Toughing It Out in Snake Gulch

The sweet perfume of sage clings to the October air like a sticky resin as my hiking boots brush against the bushes, crackling over limestone shards on the way to the trailhead for Snake Gulch Trail 59. A gentle breeze sways the golden rabbit brush blossoms like the hand of a nanny at a cradle, the effect as peaceful as a lullaby. "On the other side of this line is reality," John Neeling says at the Kanab Creek Wil-derness boundary, marking a groove in the dirt with his hiking staff. “We are leaving unreality at this moment.” Neeling, then wilderness manager for the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona, shares my sentiments about this trip into the remote Kanab wilderness. Its bristly terrain remains embellished with brightly colored rock-art messages left by residents who made this area home long before European explorers arrived.

As we leave the trailhead at Snake Gulch, the most northeastern point of the wilderness, Neeling assures me that our first day will be as easy as it gets on the 39-mile trek skirting the peninsula above Jumpup Canyon to our destination at Jumpup Spring, where we had parked a car to shuttle back to the our starting point.

Crossing the flat canyon floor of Snake Gulch, we detour off the trail to alcoves and rock faces emblazoned with pictographs up to 2,000 years old. To the untrained eye, the images appear to be ogres, demons, spacemen and monsters. The red, yellow and white pictographs painted by ancient Indian cultures hold meanings we can only imagine.

"People come from all over the world to view this art," Neeling says, setting down his heavy backpack. Some of the art panels are listed in the National Register of Historic Places, he explains. One of them, called The Wise Men, shows anthropomorphic figures on a 15foot wall. Classic Snake Gulch figures, they have round heads and gold faces, geometric bodies, wide necklaces and large ear bobs.

"These guys are more than 1,000 years old and almost got wiped out in an earthquake a couple of years ago," Neeling says as he points out seven of the figures painted on the wall. “Archaeologists and some Indians say they are Katsinam (Hopi gods) dancing. Look at those wavy lines connecting the figures' heads, like lightning bolts of energy.” Neeling's voice trails as we turn to press on to Table Rock.

Table Rock is the culmination of the major rock art in Snake Gulch, both in numbers as well as dramatic impact. The closer we get, the more drawings we see: Katsinam, shamans, dragonflies and the classic Snake Gulch twins - anthropomorphic doubles, which Neeling says probably denote power.

Table Rock spans the canyon like a lowlying stage, perfect for ceremonies. Neeling tells me an alcove across from the mesa also was used for ceremonies, adding that oldtimers working or traveling in the canyon generally stay away from the area because of too much “magic.” On the advice of a Hopi friend, Neeling carries cornmeal to protect himself. I rely on prayer. We make it past Table Rock unscathed, even after

taking a long lunch break on the mesa. The character of the canyon changes dramatically beyond Table Rock. First, the pictographs virtually disappear. Then the canyon walls narrow, and the sinuous bends multiply. Neeling says the serpentine flow of Snake Gulch could be the reason for its name. Another reason, he says, could be that hikers often report seeing snakes here, adding that he has never seen any. I hope his record isn't broken because tonight I plan to sleep without a tent. In the cool of the morning on day two, sunlight turns the pink canyon walls golden. Not far from our camp, I get a feel for Neeling's zeal for caretaking the wilderness when we spend nearly an hour cleaning up an old campsite.

“Leave no trace,” Neeling repeats as we pick up potato peels, onionskins, empty beer cans and cigarette butts. For someone carrying an already heavy pack, it seems unfair to have to carry out someone else's garbage, but Neeling does it. “The second day is always the hardest,” Neeling says when the day is still cool, the colors warm and subdued, and the instant espresso is energizing me for the journey. He's reminding me that backpackers tend to ignore how their muscles and feet will feel following an unaccustomed day of toting a 45-pound pack and trodding rough country.

carrying an already heavy pack, it seems unfair to have to carry out someone else's garbage, but Neeling does it. “The second day is always the hardest,” Neeling says when the day is still cool, the colors warm and subdued, and the instant espresso is energizing me for the journey. He's reminding me that backpackers tend to ignore how their muscles and feet will feel following an unaccustomed day of toting a 45-pound pack and trodding rough country.

Neeling's feet, covered with several blisters from bad-fitting boots, start paining him early in the second day. By midafternoon, unusually hot temperatures, sore feet and the promise of water have us resting at the mouth of Slide Canyon.

Sources have told Neeling that piped-in water from a spring 3 miles up the canyon flows right across the trail at the canyon's mouth. We find nothing. With only a half-gallon of water apiece, and no water sources for another 18 miles, we hope we don't have to hike up the canyon.

Neeling scans the area and spots an anomalous green patch 300 yards into the canyon. Instead of piped water, however, we find a rusty stock tank full of old rainwater and cattails.

Neeling calls it “bilge water, the kind hikersare glad to drink when there's nothing else around.” We use up an hour and a half filtering about 2 gallons of water apiece, spending almost as much time cleaning the filter as pumping with it. That doesn't leave much time to make our planned camp spot at Eddie's Place, an old home owned by World War I veteran Edward Hatch. Hatch, who suffered from mustard-gas poisoning, homesteaded the space with a cabin and corrals just after the war. Now the Forest Service owns it.

Within a half-mile, we spot a white pipe pouring out pure water like a garden hose. Peeved and frustrated, we stand quietly for a moment. Neeling breaks the silence with a remark about the bad information on water availability he got earlier. He refuses any part of the crystal flow. Not willing to pass up good water, I top off my water bottles, and we head to Eddie's Place.

“Kanab means ‘willow’ in the Paiute language,” Neeling says on the third day as we fight a labyrinthine overgrowth of willows and tamarisks in the Kanab Creek drainage. The Paiutes were the last native people to enter the Kaibab Plateau before the Europeans. We give up eventually, and heave ourselves up on a creek bank where we find a footpath that we hope will take us to our next connection, Trail 41, located on an extended stretch of red rock called the Esplanade. This ruddy sandstone layer bends around the Jumpup Peninsula to about Lower Jumpup Spring. Though we're not sure where the hookup to 41 comes in, we obediently follow the sometimes-faint path along a drainage. The day turns hot again as it nears lunchtime, and we've seen no sign of the trail. A combination of heat and pain, plus concern that we have passed the trail junction, provokes Neeling to stop suddenly, throw down his backpack and plop down in a shady spot. He adds more layers of moleskin and duct tape to his blisters. The "Leave No Trace Master" fantasizes for a moment about leaving the boots behind as he puts on his camp shoes.

The fantasy turns to serendipity when Neeling glances upward during his bootditching dream and spots Trail 41 climbing a slope up the Esplanade. If Table Rock is the soul of the Kanab Creek Wilderness, its heart is the Esplanade. From a distance, it looks like a mild-mannered red rock sea with swells braced by rock walls reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. Once inside, however, the Esplanade is a swirling world of slickrock where terra-cotta boulders teeter atop one another and multilevel mesas invite exploration. As we pass a mesa, Neeling says, "This red rock walk-

Way is half Grand Canyon and half Colorado Plateau. The stratified walls could match any Grand Canyon vista, but the red rock topography can't escape being branded as a Colorado Plateau natural." The red rock rhythm beats its steady pace as we connect cairns stacked strategically along the walkway. Colors change, pulsing with the whim of the sun: sometimes pink, sometimes deep red, other times the hue of glowing embers. We're spellbound, enrap-tured observers of our peaceful and enchanting surroundings. Yet thirst tugs at our sleeves, demanding attention. We need to find a water pocketa depression in the slickrock full of rainwaterto rehydrate ourselves. Neeling notices a dragonfly and correctly reasons that water is nearby. We find a pool just below the trail as it descends into a small drainage. On day four, after a tiring segment of dropping into and out of several side canyons, we enter a chasm coined "the Amphitheatre.' Here we find water, more rock art and evidence of bighorn sheep. This is our last water source for the next several miles. The hike around Jumpup Point will be like a death march, Neeling warns - hot, dry and long. Just under the tip of the Jumpup Plateau, we duck under an overhang for lunch. Rock art on the ceiling indicates that Indians probably did the same centuries ago.

We spend our last night in the Kanab Creek Wilderness on a red rock overhang peering into Jumpup Canyon near Lower Jumpup Spring. As we drift off to sleep and the wind breathes heavily through the narrows of the side canyon, a huge owl Swoops a few feet above our heads. In the sky, falling stars travel as fast as the twinkling of an eye. Coyotes howl in the morning's wee hours, their cries echoing off canyon walls. I think about how intense the hike has Been. Though this terrain has not made unusually hard demands on us, the elements have: scarce water, glaring heat and the remoteness have toyed with our comfort. I start to feel a twinge of wilderness withdrawal upon our return to civilization. Neeling's land of "unreality." But that's a reality after a long trip into the secluded backcountry. All AUTHOR'S NOTE: Artifacts can provide archaeologists with valuable information and must be left undisturbed where they are found. Even touching rock art may alter its integrity. Memorializing names on the rockfall is considered vandalism and carries a hefty fine (up to $250,000, with a prison term of up to two years). Also, vandals can have their vehicles confiscated and be held responsible for repair costs to the site. The art in the Kanab Creek Wilderness is protected by monitoring.

Christine Maxa of Phoenix likes to dip in and out of reality on trails similar to the ones in the Kanab Creek Wilderness.

Steve Bruno, also of Phoenix, who has hiked extensively in the western Grand Canyon region, rates this trail as one Of the easiest, and a personal favorite.

{highway to humor} TOURIST HUMOR

Recently we asked our readers to send us tourist jokes. Here's a sample of what we got: I volunteer as a docent, greeting visitors at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. We are Nellie: "Is that fellow of yours ever going to get up the courage to propose?"

Belle: "I guess not. He's like an hourglass."

Nellie: "An hourglass?"

Belle: "Yes, the more time he gets, the less sand he has."

Constantly working to improve our collection and the appearance of the grounds. One day one of our groundskeepers was spreading decorative landscaping rocks near the museum entrance as a tour group from Minnesota was leaving. I overheard one lady exclaim to her husband as they passed by, "Will you look at that. Back home we rake leaves. Out here it is so dry, they rake rocks!"

When we pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant in Winslow, there was a young fellow telling the drivers things like: "Nice parking. . . . You got between the lines very nicely. . . . You backed into that space really well. . . ." I walked up to him and said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "The lady from the tourist council told us 'complimentary parking' was the latest trend to attract big-city tourists."

A seasonal visitor, who said he had been coming to Yuma every winter for 20 years, was asked why he always made the long trip from his northern home state. He replied, "When I got old enough to have a big problem with shoveling snow and slipping on the ice, I looked on the map for a warm place. I found Arizona and decided to heed the call of the mild."

Arizona . . . where else can tourists experience a wilder West? Dag nab it, even the tallest cacti have their arms in the air!

UNUSUAL

Arizona's spadefoot toads bury themselves in the soil and stay in a dormant state for up to two years. I had an uncle who could do the same thing. -Linda Perret Did you know that the American Indians were the first American tourists? They had reservations.

One thing about tourists is that every time you turn around, someone's taking your picture, and I take terrible pictures. I mentioned this to my therapist and he said, "Don't focus on the negative."

A father traveling around California with his small daughter decided to visit a zoo before stopping for the night. Standing in front of the tiger's cage, the dad was explaining how ferocious and strong tigers are, and the little girl was listening to him with a very serious expression. "Daddy," she said finally, "if the tiger got out of this cage and ate you up . . ."

"Yes, dear?" asked her father.

"Which bus would I take home?"

GOOD INTENTIONS

In the sack of goodies our daughter brought home on Halloween night was a box of Jello. Taped to the box was a desperately written note. It read, "I have run out of everything."

MONSTER TALES

One evening I told my husband and then 6year-old daughter Jamie about how I had stopped traffic that day on a busy road in Tucson to let a Gila monster cross safely. That Halloween, my daughter and her friends were sharing spooky stories when I overheard Jamie

PERSPECTIVE

said, "Well, once my mom was so brave that she stopped to heal a monster on the road."

HORSE TRADER

My little sister and I each had a horse, but hers was a typical Shetland pony - hard to catch, and always biting, kicking and brushing her off on fences and tree branches every chance he got.

In October 1949, on my 16th birthday, my dad asked me to haul "Pet" out north of Douglas to McNeal to sell to Charlie McBride, a well-known Sulphur Springs Valley horse trader.

"How much should I ask for him?" I asked, feeling very grown-up and responsible with my brandnew driver's license in hand.

"Either $50 or $75," Dad replied.

"What do you have to have for him?" asked McBride when I unloaded the ornery little red and white pinto gelding from the trailer.

"Either $50 or $75," I said confidently.

Without the slightest flicker of an eye, McBride opened his worn, tooled-leather wallet, counted out five $10 bills, and smiled, "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, young lady."

{reader's corner}

Javelinas have a strong family scent that helps keep the herd together. It's like that old saying, "The family that stinks together is forever linked together."

Send us your animal jokes, and we'll pay $50 for each one we use.