Are We lost Yet?

If you take FR68 east of Dugas (which is not actually a town, but the remains of a settlement crumbling on what is now private ranch land) you will come to a Y. Your decision: take the easy road (right) towards the Salt Flats “campground” and the Pine Mountain Wilderness, or take the left fork, dubbed 68G towards - well the edge of the cliff.

If you read last post, you know which one I took.

The signs become increasingly ominous about the “primitive” and “unmaintained” nature of 68G, and, true to the warnings, the road becomse worse the farther you go in.

About 4 miles in, as I’m prodding my 06 Chevy Equinox through what is essentially a trench filled with lava rock, we have to back up to allow an older couple in a Toyota 4X4 Truck to get past us. The man says, swear to God, “You haven’t gotten to the really rocky part yet…”

A mile later, we got to it. And there, I found the Equinox Filter: a stair of rock about 20″ high that spun the tires of my HC but definitely Front-wheel-Drive crossover (pretend) SUV no matter which angle I tried. When I had smelt enough of my own burning rubber, I backed it up, and found a place to park the thing.

Yeah - that’s right - I couldn’t get the Equinox as far as I got the Cavalier. It may be a sign of wisdom, or it may be a sign of deeper erosion in the road. In any case, Ben and I climbed out and hiked the remaining three miles or so to Cavalier Point: a sizeable juniper just off the road from the cattleguard that separates the 68G from “Verde Hot Springs Road”. The latter road is marked as “Unfit for Public Travel” and is officially closed to motor vehicles at this writing.

My  straps were long gone.

We did, however find the norther terminus to something called Trail #27 which goes into the largely undocumented Cedar Bench Wilderness that covers half the northern slope of Tule Mesa. The southern terminus is, in theory, a graded dirt trailhead near Camp Verde. I’m adding that to my To Do list.

Meanwhile, while daylight remained, Ben and I drover around the other fork in the road - to Pine Mountain. That account will be the next post.

Photos on my personal blog (where I have bandwidth left): What Have We Learned?

About five years ago, Ben (then 7) and I climbed into a Chevy Cavalier and headed off for Fossil Springs. My plan was to intorduce Ben to backpacking. The problem wit this plan was that I was driving.

From Phoenix, I-17 to AZ 260 to FR720 seemed kinda dull, especially when my AZ Gazetteer showed a more direct route through Dugas. I should not here, in some feeble defense, that the Gazetteer does nt reliably indicate a road’s condition - just its existence.

I should also note that my wife will never allow e to own a 4WD the way you would not want to give a loaded pistol to a monkey. I have little to no fear of road conditions.

Forest Road 68G - which will, actually, bounce you down to the Verde River from Dugas - is high clearance up to the edge of the mesa. I bounced and prodded the poor Cavalier that far in anyways - because that is how my mental disorder manifests. We stopped at the top of the mesa, because the switchbacks going down were CLEARLY 4WD. And my nerves were shot. And we were losing daylight. And this moment of clarity saved certainly both of our lives.

So you know, to continue on the Fossil Creek, you would have to ford the Verde River and drive through the Hot Springs campground to get back to FR 720.

So we camped at the top of Tule Mesa. My hammcok, strung from a huge juniper, swung in the wind as I had nightmares of rocks moving down a roadway in waves like an incoming tide. The wind picked even more, and I had to move into Ben’s tent.

The next morning, I worked the Cavalier slowly off the mesa, blowing two tires in the process. (Happily, one was just a slow leak). We ended up “backpacking” in a few miles from a spot north of Lake Pleasant.

Ben and I didn’t make it to Fossil Springs until we hkedt for the guidebook about a year ago.

In a few hours, though, we’re going back to Tule Mesa, because I now own a high clearance vehicle.

I left a ratchet strap in that Juniper. Ben wonders if its still there. We’ll let you know.

Summer’s here - because the forest is on fire:

Summary: The Pioneer Fire started on Saturday, and is burning on East Mountain, approximately 7 miles south of Globe, Arizona.  Burnout operations were conducted last night.  Aerial resources will be assisting ground crews today in holding the line at Forest Service Road 112 near Pioneer Pass.  Smoke is expected to be visible around the East Mountain area for next 5 days.  The public is asked to please use caution on Hwy. 77 because of fire equipment and fire traffic.

This is not far from the Pinal Mountains (see last post). You can keep track of the progress here.

Presciently, the Globe area is scheduled for some prescribed burns this summer (though the big, unprescibed burn going on right now may modify their plans).

“The purpose of these prescribed fires is to reduce the hazardous fuels in these areas and lower the chances of catastrophic fire, which could burn onto private land and endanger valuable electronic sites and private property. The prescribed fires will also help promote a healthier forest and watershed,” said Rick Reitz, Globe District ranger.

In the Phoenix area? Got free time? Here’s the Arizona Game and Fish Online Calender. AZG&F is, of course, a statewide operation, and the calender does have events all over the state, but, basically, the bulk of them happen around Phoenix.

Try to follow this: Towards the end of the Clinton administration, a ruling came down declaring a moratorium on new road construction in the National Forests. Towards the end of the Bush administration, this ban was overturned. Did that lead to a frenzy in two-track road construction? No. Iy led to a flurry of legal action.

So the Obama administration, late last month, declared a moratorium on lifting the moratorium. This is from the Department of Agriculture’s press release:

The U.S. Forest Service, with jurisdiction over the National Forests and Grasslands, makes decisions about what projects can take place on those lands. In simultaneously upholding and overturning the 2001 Clinton roadless rule, the courts have created confusion and made it difficult for the U.S. Forest Service to do its job. The directive will ensure that USDA can carefully consider activities in these inventoried roadless areas while long term roadless policy is developed and relevant court cases move forward.

In related news, the adminstration has also released stimulus funds to -ah - build forest roads.

So, well, good luck with that.