Behind Courthouse Rock in the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness

LONELY ARE THE EAGLETAIL MOUNTAINS

THEY'RE SMALL, RUGGED AND RARELY VISITED

THE DIRT ROAD THAT LEADS FROM THE floor of western Arizona's fertile Harquahala Plain to the 2,874-foot-tall stone tower called Courthouse Rock is long, dusty, bumpy, scratchy, even a little exasperating. It takes a good while to negotiate that road through dense forests of cacti, creosote and hackberry, following a roller-coaster sequence of winding dry washes. But, photographer Jack Dykinga and I agreed after washing down the dust with big quaffs of water, we've both driven plenty worseeven if it did take a few hours for our spines to settle back into alignment. I examined my truck for the new “desert pinstriping” the road has bestowed on it, then put away my watch in the glove box. I had no pressing engagements in the metropolis whose lights flicker across the eastern horizon after sunset, so I wouldn't be needing it. For now we were in the heart of the Eagletail Mountains, a little-explored corner of the Sonoran Desert that keeps its own hours, and whose calendar stretches into times far distant from our own. Weathered remnants of ancient volcanoes and blocks of stone thrust into the sky some 25 million years ago, the Eagletails stretch 15 miles in a northwest-southeast direction, the classic basin-and-range orientation that defines this part of Arizona. Located at the juncture of Yuma, La Paz and Maricopa counties, only a couple of

hours' drive west from Phoenix, the range is made up of Courthouse Rock, a great monolith visible from many miles away, as well as the long, sawtooth ridge at whose heart stands Eagletail Peak. That mountain, relatively small at 3,300 feet but still rising more than a quarter of a mile above the surrounding desert, is crowned by a trio of granite spires that stand against the sky and resemble an Indian warbonnet-or, to the eye of the unknown miner who gave it its I scaled a canyon wall, alert for hedgehog cacti and sunbathing rattlesnakes as I made my way upward to the wind caves and natural arches that time has carved into the rock. resonant name, like an eagle's feathers. Much of the range, as well as the broad plain that joins it to the westerly extension called Cemetery Ridge, falls within the 100,600-acre Eagletail Mountains Wilderness, so designated by the federal government in 1990. The wilderness, at once accessible and remote, harbors several other peaks between 2,000 and 3,000 feet in elevation, low enough that they'd barely pass for foothills in many parts of the Grand Canyon State. What they lack in size, though, they more than make up for in ruggedness, as well as in some of the scenic beauties that lie nestled among them: steep-walled box canyons, stone arches, rock pinnacles that wouldn't be out of place in Monument Valley or Sedona, and, here and there, shaded pools of water that offer sustenance to pronghorn antelopes, deer, kangaroo rats, kit foxes, bighorn sheep and other mammals, as well as hummingbirds, painted ladies, rock wrens, verdins, phainopeplas, flycatchers and many other winged creatures.

Drawn by such attractions, people have been coming to the Eagletails for millennia, and the signs of their ancient presence are everywhere. It takes a practiced eye to find some of those signs-to distinguish, say, arrowheads deliberately shaped by human handiwork from bits of quartz that millions of years of wear and tear have ground into sharp points. But other signs are there for anyone to see. On that cool morning in December, I wandered into one of the dozen-odd washes that spill out of the Eagletails and came across a series of round, half-foot-deep holes that some hard-working soul pounded into the porous rock generations ago, either to grind meal from mesquite pods or to collect precious rainwater. Later in the day, I scaled a canyon wall, alert for hedgehog cacti and sunbathing rattlesnakes as I made my way upward to the wind caves and natural arches that time has carved into the rock, and came across intricate petroglyphs depicting the movement of animals and pointing the way to the springs and pools where they gather.

Dykinga, who has-pardon the pun-an eagle eye for such things, was delighted to discover a rarer find as we made our way across the boulder-strewn slope below 2,184-foot-tall Nottbusch Butte: a sleeping circle, a ring of hefty rocks arranged in a rough oval to guard its long-ago maker against wandering spirits in the night. Just how long ago we could not say, but the natural glue called desert varnish, formed by trickled-down minerals over the centuries, had fixed the rocks to the ground. This suggests that the circle was part of the landscape long before the Clanton family, 19th-century ranchers who would soon go on to earn their fame in Tombstone, sank a deep well not far from the spot. Dykinga and I agreed that it was a fine place to make camp in any century, afford-ing as it does a wide-angle view of the rolling Clanton Hills to the south, the imposing Kofa Mountains to the west, and the lava-and-saguaro-studded valley that ends, a mile or two away, below the three-spired notch of Eagletail Peak. As I took in the view, I found myself thinking about those wan-dering spirits, and about the mind of the traveling hunter who arranged those stones so long ago. I decided that whoever he was and whatever his worries, he had a good eye for real estate.

The Clantons weren't the only Anglo pio-neers to settle around here; in odd corners of the mountains, we find the remnants of old mining shacks, line camps and corrals that date back more than a century.

Then as now, however, most of the area's residents have chosen to live down in the green Harquahala Valley, where broad irri-gation canals nourish vast fields of cotton and herds of livestock. The few local ranch-ers who run their cattle in the hills keep their fences mended and their water tanks full. They keep a watchful eye out on the range as well, and visitors should repay the favor by securely closing cattle gates behind them as they pass.

Inside the gates, fences and canals that bound the mountains, those visitors will find plenty to do. A favorite destination of Arizona wilderness hikers is the Ben Avery Trail, named to honor the late Arizona Republic outdoor writer.

The trail, whose northern terminus lies just below Courthouse Rock, is rated as being of moderate difficulty, mostly because of the loose rock and up-and-down terrain over which it passes. It's easy enough to walk in most spots, but the trail itself is not always easy to follow, and hikers have to keep a careful eye out for the occasional rock cairn for orientation-if, that is, they're not equipped with a global-positioning device, which makes such monuments seem somehow anachronistic.

The 12-mile-long trail bends southwest toward Indian Spring, where rocks bear dozens of well-preserved petroglyphs, before branching west to Cemetery Ridge and east to Eagletail Peak. Both branches lead eventually to the Arlington-Clanton Well Road, a washboard dirt route that forms the southern boundary of the wilderness area. A favorite of four-wheel-drive enthusiasts, this slow, bumpy road crosses the range at a narrow pass that offers a spectacular view of Eagletail Peak's sun-drenched south face, beyond which it reaches other four-wheel-drive trails that thread into the surrounding desert.

Though it's possible to scale the lower portions of the stately monolith without ropes, carabiners and other mountaineering accoutrements, the higher reaches remain the province of the skilled climbers...

Some outdoor enthusiasts, those with an evident bent for more perilous adventure, travel to the Eagletails to climb Courthouse Rock, the 1,300-foot ascent of which is one of the most challenging in Arizona. Though it's possible to scale the lower portions of the stately monolith without ropes, carabiners and other mountaineering accoutrements, the higher reaches remain the province of the skilled climbers who travel from all over the world to try their skills against the Courthouse's granite. The unskilled, suffice it to say, need not apply.

Nature lovers can make do without such challenging activities, opting instead for a leisurely stroll among the saguaros, paloverde trees, catclaw acacias, bitter condalia, chuparosa and other plants that make up the Eagletails' natural botanical garden. Still, for the dedicated plant aficionado, the more arduous cross-country trip to the north slope of Eagletail Peak repays the effort with the view of a true curiosity: a grove of windswept juniper and oak trees, which don't quite belong at such low, hot elevations but flourish there all the same.

In spring, when the winter rains have been generous, all these year-round plants are joined by sweeping carpets of buckwheat, lupines, poppies, golden eye, marigolds, four o'clocks and other wildflowers,adding yet more splendor to an already gorgeous place.

But even with all those opportunities for recreation and nature study, few people venture into the Eagletails, and the chances are good that you'll have the place to yourself on any given day. On our trip into the mountains, in fact, Dykinga and I shared the range with just two other visitors, a pair of hunters who had come over from Yuma. They'd been scaling the mountain wall for a week, one of them said, in search of big game, up and down, up and down. Added the other, "Yeah, my legs feel kind of rubbery right now."

I was secretly glad that they hadn't found the bighorn sheep they were after, though diplomatic enough not to say so. Still, I enjoyed visiting with them over coffee and a campfire against the cool winter air, hearing about the hidden canyons and caves that they'd been exploring for weeks-and they swore that they would continue to explore until they found their sheep.

A stern archipelago of jagged rock, easily visible from the busy highway to the north but worlds away. These are the Eagletails, an open secret to those who know them, and a timeless place that beckons the traveler with time to spare. Al