Category: Maricopa

Courthouse Rock Picture of the Week

Courthouse Rock - The huge granite monolith that attracts climbers and base-jumpers to the Eagletail Wilderness Area.
Courthouse Rock – The massive granite monolith attracts climbers and base-jumpers to the Eagletail Wilderness Area.

When you were in school, did you learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition—the party that explored the Louisiana Purchase and discovered the first Starbucks in what’s now called Seattle? Sadly, when it comes to the outdoors, my buddy Fred and I will never rise to that level of notoriety. We’ll most likely go down in history more akin to Laurel and Hardy.

Fred and Jim's overlapping skill sets - When we get together, things don't always go as we plan.
Fred and Jim’s overlapping skill sets – Things don’t always go as we plan when we get together.

Don’t get me wrong, Fred is a brilliant man. After all, he is an engineer, and I can write complete sentences, so when apart, we can navigate the world and safely return home (to the amazement of our wives). But when we go out together, our skill sets overlap like in a Venn diagram, setting up a thinking interference pattern that causes things to go south.

To finish up this month’s project, the Eagletail Mountains, I needed a couple more photos that are close to the subject. Since it’s a wilderness area, that meant hiking. I spent time researching and found a perfect trail on AllTrails. It’s only 3 1/2  miles each way and goes to Indian Springs. There, we should see a spring and a rock wall of petroglyphs. They described the hike as “the easiest trail in the world. It’s an old mine road with little grade change. A baby can do it.”

I began calculating. I walk at 2.2 miles per hour (I measured it using my hand-held Garmin), so 2 hours in, snap a couple of shots, 2 hours out, and add four hours of drive time down and back. The outing should easily take an afternoon. I asked Fred if he would be interested (somebody needed to carry me out when I fell). He said, “Sure.”

Monday at noon, I tossed on some comfortable jeans, my whitest Tee shirt (so the rescue helicopter could spot me), and a baseball cap. I drove to Fred’s house to pick him up. He opened the front door dressed like an L.L. Bean model, with a freshly pressed ‘cool-shirt,’ safari hat, day pack, and walking sticks. He was gorgeous.

It was a beautiful day, and we spent the two-hour drive talking about the hike and sharing the maps we brought. Fred downloaded the AllTrails map onto his iPhone; I had printed the directions to the trailhead; we were ready.

Mistake #1: The easy part was getting to the Gas-Pipeline road, but we had to count the miles to the turnoff. As Fred read the instructions, I watched the odometer. When the instructions said, “At 1 ½ mile, turn onto an unmarked road,” a road appeared on the left. We turned, but the sign that they promised wasn’t there. We continued anyway and came upon a group of young men camped at its end. This place must be our spot, so we parked.

Mistake #2: The boys/men were friendly and were sitting around packing parachutes. If we were in California, I would have expected them to be waxing surfboards. They had come to Courthouse Rock to climb the monolith and then jump off with a parachute—even though the rock wasn’t in danger of crashing. They asked why we had come. They said we were on the wrong road when we told them about the trail. They said we needed to return to the pipeline road and go another mile. Fred and I looked at one another, the maps, and the app. Since the trail was just over the hill, we ignored their directions—like any person holding a man-card should.

Mistake #3: We started hiking cross-country diagonally toward the trail. “Surely, it must be over that low ridge, and we’ll see it from the top,” I told Fred. We hiked to the ridgeline and saw——another hill. We began the long trudge to its top. What we didn’t realize at the time was that we were climbing Courthouse Rock’s talus slope. The rock must have been significantly larger at one time because sharp granite chips covered the ground. They had flaked off the enormous tower, making the footing lose. Falling on them would hurt—a lot.

Fred the trailblazer - Fred hikes to another ridge to see if it's the last of our hike. It wasn't.
Fred the Trailblazer – Fred hikes to another ridge to see if it’s the last of our hike. It wasn’t.

After an hour of hiking uphills and over gullies, we reached a point where we could see the trail. It was on the other side of a deep wash. That meant we could get to it if we could cross the dry creek, but it was still a half-mile away. We only managed to cover less than a mile during the past hour. I was ready to quit but could see yet another ridge on the horizon. I hoped it was the last. Fred volunteered to continue seeing if it was our summit while I sat, drank water, and caught my breath. He confirmed that it wasn’t, so we started back when he returned.

Instead of retracing our steps, we went down into the wash, where we could walk the sandy bottom back to the Jeep in half the time. We had to explain our failure to the base-jumping dudes when we reached the camp. “Yeah, I thought you should drive to the other road,” one of them graciously taunted. Since we were in the area, we did. We found the second road with signs, parking, and an informational kiosk. At least we’ll know should we ever go back, but the two-hour drive home was nearly silent for now.

I shot this week’s picture that I call Courthouse Rock at the beginning of our hike. It’s of the enormous granite monolith from its west side. The 20-foot palo verde tree gives scale, so I’m glad the tree photo-bombed my shot.

Click here to see a larger version of Courthouse Rock on its Web Page. Next week, we’ll finish our Eagletail Mountain visit and move on to another project. Hopefully, somewhere I can drive.

Until next time — jw

Eagletail Peak  Picture of the Week

In last week’s article, I mentioned that the Eagletail Wilderness encompassed two desert mountain ranges and the Sonoran Desert basin that lies between them. The Eagletail Range was one, while the other is a chain known as Cemetery Ridge. After I gave you their name, I made an offhand remark about how they got that name. Well, I accepted that question as this week’s homework assignment, boys and girls. Here’s what I found—nothing.

Cemetery Ridge - A 16 mile-long chain of mountains that make up the southwest flank of the Eagletail Mountain Wilderness Area.
Cemetery Ridge – This is a 16 mile-long chain of mountains that make up the southwest flank of the Eagletail Mountain Wilderness Area.

Well, that’s not wholly true because, in my handy Arizona Place Names book, there is this entry:

“This sixteen-mile-long and two-mile-wide, low range was the scene of the killing of several prospectors in the 1870s, according to local stories. Their bodies are said to be buried on the ridge (sic), which is also known as Cemetery Hills.”

When I read that, I thought, “Alright, there’s an interesting historical story to tell my loyal readers.” So I, as the unofficial Marshall Trimble understudy, started a week of research that would have made Jimmy Olson proud. I wanted to find out what miners, who killed them, why, and where are they buried. I asked Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google’s unnamed assistant. None of them knew nothin’.

I did find out that I’m not the only person searching for those answers. Google referred me to the Desert Mountaineer blog. There I found the anonymous author had written a three-part journal covering Cemetery Ridge. The writer is a pretty good storyteller and photographer, but his passion is climbing mountains, and the photographs are incidental, kind of the opposite of what I do.

His three-part saga covers four days of driving the same roads I did, looking for graves. He travels with his dog, sleeps in his truck, and often stops to climb the mountains he passes—sometimes two or three in a day. I’m impressed! Anyway, after exploring the entire length of Cemetery Ridge, he didn’t find our legendary graves. He does mention the place where Deadman Wash crosses Cemetery Ridge on the west side. If ever there were a place to look, that would be where I’d start. It has all the intrigue of a pirate’s treasure map.

Framed between two of the Cemetery Ridge Mountains, Eagletail Peak's feathers lit by the sunrise.
Framed between two of the Cemetery Ridge Mountains, Eagletail Peak’s feathers lit by the sunrise.

I shot this week’s image along the Arlington-Clanton Well Road on the south side of Cemetery Ridge. The Ridge’s mountains (like hills really) appear and disappear in a straight line for 16 miles. At one of those places where they slip below the surface like a giant sea-serpent, I saw Eagletail Peak framed and lit by the sunrise. You can make out the ‘tail feathers’ sticking up at the top in the picture. I want to explain that the Eagletail Wilderness is directly under the Los Angeles-Phoenix flyway, so contrails are part of the natural landscape, but they won’t let me fly my drone there.

You can see a larger version of Eagletail Peak on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week we go hunting for more treasure in the Eagletail Range. Come back then and see if we were successful.

Until next time — jw

Eagletail Mountains Picture of the Week

 

Eagletail Mountains - The Eagletail Mountain Wilderness Area is an hour west of Phoenix, and south of Interstate 10. Since you have to hike to see the good stuff, it's challenging for me to photograph properly.
Eagletail Mountains – The Eagletail Mountain Wilderness Area is west of Phoenix and south of Interstate 10. Since you have to hike to see the good stuff, it’s challenging to photograph correctly.

I find some places where it is difficult to photograph properly. Most of those are wilderness areas. Because they’re not accessible by road, you have to hike to get to the good stuff; that’s exciting visually. You know by now how I feel about hiking—I’m vehemently against it. However, sometimes you have to do things that make you uncomfortable.

The Eagletail Mountains are one of those places. Plenty of old jeep trails are running through the area, but since it was declared a wilderness and set aside in 1990, you can’t drive on them. Instead, you have to hike anywhere within its boundaries.

I last visited the Eagletails in 2003—when I first created my Website. Since I routinely update the site with newer and better photos, I discarded those shots long ago. I needed a new project, so I decided to revisit the Eagletail Wilderness and try my luck again.

There are two mountain ranges in the Eagletail Wilderness. Foremost is the Eagletail Range that runs north-south. If it were a hand on a clock, they would be in the 11:00 position. The other range is Cemetery Ridge (hmm, there’s got to be a story behind that name), a line of mountains that run northwest-southeast, or 9:30-10:00. Most of this wilderness fits within this triangle between the two ranges. That’s the justification that Congress used to preserve it. It is a complete example of two mountain ranges separated by a flat Sonoran Desert basin.

This week’s picture is of the western slope of the Eagletails. It’s an aerial shot taken with my drone. Since I can’t fly into a wilderness, it’s as close as I could get from the east side. It shows the jagged ridgeline with Eagletail Peak—the high point—at center-right. If you got closer, you’d see its top has several granite spires resembling feathers—so its name is descriptive.

The trouble is that the interesting geologic formations and petroglyphs are on the other side. For February, my challenge is to see how far I can walk in and show you what’s there. It’s been several years since I last twisted my ankle, so I’m about due.

You can see a larger version of Eagletail Mountains on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we move south and get a shot, including Cemetery Ridge. I promise to see how it got that name. Come back then and see what we found.

Until next time — jw

Saguaro Bouquet Picture of the Week

We’ve spent March exploring the Black Hills—an interesting group of low mountains on Wickenburg’s north side that gets their name from the dark surface crust on their top. I was able to shoot them from different perspectives by driving the old mine roads that my SUV—Archie—could navigate easily. While I’m out jaunting about and looking for different angles of my subject, I try to keep an eye out for other good scenes—and that’s the case with this week’s featured image.

When I drove out Rincon Road a couple of weeks ago, I intended to get the shot Black Hills—last week’s featured image. While I was there, I discovered a hill covered with saguaro. As I’ve written before, saguaro does well on a south-facing well-drained slope, and when I see a stand like this, it makes me happy. This is a healthy forest. Since I’d already invested the time driving out there, I also took this shot.

Saguaro Bouquet-A small but dense grove of saguaro growing on a hillside near Wickenburg, Arizona.
Saguaro Bouquet-A small but a dense grove of saguaro growing on a hillside near Wickenburg, Arizona.

I named this week’s image Saguaro Bouquet jokingly because—although they each weigh a couple of tons—it looks like you could pick them for a Mother’s Day bouquet (hey, no one said I was normal). Although this grove is small, it’s densely packed along the hillside.

There are some other things I see in the photo. It was still winter when I took it, but the scene will change dramatically as the weather warms next month. For example, the little gray bushes covering the ground are brittlebush. In a couple of weeks, they will sprout yellow daisy-like flowers. Shortly after that, the palo verde trees will start flowering, adding more yellow. Finally, in May, the saguaro will be adorned with large white blossoms. That’s an Arizona Highways kind of picture. If you’d like to see it yourself, ask me, and I’ll give you the map coordinates.

I am happy you took the time to view my new photo. You can see a larger version on its Web Page by clicking here. Be sure to come back next week for a complete change of pace. I promise that for April, there won’t be a single saguaro.

Until next time — jw

Black Hills Picture of the Week

Queen Anne and I spent a couple of days last week visiting our favorite foreign city. That’s right; we went to Algodones, Baja California. I had to see my dentist and have a couple of holes in my head filled. Instead, she worked on my teeth.

Algodones (it means cotton in English) is famous for liquor stores, pharmacies, and dentists. The little town has over 350 dental offices within a 10-minute walk from the crossing. It’s straightforward for visiting Snow-Birds to park in the lot, walk across, hit the liquor store for liquid courage, get a tooth fixed, and buy pain relief on the way out.

During the pandemic, the Mexican border is closed, but there are exceptions for medical, educational, and commerce visits. The big restriction placed for Algodones was closing the crossing at 2:00 pm instead of 10:00 pm. Early on, many people didn’t know that, so the wait times at the customs house were nil. Well, the secret’s out. The line of people going through customs was over a mile long. There’s a break in the gate where our dentist is, and when we can join the crowd there, it’s a half-hour wait. On Tuesday, the end of the line was three times that distance. It was 12:40 pm when we started. At 2:00, when the siren blew, we were only half-way to where our usual starting place.

The way customs close the border is interesting. If you’re in a car, you’re out of luck. You have to drive an hour to San Luis or Mexicali, where the crossings are open 24 hours. But if you’re a pedestrian in line, they stay open until the end of the line. That’s good because I thought we were going to sleep in a cardboard box like homeless people. It was 3:30 by the time we stopped at the Yuma Carl’s Jr. for lunch/dinner.

There was something weird on this trip that has never happened to us before. When we made it to the line’s the halfway point, an American guy jumps out of his car—taps on my shoulder—and asks if we want a ride in his car. “You’ll be in line for another couple of hours, but the cars are crossing in a half-hour.” His car had four people in it already. Anne and I glanced at each other and declined. I’m of the generation that said, “Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free.” What if we got in the car and he demanded cash that we didn’t have. We’d be back on the street and at the back of the line again. Everyone around us also turned him down. What would you do?

Get to the Picture
Black Hills - As the Hassayampa River flows down from the Bradshaw Mountains, it cut a gorge through the Black Hills, known as the Hassaympa Box Canyon.
Black Hills – As the Hassayampa River flows down from the Bradshaw Mountains, it cut a gorge through the Black Hills, known as the Hassayampa Box Canyon.

Speaking of this week’s picture . . . (I know it’s a lame segue, so I won’t charge you for this issue.) This is another view of the Mountains/Hills that we’ve been photographing in March. I found that they’re called the Black Hills because of the dark crust along their tops, hence the photo’s title. This version was taken on their other side, looking back to Wickenburg.

If you own one of my 2021 calendars, these rocks are the same subject as the March photo. This time I wanted to get a closer look at the interesting fault thrust in the foreground, but when I processed it, I realized I had captured more.

You can see the Hassayampa River as it flows down from the Bradshaw Mountains on the mountain’s left side. But here, it turns right—behind the foreground rocks—and it cut a gorge through these hills. It’s a local attraction called the Hassayampa Box Canyon. Unfortunately, it’s hidden in this shot, but there is a glimpse of the river after it hits the Hassayampa Plain on the right side. Here it turns into a wide, sandy, and the water flows beneath the sand. That’s why the native tribes call it Hassayampa—upside-down river.

I hope my photo brings completeness into your life. You can see a larger version on its Web Page by clicking here. I like reading your comments, so feel free to add your two cents below. Be sure to come back next week for another image from the Wickenburg area.

Until next time — jw

Evening in the Hills Picture of the Week

Optimism comes at a price. If you remember, last week’s post was upbeat. The world was peaches and cream. I should have known better because, on Monday, karma smacked me in the face. Life never goes smoothly. It’s one big game of Wack-A-Mole. You have to solve one problem after another.

Here’s what happened. Last Monday, Fred was helping me with some upholstery in the living room. To use my pneumatic staple gun, I dragged my compressor inside and plugged it into the same electrical circuit that my computer is on. We only had a half day’s work, so I went into the office and checked my email when he left. The monitor was black—you know, in sleep mode (or so I thought). But when I touched the keyboard, it never woke up. I spent the next quarter-hour flipping switches, moving wall plugs, and I even moved the monitor to a different room with no luck. It was dead—D-E-D, dead. I’m not sure if the compressor sent a surge into the line or the monitor was already on its deathbed.

It was expensive when I bought it 10-13 years ago. I still have marks on my neck to prove it, where Anne tried to strangle me when she found out how much I paid for it. It was a 30”, it could display 90% of Adobe RGB colors, and it had a native resolution of 2560×1440. Those things are important to me as a photographer and the reason the price was high. I had to find a replacement, so I logged on to Anne’s laptop and started shopping Amazon.

I found two displays that would meet my criteria. They both were 4K models, 32” wide, and had wide color capabilities. They were better than what I had, and they cost less than a quarter of my original unit. I liked the one that wouldn’t be delivered until next week—what, no news this Sunday; I can’t let my loyal fans down. So I settled on the other one, and it arrived Thursday afternoon. It was in a box big enough that we’re going to use it as a guest bedroom for when you visit.

My new monitor works great. I’m using it now to write this post. I’m not too fond of the fact that it’s too low, and there’s no vertical adjustment. I’m probably going to build a box for it to sit on—some exotic wood would be handsome, and a drawer would be nice. Someplace to squirrel away some of the clutter on my desk.

Evening in the Hills - The low evening sun throws long shadows on the desert.
Evening in the Hills – The low evening sun throws long shadows on the desert.

The new monitor also helps my photo editing—like this week’s featured image that I call Evening in the Hills. As with my other March images, this one was taken in the mountains above Wickenburg. This one isn’t about mountains; it’s all about the light. With the sun going down, it began throwing long shadows on the desert, so I turned the camera and captured a group of nearby hills. This was one of those quiet moments when the air was still, and I felt alone in the world.

I hope you like it. You can see a larger version on its Web Page by clicking here. I like reading your comments, so feel free to add your two cents below. Be sure to come back next week for another image from the Wickenburg area.

Until next time — jw

Blue Tank Saguaro Picture of the Week

It’s only the third month of 2021, and already I can tell it’s a much better year than the last one. If you remember, this time a year ago, I was comforting my dear wife, who was convalescing from knee surgery, we had growing concerns about a new virus that threatened our existence, and we faced travel restrictions to slow its spread. In contrast, this week, I feel like a kid at the end of a time-out, no longer grounded or released from juvy (of course, I was such an exemplary child that I never experienced any of those feelings—my parents just spanked us).

I have this exhilaration of freedom because we got our second vaccination shot this week—and we have passports to prove it. If you’re debating on getting your shots, you shouldn’t be. Queen Anne and I didn’t experience any abnormal side effects. Like any flu shot, your arm is sore for a couple of days, but other than that, our lives went on normally. And as an extra benefit—like a putty knife—the Microsoft chip they snuck into the vaccine scrapes off any plaque in your arteries (but I do have an incredible desire to buy a new version of Windows).

We’re still cautious about our movements—we wear masks and keep our distance, but now we can plan to go on vacation later this summer. In our laundry room, I have a huge wall map of the Colorado Plateau. Whenever Anne gets out of bed this afternoon, I’m going to have her toss a spit-ball at it. Wherever it lands is the place we’ll drag our trailer—The Ritz—this August.

Blue Tank Saguaro - A mature saguaro growing along the bank of the Blue Tank Wash near Wickenburg, Arizona.
Blue Tank Saguaro – A mature saguaro growing along the Blue Tank Wash bank near Wickenburg, Arizona.

I’m so giddy this morning; I almost forgot this week’s new picture. If it looks familiar, it should. That’s because it’s a variation of last week’s featured image. They both show the mountains on the Hassayampa River’s far side, and they both feature saguaro cactus. The difference is that last week’s photo was of the mountains with cactus in the foreground, and this one is a saguaro with the mountains in the background. Who said you couldn’t get two good variations of the same scene by working-the-shot? I called this shot Blue Tank Saguaro for obvious reasons.

I’m interested in hearing what you think. Both images can be seen on their Web Pages, and you can flip between them using the Previous/Next links. You can get to this week’s image by clicking here. Which of the two do you like better? Let me know by leaving your comment at the bottom of this page. Be sure to come back next week for another of my images from the mountains surrounding Wickenburg.

Until next time — jw

UPDATE 4:30 pm: Anne got up and threw her spit-ball at the map, so I guess in August we’re going to . . . the laundry room.