Alamo Lake

2004 Photo Workshops Learn from the Best

SMALL GROUPS AND PROFESSIONAL photographic instruction are the hallmarks of all our workshops. Led by photographers whose breathtaking images have graced the pages of Arizona Highways magazine, this year's exciting lineup includes:

Bald Eagles Find a Cozy, Secluded Home at Far-flung Alamo Lake

I HAVE ASPIRED TO VISIT the Alamo Lake area for many years. Mostly, the great eagle rescue story lured me, but I was also pulled by my unreasonable affection for the sharp and spiny land of loose lava that lies between the end of the pavement and the shores of this out-of-joint desert lake.

Alamo Dam created the lake in 1968 at the junction of the Big Sandy and Santa Maria rivers to control violent floods that can raise the lake level by 11 feet in a single day. Before the lake's creation, the harsh, angular desert attracted prospectors, hermits and colorful characters. Since the lake arrived and the area came under the care of Alamo Lake State Park, it draws campers, wanderers and fishermen - not to mention nesting desert bald eagles. So I set out to savor the juxtaposition of lake, rivers and remote desert, way out past the pavement in the blush of spring - and maybe glimpse an eagle.

I launched westward onto Tres Alamos Road, a portal to the raw desert, which begins off U.S.

Route 93, between mile markers 177 and 178. Labeled as Alamo Road on some maps, the unmarked road begins as a washboard dirt track until about mile 19, where it smoothes out into a well-graded surface. It jaunts westward from the highway into the open desert, hemmed first by Joshua trees, then mesquites, paloverdes and ocotillos.

Slowing to a stop, I noticed at the top of one yellow-flowered paloverde a smallish, white-headed butterfly with a brightorange abdomen and shimmering black wings spotted with white and iridescent blue-a misnamed great purple hairstreak butterfly. He sat high on the blossoming tree, rubbing his hind legs on a projection of his rear wings-a "false head" designed to fool hungry birds into biting his other end instead of his head. As I watched, another black butterfly fluttered past, provoking an immediate challenge. The resident male flung himself at the interloper, chased it around the tree, then straight up into the air for a hundred feet. Then they dove at the ground like a pair of ricepaper biplanes. At the last minute, they pulled up and one fluttered away. The victor swaggered back to his perch, having demonstrated the top-gun flying skills that convinced the intruder he would lose the race for any passing female.

Satisfied that butterflies are just as foolish as human beings, I climbed back into the car to continue my journey. About 6 miles from U.S. 93, I encountered the first Y intersection, which is unsigned, and stayed to the left. After another 23 miles, I came to a cluster of buildings and an intersection signed as the turnoff to Alamo Lake State Park. Wanting to see the north end of the lake first, I continued straight ahead.

Almost 3 miles later, I explored several of the bumpy, dusty side roads that lead a mile or two into primitive camping and hiking areas around the lake's north shore. During the recent drought conditions, this end of the lake has been mostly dry.

Alamo Lake remains an out-of-place gleam and glimmer in the desert. It captures the Big Sandy and Santa Maria rivers and merges them into the Bill Williams River flowing from the lake, which nourishes one of the state's best, last stretches of cottonwood-willow habitat as it meanders some 33 miles down to the southern end of Lake Havasu on the Colorado River. Sweltering in the summer, the remote, shallow Alamo Lake has some of Arizona's best spring bass fishing, thanks to a fluctuating shoreline and heavy, seasonal inflows from a 6,500-square-mile watershed.

The springtime abundance of fish also attracts at least one pair of bald eagles that usually nest in the cottonwood snags at the lake's north end, feeding their voracious chicks on the lake's finny buffet. Bald eagles have made a dramatic recovery nationwide. In Arizona, which has nearly the entire population of desert nesting eagles, there were 45 nesting pairs in 2002. State nest watchers protect the nesting eagles in areas where they might be disturbed by humans, like in the tangle of drowned trees at the lake's north end.

I'd wanted to visit Alamo ever since I'd heard about the time, nearly two decades ago, that nest watchers in a rowboat saved two eagle chicks from rising floodwaters about to sweep their nest from a cottonwood snag. The chicks were placed with another nesting pair of eagles and seemed to make the transition successfully.

So I spent time around the upper end of the lake, exploring the welter of dirt roads and keeping an eye on the sky. Alas, while I was momentarily fooled by a couple of circling turkey vultures, the eagles remained hidden. I backtracked to Tres Alamos Road and