaff Drives Lockett Meadow (FR 420 and 52 from U.S. Route 89) The unpaved road has lots of switchbacks, so you’re best off in a high-clearance vehicle, preferably with four-wheel drive. It’s just a couple of miles each way. The 8,560-foot elevation means you’ll see mostly aspens, generally from mid-September to mid-October.

Hart Prairie This easy, 10-mile loop road just north of Flagstaff threads through groves of aspen and offers dramatic views of Humphreys Peak, the highest spot in the state.

From Flagstaff take SR 180 past Snowbowl to Hart Prairie Road (FR 151). Best to avoid weekend crowds if possible. Contacts include Coconino National Forest Peaks District: 928-526-0866 www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino and Flagstaff Visitors 928-774-9541 www.flagstaffarizona.org Snow Bowl Road (FR 516 north from U.S. Route 180) This seven-mile-long (one way) paved road winds past thick aspen groves at the upper end, providing easy access to fall colors. The elevation rises from 7,200 feet to 9,000 feet. That means you get the best colors from mid-September through mid-October.

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Highlands ARIZONA

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Tom Brossart

The wild life on the Blue River

H

ow does one impress an Australian daughter-in law accustomed to wandering wombats, kangaroos and parrots? Simple, take her on the dirt-road journey from Alpine to the fitful Blue River through country so remote it’s the place biologists have reintroduced the Mexican Grey Wolf to the wild.

Or so I hoped, at any rate. After all, Alpine remains one of Arizona’s largely undiscovered treasures, a tiny town nestled in the White Moun-

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The Blue River runs along a wilderness area that separates Arizona and New Mexico.

tains. Graced with pines, firs and trout streams, Alpine seems filched from the high peaks of the Rockies.

Moreover, nearly every time I’ve visited the area I’ve spotted elk — the one North American species Karen seemed keen to glimpse. She’d seen a picture of an elk somewhere and set her heart on seeing one in the wild. Of course, elk are the kangaroos of Arizona — thrilling for a foreigner, but routine for a native. But at least she didn’t have her heart set on something hard to find.

Like a wolf.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been struggling for several years to establish wolf packs in the Blue River Wilderness Area.

The Blue River runs fitfully in the canyon bottom and the logs of a corral frame a patch of wildflowers.

Story by Frank Jennings Photos by Tom Brossart

Hunters and ranchers exterminated the Mexican Grey Wolf in the region nearly a century ago, but now several introduced packs have gained a tenuous toehold. Several years ago, I heard the yearning call of a wolf in the dark trees near Alpine. The sound has clung to me ever since, like the memory of first love. But I knew that today we had little chance of hearing that call, much less glimpsing a wolf.

We set off from Alpine on the 35-mile quest for elk and picked up the Blue River Road (Forest Road 281) just before the turnoff to Alpine Lake on the outskirts of Alpine. The road turned quickly to a good dirt road suitable for any high clearance vehicle or even passenger cars driven carefully.

We wound through the snow-chilled forest and started down the steep series of switchbacks toward the river, enjoying the striking vistas on into New Mexico.

Some eight miles down, we hit the Blue River, really just an ambitious stream meandering through a multi-colored jumble of ancient lava and ash jumbled with quartz sandstone and pastel river cobbles. We pulled over to admire a beaver pond, very nearly frozen.

Beaver once dominated riparian areas in the southwest, one of a handful of “keystone species” whose activities create ecosystems. Beaver ponds control flooding, raise water tables and harbor many fish and insects. But trappers feeding a European passion for beaver skin hats virtually exter-

minated the beaver in the 1800s, triggering long-term changes in many riparian areas.

So the discovery of the beaver pond seemed a blessing, a whiff of wilderness.

But Karen seemed unimpressed. “Where is the beaver?” she asked politely.

“Ah. Well. He’s sleeping,” I said.

We trundled on down the road, past jagged rock formations graced by the sound of water.

But no elk.

After 13 miles, we came to the Upper Blue Campground set amongst a grove of oaks. It boasted log lean-tos with concrete floors built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression and recently restored.

Suddenly Karen exclaimed, “Oh, little bubba chickens.”

I braked, convinced her yearning for elk had triggered hallucinations. Poor dear.

But right alongside the road stood a small bird with a striking black and white face. I stared, mouth agape. It was a Montezuma’s Quail. I have tromped all over Arizona wishing for a glimpse of this rarest of quail. They live in oak woodlands and eat bulbs they dig up with long, agile claws. Except for the vivid face paint of the males, they blend in against the grass and duff. They freeze when threatened until you all but step on them. The resulting flurry from beneath the feet of hunters earned them the nickname “Fool’s Quail.” However, this strategy makes

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Early morning mist rises from a meadow just off the Red Mountain Road above the Blue River Valley.

them fatally vulnerable in areas where cattle have stripped away the grass. As a result, they survive in only a few oak woodlands with no cattle grazing.

“It’s a Montezuma’s Quail,” I said, reverently.

Just then, the rest of the covey started moving away from the road — all females who’d been standing perfectly still, perfectly invisible.

“They’re cute,” said Karen.

I drove on, shaking my head as we headed deep into the wild splendor of the place.

After 19 miles, we came to the junction between the Blue River Road and the Red Hill Road (Forest Road 58). We turned north onto FR 58, splashing easily across the modest flow of the Blue River. As we climbed the steep switchbacks out of the valley, the views shifted from stirring to spectacular.

Pictoglyphs at “Oh. A peacock,” said Karen suddenly. the Blue River I slammed on the brakes just in time to see a Camp testify to the thousands flock of wild turkeys vanish into the underbrush. of years of Mind you, I have spent years hoping for a glimpse of human use. wild turkeys, which Benjamin Franklin recomThe campmended as the national bird instead of the carrionground was built by the eating bald eagle.

Conservation “Wild turkeys,” I said, humbled.

Corps during “They’re big.” the Great Depression.

“I’ve never seen them in the wild,” I added.

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Getting there Blue River is a 35-mile drive on a wellmaintained dirt road, high clearance vehicle preferred.

Just east of Alpine take TURN RIGHT on BLUE RIVER ROAD (FR 281). Continue for 19 miles, down to the Blue River and past the Upper Blue River campground.

TURN RIGHT on RED HILL ROAD (FR 58).

Continue north to Highway 666. TURN RIGHT to return to Alpine.

“Hmm,” she said, deliberately not gloating.

We drove on.

“Elk,” cried Karen as we rounded a hairpin.

I hit the brakes. Four bighorn sheep scrambled up the hill, in defiance of at least four laws of physics.

“Bighorn sheep,” I said.

“Sheep?” she said, disappointed.

“You can live your whole life in Arizona without seeing wild bighorn sheep,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said, mollified.

A few miles later, we topped out in the snow-mantled forest.

“Snow!” cried Karen in delight. “I promised my mum I’d send her a picture of the snow.”

I hit the brakes.

Karen was perfectly happy.

I wandered across the snow, idly looking for tracks.

“Elk,” I yelled.

Karen hit the brakes.

“Elk tracks,” I said, pointing.

“Lovely,” she exclaimed.

I stooped and triumphantly announced, “Elk poop.”

I picked up a pellet and examined it closely.

Karen eyed me dubiously.

Nearby, I found more tracks — melted and indistinct.

Wolves?

I straightened, marveling at the day, the wonderful failure of my plan.

The road led on to the junction with paved Highway 191, which led through 15 miles of streams, pines and aspen back to Alpine.

And as we hummed down the highway, I realized John Lennon was right: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

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The blessings of catastrophe

The ruins of Wupatki just north of Flagstaff harbor clues to one of history’s great missing person mysteries — and a surprising suggestion that links a population boom to a natural disaster.

STORY BY FRANK JENNINGS PHOTOS BY TOM BROSSART

Some ceremonial structures at Wupatki were built with slots and windows to frame the sun and moon at key times of the year.

The earth shook. The rock smoldered. The forest burned.

And the holy man danced, his turquoise and coral beads bouncing on the chest of his finely woven tunic. The low wall of glowing lava rolled inexorably toward him at a slow walk, swallowing everything in its path with a gulp of flame and smoke.

The shaman danced up to the edge of the molten rock, feeling its heat on his face. Then he bent down before the lava, with the grace of a bow and arranged three ears of corn in front of it — an offering, a frail prayer.

Then he danced backward, chanting — as the lava took the corn in a gulp, then rolled on toward the holy man’s doomed village — unappeased.

Countless such scenes no doubt attended the most recent volcanic outpouring in the 8-million-year process of building Humphreys Peak, the tallest mountain in Arizona.

Archaeologists have unearthed the ash-smothered villages, the lava-created casts of the corn placed carefully in the lava’s path and even the richly decorated burial site of the headman or shaman they have dubbed the “Magician,” because of the elaborately carved, turquoise inlaid wands buried with him.

The 12,633-foot-tall Humphreys Peak offers a compelling example of the long, complex relationship between human beings and mountains. The eruptions of 1064-65, had a dramatic effect on existing civilizations and left the raw, colorful landscape of Sunset Crater National Monument.

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Geologists have counted some 600 volcanoes in a field of peaks, flows and cinder cones that covers much of northcentral Arizona, from the Little Colorado River west to Ash Fork and from Cameron down to the 1,000-foot-high line of the Mogollon Rim, which is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. Geologists have laboriously dated the layers of lava and concluded the major eruptions took place every 7,000 to 13,000 years.

The most recent episode in the complex mountain building project came in the late fall or winter of A.D. 1064-65, about the time the Normans crossed the English Channel to conquer England.

At that time, a farm-based civilization had spread throughout the Southwest, composed of a variety of distinctive cultures linked by sprawling trade routes that stretched from the coast of California into New Mexico and from the San Francisco Peaks deep into the complex civilizations of Meso-America.

Archaeologists have named the people living in the region around Humphreys Peak the Sinagua, Spanish for without water.

The Sinagua first settled in the area in about A.D. 600, establishing small villages sheltering extended family units across a semi-arid area of about 3,100 square miles. Settled in a transitional area between the more urbanized, populous civilizations to the north and south, the Sinagua benefited from living along a major trade route and borrowed traditions from the other cultures they contacted.

Lacking reliable rivers and depending on fitful streams and springs, the Sinagua lived in the fertile areas between the upper elevation ponderosa pine forests and the pinon juniper woodlands. This ecological transition zone was sprinkled with open, grassy, park-like areas of well-developed soil that would hold moisture longer than the woodlands.

The Sinagua excavated pit houses, some 25 feet in diameter, for ceremonies and gatherings. Most of the settlements had three to 10 smaller pit houses, dug into the ground with a dome-like door fashioned from logs and saplings plastered over with mud. They also constructed great, walled “ball courts,” an idea perhaps borrowed from urban civilizations in Mexico.

Renewed eruptions from 1064 to 1250 had dramatic effects on this inventive and adaptable civilization, especially the 50 villages close to the site of the first eruptions.

Some archaeologists have found evidence that people laboriously took apart their pit houses and used the precious logs in new villages.

They were the lucky ones.

When the major eruptions finally came, the explosions and ashfall exterminated all vegetation within a two-mile radius of the cindercone now known as Sunset Crater for the fiery red cast of its cinders. The ash, fire, poisonous gases and acidic rains probably debilitated almost all the plant growth within about 15 miles — an effect that per-

Sunflowers are among the items grown by park staff at Wupatki to show visitors what a typical garden may have looked like when the ruins were occupied.

sisted for years.

Lava forced its way to the surface along a six-mile-long fissure, first in geysers of steam, then in fountains of lava.

Bubbles in the lava would have expanded explosively as the molten rock reached the surface. A broiling column of cinders rose thousands of feet into the atmosphere, generating a terrifying play of lighting within the cloud of ash and making a howling roar.

Prevailing winds scattered the ash across 800 square miles, smothering the fields of hundreds of villages and reaching as far as the current Hopi Mesas. Layers of ash clogged washes, filled ponds and buried springs. Denuded of plants, the raw, ash-plagued soil eroded easily, unhinging the ecosystems that had sustained the Sinagua for generations.

This terrible rain of fire and ash persisted heavily for 25 years and intermittently for about 85 years — although scattered eruptions continued for a full 200 years.

This violent series of explosions was but a smudge compared to the events that built Mount Humphreys. However, the eruptions profoundly changed the lives of the people living in the region.

About three-fourths of the lava was converted into cinders that fell close to the vent and built the 1,000-foot-high Sunset Crater, with a 400-foot-deep hole in the center. The rest of the lava buried nearly two square miles in a flow 100 feet thick at the center, tapering off to 10 feet at the edges.

Strangely enough, as the eruptions subsided, the region underwent a major population explosion, with migrants moving in from other regions.

What happened? How did a devastating series of volcanic explosions provide a long-term benefit?

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The ruins of Wupatki testify to the way in which these ancient farms adapted even to disaster.

Most archaeologists argue that the blanket of ash actually benefited farmers by insulating the soil and extending the growing season. Archaeologists cite the effect of this volcanic mulch in the movement of people into the area.

Several major settlements were established or expanded in this post-eruption period, including the extraordinarily well-preserved ruins of Walnut Canyon and Wupatki.

Reportedly, an estimated 1,000 Hohokam settlers migrated in from the south and similar numbers of settlers moved down from the north. The effects of the in-migration showed up in the culture of the Sinagua, including the distinctive pottery, cremation burials, shell jewelry and ball courts apparently borrowed from the Hohokam in the Phoenix area -- leading to a cultural renaissance, say some archaeologists.

However, archaeologist Peter Pilles, Jr. in “Earth Fire” argues that the volcanic mulch has been given too much credit for the population boom. He notes that although ponderosa pine trees now grow 1,000 feet lower in the ashfall zone than in other areas, they’re often smaller than normal, with many crooked and bent branches. Instead of the insulating effect of a layer of ash, Pilles points to generally increased rainfall in the decades after the eruptions. The ashfall may have played a role in the driest areas, but the population boom affected areas outside the ashfall as well, Pilles argues.

In any case, the population boomed as the Sinagua built new settlements — many more elaborate than the ear-

42 Arizona Highlands

lier pit house villages. They left behind some of the most interesting and beautiful ruins in the Southwest, built atop that seemingly catastrophic ash layer.

That includes Wupatki, protected now as a national monument adjacent to Sunset Crater. The settlement housed several hundred people, living in masterfully fitted together, two- and three-story buildings made from sandstone blocks. It includes a beautifully preserved ball court.

Near the ruin is a geological blowhole, from which a constant wind strong issues. The small fissure connects to a complex of caves and fissures in the layers of limestone below.

In periods of high atmospheric pressure, like winter, the blowhole sucks in air. In periods of lower atmospheric pressure, like summer — the air rushes back out of the blowhole. The location of this probably sacred site may have influenced the placement of Wupatki.

However, the Sinagua in the 1400s mysteriously abandoned Wupatki and all the other stone villages they built so laboriously throughout the region. Researchers have worked for decades to understand what happened.

Some suspect conflict between different cultures. In the decades before the abandonment, many people withdrew from vulnerable, unwalled settlements near their fields and built great pueblos in easily defended places. Although few of the ruins have any obvious signs of warfare, many archaeologists believe that only fear of attack could have prompted so many people to have built such obvious

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Go, See, Do Lodging: Try the historic Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff — don’t worry, the ghosts are friendly.

Dining: Josephine’s in Flagstaff serves gourmet food in a converted house — some say it’s the best food in Arizona.

Other Attractions: Check out the ruins at Walnut Canyon, in Flagstaff take in historic Riordan Mansion State Park or the Lowell Observatory, enjoy the fall colors on the Snow Bowl Road, take a drive out to Meteor Crater, or plan a 90-mile drive to savor fall at the Grand Canyon.

fortresses.

However, most researchers suggest that a combination of over population, the exhaustion of local resources and the resulting collapse of regional trade networks might have simply made life too hard to sustain large settlements. Although the abandonment in the 1400s doesn’t coincide with a single, regionwide drought, a series of smaller-scale, sometimes severe droughts probably played a role.

So where did they go?

Once again, the eruption of Sunset Crater provides a clue.

Just north of Sunset Crater, the Hopi live on a series of high, flat-topped mesas. They had already lived on top of those mesas for a long time when Francisco Coronado’s expedition encountered them in 1540.

The Hopi have since become master weavers and potters, who cling steadfastly to ancient traditions on their 2.5million-square-mile reservation, which includes the village of Walpi, established in 1690 -- the oldest continuously inhabited place in North America. Some 7,000 Hopi now live on the reservation, trying to preserve their traditional beliefs and eke out a living from tourism, arts and farming.

The Hopi have long claimed a connection to the Sinagua and the other pueblo-building people of that vanished era. They reject all of the names archaeologists use for those vanished cultures, referring to them all as Hisatsinom,

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which means “ancient people.” The Hopi trace some of their clans to specific sites from that era.

The connection to that titanic series of eruptions and to the Sinagua who lived among the cinder cones comes in the form of myths that seems to recall the time of the eruptions.

One story holds that people living in one of the Hopi villages grew greedy and half-crazed because of their out-ofcontrol gambling. The spiritual leader of the village saw that his people had become koyaanisqatsi, or “crazy without regard to human life and values.” So he went to the supernatural beings — the Katsina spirits, also known as Yaayapontsam, who lived on top of Mount Humphreys.

These deities sent a firestorm racing across the desert to destroy the wicked village.

So the lava rose, the ash fell, the ground trembled — and not even the offering of corn and the dance of the shaman could appease the gods.

A simpler story perhaps than the one told by geologists, but a haunting echo of the fear and trembling that must have seized those first Arizonans the day the earth rose up.

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Wherever life takes you, we’ll be there, too.

At Payson Regional Medical Center, we offer the diagnostic and treatment capabilities to help maintain your health throughout your life. From Mammography Services to Bone Mineral Density testing, Gynecological Procedures and Obstetrical Services, to Cardiovascular treatments, our line of Women’s Services is designed to provide you with the care you need, when you need it.

Payson Regional Medical Center cares about you. We provide Healthy Woman, a free community resource providing educational and interactive monthly programs created by women for women. As a woman, isn’t it great to know that the right care from the right people is right here?

Call (928) 472-1226 or log onto www.paysonhospital.com.

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Comeback tale Writer seeks a resurgent Apache Trout on a reservation lake — and comes back with a tale of the one that got away — the fish, not the day Story and photos by Peter Aleshire Standing in the chill of dawn alongside Christmas Tree Lake, I eye the bruised thunderclouds overhead warily, suddenly missing my snug room in the White Mountain Apache Hon Dah Casino back in Show Low. On the opposite bank, the gold aspens quake, awaiting the immolation of dawn. Somewhere beneath the surface, the world’s largest Apache Trout awaits my nymph, my caddis, my uncoiling fly line.

If the sun will rise, if the trout will rise, if our hopes will rise, then we can savor a picture-perfect day matching wits with the comeback-kid Apache Trout, the only fish to ever make it off the endangered species list.

Once, the golden Apache Trout gleaned and glimmered on all the streams riffling down off sacred Mt. Baldy, the wettest place in Arizona. The soldiers who hunted and harried the Apache in the 1880s pulled piles of these unique native trout from the streams and pools. But a century of dams, cows and hatchery fish nearly exterminated the Apache Trout, which held out in a few, small, high headwater streams in remote areas of the White Mountain Apache Reservation.

Fortunately, the Apache Tribe, Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department have returned the native trout to a dozen small streams and a handful of White Mountain Lakes — most notably 9,000-foot Christmas Tree Lake, deep within the normally closed area of the reservation. Protected by its remote location and the $25-perperson-per-day permit, the lake now teems with the native trout

Aspen leaves make the forest floor gleam as gold as the flank of an Apache Trout.

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Fishermen can try to hook the world’s biggest Apache Trout with a $25-a-day tribal permit at Christmas Tree Lake.

grown here to record size. The trophy fishery lures devout anglers from all over the country — mostly reverent, catch-and-release fly fishermen.

Plus me — an enthusiastically inept fly fisherman, all but unarmed in any battle of fish wits.

But this time I have insured against my fickle fishing fate by enlisting the guidance of fly fishing guru Stan Cunningham, once a state game and fish biologist who says this lake remains his favorite Arizona fishing hole.

Alas, Stan hasn’t yet arrived.

Nor has the sun.

Nor, have the trout.

Suddenly, from deep, dark woods floats the sound of a sea serpent, yearning for his kind. Then again. Then again.

No doubt about it: sex-crazed elk.

Immediately I forget my yen for fish. This has always been my downfall as a fisherman: I have the attention span of a doodle bug.

Fifteen minutes later, I reach the top of the hill overlooking the lake and stand in a grove of aspen, the call of the elk everywhere and nowhere. The great, 800-pound bulls gather up their harems in the fall, then spend a sleepless month defending their sexual privileges. They should sound demented and exhausted, but instead their calls waft through the trees as poetic as the rise of the trout to ripple the boundary between water and sky.

The breeze tugs loose heart-shaped, red, gold and yellow aspen leaves, which fall in a fluttery chromatic storm.

In just that moment, the sun lances through a hole in the clouds — transforming droplets to jewels on every brilliant yellow leaf, infusing the woods with the vitality of the pulse in a woman’s throat.

The cloud returns, releasing me from the spell — and reminding me of the giant fish, awaiting me so patiently in the rain-spattered lake.

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Returning, I flail the waters, casting my hairy, brown and white invocation of an insect upon the now perfect sky-mirror of Christmas Tree Lake. My fly alights light as a fairy’s kiss on the shimmering yellow likeness of the tall, white-trunked aspen, each sensuous as a supermodel.

No trout rises to trouble my fly. In fact, I see no signs of trout anywhere on the cloud-scudded surface of the lake.

Periodically, my line mysteriously ties itself into an intricate knot on my backstroke. When I pull the line in, I discover a puzzle of topology that would break the heart of a math graduate student.

I could not myself create such a tangle with an Go, See, Do hour of advanced planCall the White Mountain ning and the help of two Apache Tribe’s Game and elves, yet my line has Fish Office for a permit to done it while floating in fish at the lake. mid air.

(928) 338-4385 Soon, the clouds regamefish@ wmatoutturn and the hail starts, doors.com. Permits cost attended by distant peals $25 per person. of thunder, forcing me to retreat to the car.

Just as the hail lets up I look up to find a dog sitting just in front of the truck, head cocked.

No. Not a dog. A coyote.

No. Not a coyote. Too big.

Yet, he leers like a coyote.

He turns and trots off into the woods. Not a dog.

Not with that fluid, loose-hipped trot. I gulp. A wolf. A Mexican Grey Wolf, reintroduced like the Apache Trout into the deep, high forests of the White Mountains.

At this point, Stan arrives. He’s a tall, easygoing biologist who considers it great fun to crawl into bear dens and radio-collar mountain lions. He never mocks clumsy bumblers — a quality essential in my friends.

Naturally, I have been fishing all wrong. I like dry flies for the entertainment value of watching the fly float unmolested on the surface. But it’s October and it’s cold.

The flies have fled. I need a nymph to imitate the underwater hatch of whatever muck dwellers loiter about when ice crusts the first puddles.

So Stan hooks me up, rigs my line, ties the nymph.

We blow up his absurd little floaty things, so we can paddle out across the lake, casting, trolling, freezing. And so we do — as supplicants to the mystery of the Apache Trout, that remarkable survivor.

After thriving for millennium in small, fickle, highaltitude streams, the Apache Trout had nearly vanished by 1950. Grazing cattle delivered a body blow, trampling the streams and reducing trout cover. But mostly the native trout struggled to hold their own against invaders -

the browns, rainbows and brooks. Biologists aren’t sure why non-native trout displace the Apache trout whenever they live together. Most likely it’s because the nonnative trout spawn in the fall instead of the spring. The voracious hatchlings of the browns and brooks gobble up the hatching fry of the Apache Trout in the spring.

Meanwhile, the hoards of stocked rainbow trout compete for food and habitat.

The Apache Trout hung on in only a few, high streams, protected from the non-native trout by waterfalls and from cattle by canyons. When the federal government declared the Apache Trout threatened in 1967,

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the range of the natives had shrunk from 600 miles of stream to just 30.

In the past 40 years, the tribe, state and federal governments have gradually returned the Apache Trout to many streams. First, they learned how to grow the skittish native trout in hatcheries. Next, the biologists identified 28 streams the Apache Trout once dominated. Biologists then built barriers at the lower ends of many of these streams before poisoning out the introduced trout and reintroducing the Apaches — an effort that costs about $1 million annually. It has yielded a rare conservation success story and created a nationally ranked fishing opportunity here.

I drift across the lake for seamless hours, my fingers soon too numb to tie on another fly. Just when I have decided all the fish have burrowed into the bottom to hibernate like bears and beaver, a single, monstrous Apache trout swims past my tube. He’s enormous: A howler monkey could ride him, with a French poodle passenger.

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Had I not been buckled into my tube, I would have toppled over and drowned.

Off in the woods, the bull elk have resumed bugling — the monster still unrequited, but hopeful as a fisherman in a float, a photographer in a storm or a wolf in the woods.

And in that moment, I understand everything — even the topology of fishing line knots.

Out on the lake, Stan hollers. He has a big one. It takes 10 minutes to land the trout on his thread of a leader. The trout is 20 inches long — a few inches short of an Apache Trout record. The nugget that lured the 49ers had less gold in it. That trout could have swallowed a howler monkey whole — maybe the poodle too.

Stan returns the great fish to the lake, the happiest man on the planet.

So you must take my word that the trout is out there still. And that I am now an expert fisherman, zennish, adept and knotless.

Welcome to Payson Arizona’s Cool Mountain Town

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(928) 474-5242 Web Site: www.ci.payson.az.us Email: ssmith@ci.payson.az.us 303 N. Beeline Hwy., Payson, AZ 85541

Where to fish for Apache Trout Lee Valley Reservoir: (Two-trout limit, artificial fly only, 12-inch minimum). Take Hwy 260 to Hwy 273 and continue for 11 miles on unpaved road; reservoir is 1/4 mile south of 273.

East Fork Black River: (Six-trout limit). Take Hwy 273 or paved 261 to Big Lake from Hwy 260. Turn right on Forest Road 249E (unpaved), south of Big Lake, and go 1/2 mile to FR 24, turn left to Buffalo Crossing where FR 276 intersects. Turn left on FR 276 and fish between Diamond Rock and Buffalo Crossing.

West Fork Black River: (campground, six-trout limit).

From FR 249E just south of Big Lake take FR 68 south to FR 68A. Upper West Fork Black River: (No bait — catch and release.) Take Hwy 260 to Hwy 273. Continue about 16

miles on 273 to FR 116. Right turn on FR 116 and continue six miles to river crossing.

West Fork of the Little Colorado, Sheeps Crossing: Take Hwy 260 to Hwy 273. Continue on 273 eight miles to parking area near crossing.

East and West Fork of the Little Colorado River at Greer (six-trout limit) Take Hwy 260 to Hwy 373 through Greer on upper end off of the county road on the east side of Greer and at end of Forest Road 575.

Silver Creek: Arizona Game & Fish owned property is catch and release only. Take Hwy 60 east from Show Low, 5.5 miles east of intersection with Hwys 60 and 260, and turn left on Bourdon Ranch Road. Continue approximately five miles to Hatchery Way Road, turn right on Hatchery Way and go to parking area.

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Vortex: Cathedral Rock is considered one of six vortex sites in Sedona.

Tom Brossart photos

Into the

VORTEX Writer sets out on quest for a mystical power center — finds something better

Story by Peter Aleshire

T

he sandstone crumbles beneath my feet on a precarious slope at the base of Cathedral Rock in the mystic heart of Sedona. After halting my slide toward the cliff edge, I reconsider my plan.

Dawn had just graced the red rock slope of a reputed psychic power center, able to focus strange energies through a stone lens on the pliable minds of true believers. Mind you, I’ve never believed in much beyond the migration of birds, the power of water, and the innocence of children. Nonetheless, I’d left my wife and kids slumbering peacefully in the hotel room for this first-light pilgrimage to one of the three fabled vortices of Sedona.

No doubt, just froth and foolishness.

These spires of 280 million-year-old sandstone are merely ancient beach sand, welded into great layers of rock by their long burial.

Once this area probably resembled the floodplains of the Nile. Vast sand dunes wandered across the face of the land, great rivers emptied into inland seas, and wind and water shifted through the layers of sand that would become the red rock cliffs of Sedona.

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Oak Creek Crossing offers a dramatic view of the vortexted Cathedral Rock

Peter Aleshire photos

Much later, some five to seven million years, the Colorado Plateau began to rise at a rate of up to 1,400 feet every million years. Water clawed at the upthrust rock and the meanders of Oak Creek crafted the landscape now clasped to the heart of nearly 3 million visitors annually.

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New Agers have developed all sorts of theories about Sedona, impelled by rocks the color of old blood. These latter-day myths suggest Sedona is one of those rare places that resonate with strange concentrations of electrical, magnetic, and vibrational energy. They invoke magnetic

field lines, underground crystal tuning forks, and hidden networks of caverns, according to a summary of the phenomena penned by Jack Kutz in “Mysteries and Miracles of Arizona.” The Sedona area supposedly harbors three major vortices, centered on Bell Rock, Boynton Canyon and Cathedral Rock. Reportedly Cathedral Rock concentrates both magnetic I STARTED BACK and vibratory energies, working DOWN THE TRAIL, on the subconscious mind, boostUNENLIGHTENED, ing psychic perceptions.

People swear they’ve felt inexSLIGHTLY STIFF AND plicable stirrings here. The trick FEELING FAINTLY lies in surrendering the need for FOOLISH. hard evidence, like a true believer clutching a sliver of the true cross.

People emerging from trances report dropping in on past lives, watching images from the landscape’s past played out with ghostly precision, and engaging in mental conversations with extraterrestrials, ancient Indians and John Lennon. One woman reported that the energies of Boynton Canyon repaired her dead husband’s wristwatch. Others have been cured of colds. Some have risen from the meditations and strolled across hot coals.

Not that I expected to chat with Lennon upon reaching the base of Cathedral Rock, whose massive spires reared several hundred feet overhead. I figured I’d be content with some insignificant sign, adding a certain resonance to dawn.

So I sat on a boulder at the base of the cliff and stared out across Oak Creek Canyon, graced with

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Tom Brossart

cottonwoods and sycamores greenly luminous at first light. A jay appeared out of nowhere, pivoted sharply, and landed on the gnarled skeletal branch of a nearby pinon pine. We regarded one another, beady-eyed. Then he cawed a rude observation and darted away.

Closing my eyes, I waited for a tingle of psychic energy, but felt only a cool breeze swirling up from the creek below. Instead of voices from the past, only the distant chatter of birds straightening out their territorial claims floated on the breeze. At length I gave up, opened my eyes, and sat silently in the bird-punctuated silence.

Then I started back down, unenlightened, slightly stiff, and feeling faintly foolish.

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At base of the red spires, a slab of sandstone turned underfoot. Regaining my feet, a glitter caught my eye. In the dirt gleamed a perfectly transparent quartz crystal the size of a peanut. Immediately, other glimmerings in the dirt caught my eye. Eager as a sun-crazed prospector, I combed through the dirt for perhaps half an hour until I’d accumulated a whole pile of quartz crystals, most no bigger than a tooth filling.

Looking up, I saw a blue jay watching me skeptically, his head cocked to one side. I shrugged. He cackled some off-color jay joke, then flitted away, leaving me to my treasure. The Earth hummed all around me.

I could almost hear it.

HUNGRY FOR RIM COUNTRY NEWS? Satisfy your craving with a subscription to the Payson Roundup!

Call (928) 474-5251 to subscribe.

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Banner Health Center of Payson offers a wide range of services for their patients, including: Family Practice/Obstetrics • Internal Medicine Pediatrics • General Surgery

Don’t let varicose veins keep you from enjoying life.

Nobody likes varicose veins. For some people, they even cause severe, aching pain. If varicose veins are keeping you from living your life to the fullest, consider scheduling an appointment with Luis Coppelli, MD at Banner Health Center. Treating your varicose veins is more than just a cosmetic procedure, and it’s important that you have them evaluated and treated by a medical professional. Call (928) 474-5259 to schedule an appointment today.

Banner Health Center 117 E. Main St., Suite A100 • Payson Professional Plaza (928) 474-1714 or (928) 474-5259 • www.BannerHealth.com

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Dining Guide Chili’s Grill and Bar Family Dining ..........................................................468-7036 900 S. Beeline Highway, Payson Open Sunday through Thursday 11am-9pm, Friday and Saturday 11am-10pm

Macky’s Grill Family Dining ..........................................................474-7411 201 W. Main St. Suite J, Payson carijo@npgcable.com Come dine in our recently remodeled family restaurant, home of the Macky Burger. We now sell domestic and imported beer and wine.

Open Sunday thru Thursday 10am-8pm, Friday and Saturday 10am-9pm.

Zane Grey Steakhouse & Saloon

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Come by Chili’s® today and live life to the ta stiest.

Fine Dining/Steaks...........................................928-478-4211 Highway 260 at Kohl’s Ranch Lodge www.kohlsvacation.com Hearty, authentic, western cuisine. Live entertainment on weekends (call to check). Steakhouse open for Breakfast daily 7:30am11am; Lunch, Monday thru Friday 11am-2pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am-noon; Dinner, Monday thru Thursday 5pm-8pm, Friday and Saturday, 5pm-9pm. Saloon open Monday thru Friday 5pm-8pm, Saturday and Sunday noon to closing.

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