Ash Canyon

The trail steepens, wavers then veers toward the black, leering eye socket of the abandoned mine shaft, its menace underscored by the skull-and-crossbones warning sign.

I falter, huffing to a halt on the quartz glitter of the shattered rock dug from the mine a century ago in an arduous fit of hardscrabble optimism. I peer into the mine, a short shaft sunk into the alluring geological chaos of the Huachuca Mountains in southeast Arizona.

I pause, swaying a little, wondering at the daring and desperation that drove people to chip holes in rock in this tough, remote country, before jets and interstates made it a dappled, laid-back lure for nature lovers.

Besides, I need to catch my breath on this 5-mile climb from the trailhead in the heart of little-visited Ash Canyon to 9,466-foot Miller Peak.

Puffing, I ponder. Perhaps I've overdone. But 5 miles is not all that far, even for a paunchy, middle-aged writer. Surely, any story centered on Ash Canyon's hidden sycamores, strange shrines, glorious cottonwoods, secret hummingbirds, layered history and reclusivejaguars should include that climb through the canyon to the peak.

But perched on the slope above Ash Canyon, I wonder if I should have focused on something less arduous. Birding, maybe. I'd stayed the night before in the Casa de San Pedro, just 8 miles from the canyon mouth on the fall-crazed banks of the San Pedro River. I'd wandered at dawn through the extravagance of cottonwoods, willows and tropical birds, taking pleasure in the color saturation of first light. Birders come from all over the world to glimpse vivid tropical migrants flitting along the San Pedro and up into the precipitous canyons of the Huachucas.

Most birders head for Ramsey Canyon, but some find their way to Ash Canyon Road, which connects with State Route 92 just south of Sierra Vista. Ash Canyon Road dwindles as the canyon narrows, but remains accessible to passenger cars to the trailhead. I could have stuck mostly to the road and written a perfectly respectable story about searching for warblers in the gold glory of fall leaves along the dry creek bed.

But the embers of my youth flickered and flared, so I resolved to seek a more strenuous adventure in Ash Canyon. One sycamore led to another and before I knew it I'd decided to climb Miller Peak and see Ash Canyon from above. Soon I resume and wander past the dark mine shafts, waiting for the trail to switchback on up the mountain. Suddenly, the trail evaporates, like those vanished miners at the end of their venture capital.

I scan the slope above, certain I'll see the thread of the trail through the encroachment of brush. Nothing. I turn and look back the way I've come. I spot the trail on the opposite slope, zigzagging through the thick cover. Alas, I have zigged onto a spur leading to the mineshafts. To regain the real trail, I must backtrack to the Vivid Survival Strategy Yellow Arizona ashes in Miller Canyon still brace themselves for the harsh winters of their origins. The leaves of such deciduous trees grow a layer of cells at the stems called an abscission that cuts off the leaves' moisture. As green chlorophyll breaks down, already-present pigments of still unknown function dominate.

canyon bottom, then climb all the way back to my current altitude, still far from the ridge. My heart sinks. My legs throb. I could give up, yield to gravity and roll downhill to the trailhead. I could make notes about the birds. Write about the jaguars documented by cameras with motion detectors on nearby mountain ranges. Write about Father Francisco Eusebio Kino and how the mountain got its name. Write about the pulse of fall, the migration of birds, the concentration of characters.

Tempting. But turning, I study the slope above. Surely I can just scramble straight up to the ridge above, where my hiking map promises a trail that connects to my mislaid route to the peak. So I turn upslope, driven by the perfectstorm convergence of the male ego and a midlife crisis. I leave behind the warblers and red breasted whatnots flitting through the leafy, soothing, profuse charms of Ash Canyon, easternmost in a chain of deep cuts into the extravagant geology of the Huachuca Mountains. A crashing, venting, crunching, geologic event in the

And the Sign Says... A few miles into Ash Canyon, this sign offers a fateful choice. Go right up Lutz Canyon to the Miller Peak trailhead or left to loll about under grand sycamores in your high-clearance vehicle.

Mixed-up Ecosystems In Lutz Canyon (right) yellow Arizona ashes mingle with prickly pears, demonstrating why the Huachucas offer one of the most varied natural habitats in North America. The Spanish used the bright-red body fluids of an insect that feeds on prickly pears for a red dye so rich only royalty could use it.

The heyday of the dinosaurs forged the Huachacas. The jostling of two crustal plates between 135 and 70 million years ago resulted in a bewildering succession of spewing volcanoes, inrushing oceans and subsiding basins. This geological chaos forged the mountain's conglomerates, sandstones, shales and limestones. First, volcanoes spewed layers of lava and ash 4,000 feet thick, which then sank as the crust slumped. Later, the Gulf of California gaped open and the ocean rushed in to deposit a 9,000-foot-thick layer of limestone laced withmarine fossils. Renewed uplift finally bullied this jumble of rocks into chains of mountains, running along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Huachuas tower some 5,000 feet above the surrounding desert grasslands, forming an ecological "sky island." During the Ice Age, mammoths, ground sloths and camels wandered the oak grasslands, stalked by newly arrived Stone Age hunters.

As the Ice Age waned 10,000 years ago, the youthful Sonoran Desert plants occupied the stretches between the mountains. Many creatures retreated to the rocky arks of these sky islands, which intercepted storms swirling out of tropical Mexico. Moreover, the mountains provided a way station for tropical migrants, especially the songbirds that grace all of North America. As a result, the Huachucas boast more different types of birds, reptiles, mammals and insects than almost anywhere else in North America.

The mountains have also sustained a succession of human cultures. After the Stone Age hunters left, farmers settled along the San Pedro. For a millennium, they supplemented their crops by hunting in the Huachucas. Those complex, ditch-digging, pottery-producing cultures collapsed mysteriously in the 1400s, giving way to other people who wandered more freely and lived more simply. In addition, the hunting-gathering Apache people moved into the region to take advantage of the changing seasons and varied resources of the sky islands.

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, with more than 300 Spaniards and several hundred Mexican-Indian allies, passed just east of the Huachucas in 1540, seeking golden cities to conquer. His passage is remembered at the Coronado National Memorial on the southern side of the Huachucas, directly opposite Ash Canyon.

Next came the devout Father Kino in about 1687, seeking souls rather than gold. Along the San Pedro, the German-born priest, who wore hair shirts, slept on the ground and loved the Indians, encountered the peaceful, bean-, squashand corn-growing Sobai-puri Indians. The Spanish initially called the Huachucas the Sierra Espuela (Spur Mountains). But a 1771 map noted a stream called Guachuca that flowed from the mountains. That name, probably of Indian origin, stuck to the mountains.

Kino's arrival initiated two centuries of wrenching change. The Apaches soon gained an appetite for acquiring horses and cattle and took up raiding, triggering a war with the Spanish and their Indian allies. The Americans continued the fight when they seized the region from Mexico in 1848. The cavalry established Camp Huachuca at the foot of the mountains in about 1877. The battle to subdue the last Apache raiders raged across southeastern Arizona until Geronimo's surrender in 1886.

As soon as I get my breath, the view takes it away.

I can see perhaps 100 miles in every direction, south into Mexico, northwest to the Santa Catalina Mountains, east toward New Mexico and north to the dark, distant shape of Mount Graham

The defeat of the Apache people opened the region for settlement. Since then, the area's history has been low-key and relaxed, dominated by the off-again-on-again Army post at Fort Huachuca, ranchers, the transformation of Sierra Vista into a boom town and development of the ecotourism industry.

Historic ranches have yielded to subdivisions and bed and breakfasts. For instance, the Rail Oaks Ranch was originally built by the Weber family, who got rich making pencils. But now it's operated as a cozy bed and breakfast by a Sierra Vista judge and his artist wife, Donna Ramaeker.

As it turns out, Ramaeker painted a mural of Jesus inside Ash Canyon's most controversial landmark, the outsized Our Lady of the Sierras shrine overlooking the canyon's entrance. Built by Gerald and Pat Chouinard in 1998 to the dismay of some of the neighbors, the shrine includes a waterfall, a 75-foot-high Celtic cross, a 31-foot statue of the Virgin Mary and a stone chapel.

Admission to the chapel is free daily from 9 A.M. to sunset. I think of the chapel as I toil up the difficult hill. Maybe I should have focused on the chapel or at least prayed for guidance.

Stopping often to find a route up the steepening slope, I come to a thicket of scrub oak. Soon, I'm crawling along on my hands and knees, scraped and bleeding. The thicket detours me to a long wall of rock. But I manage to find a shattered crack in the wall and claw my way up it, not looking down. Atop the wall, I stand unsteadily, bleeding and winded. I can no longer tell how far it is to the top, but I'm past the point of no return. For all I know, the top is just some scrub-oak Twilight Zone delusion. But I'm committed now.

A short distance above the rock wall, I come across a faint game trail. Praise the lord. No more hands and knees. An hour later, I climb atop a pile of boulders and stare down at a perfectly good trail. I want to dance a jig, but I'm too wobbly.

The trail leads on to junction with the Miller Peak trail rising out of Ash Canyon. Here, I hesitate once again. It's another mile to the peak. It's getting late. I should flow downhill and sit a spell where I can contemplate the frailty of life and the swelling of the male ego. But for some reason, I head for the peak. Nearly 45 minutes later, I stagger onto a great altar of stone on Miller Peak. Later I calculate I climbed 4,000 feet in 5 miles.

As soon as I get my breath, the view takes it away. I can see perhaps 100 miles in every direction, south into Mexico, northwest to the Santa Catalina Mountains, east toward New Mexico and north to the dark, distant shape of Mount Graham, at the foot of which Billy the Kid killed his first man. The view encompasses a vast sweep of nature, history and geology.

I subside onto a rock, overwhelmed by fatigue and awe. The 40mile-an-hour wind gusts chill my sweat-damp shirt, but I hardly notice. Almost, I can see the world like a mountain, all wind and space and sky and the dance of the earth.

A vivid yellow bird flits into a wind-tormented Douglas fir in front of me. The fluff of yellow seems utterly out of place on this peak so far from the leaf-song solace of cottonwoods. Maybe he's a warbler. He hesitates for a flicker then hurtles himself down the slope-back toward Ash Canyon. A yellow warbler or a Wilson's warbler? No. Maybe a goldfinch. I am too tired to decide.

But now I study the fir, twisted into a metaphor for the wind by its hard life on this high peak. Such stunted, persistent survivors can last more than 1,000 years on these peaks, where it's too harsh and sparse to sustain a forest fire.

I find this obscurely comforting. It helps me not think about the 4,000 feet back down. Al Aleshire is editor of Arizona Highways. Native Arizonan Paul Gill of Phoenix hiked from sycamore-lined Ash Canyon to pine-covered Miller Peak and near the summit encountered a rare October snowstorm.

arizona fall color guide

Jacob Lake to Grand Canyon Lodge SR 67

Drives You don't have to lace up your hiking boots to catch fall leaves, simply fasten your seat belts and hit the state's highways, back roads and railroads.

To find ideal fall color cruising, match the red-circled numbers of the route description to the corresponding numbers of the route description to the corresponding numbers and highlighted routes on the map.