No Man's Land Below the Border

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JANUARY, 1935 No Man's Land Below the

EDITOR'S NOTE: Reports from the Pinacate region indicate that the earthquake of December 31, was centered there. Perhaps old Pinacate is coming back to life. The following story is continued from last month.

eroded many small gullies down its slopes.

BOUT two miles from the abrupt foot of Cerro Colorado all vegetation around the crater ceases and a small lichen-like plant takes its place. The car runs smoothly nearly everywhere on this carpet, but beware of any trail that does not have some vegetation upon it, as the footing is soft volcanic ashes or cinder and it is easy to become trapped in it, which will cost an hour or more hard work to get going again. As we gradually approach the foot of the crater, several large prong-horn antelope scamper away from their lunch of small lichen plants and then turn to look at the intruder. Stamping their feet, they gradually come closer and closer, and if there is no sign of life in the car or small quick movement of a hand or foot, they come so near that for them tragedy has often resulted. However, as we are on a joy-ride to see Nature and paint it on indelible films of chemical origin, we clap our hands and they scamper away to the hiding places of Pinacates wild domains.

Pinacate itself lies about twelve miles away to the southwest. Black rivers flow down its sides, frozen streams whose congealing point was the heat of a blast furnace and whose downward rush was stopped only by the vast expanse of the flat desert which received them and gave them room to spread out to paper thickness. One of the most peculiar arroyos the writer saw on a trip up to the top of Pinacate was a smooth-sided, deep and narrow channel that ran for miles up the slopes of the great Pinacate volcano. Two scientists whose technical knowledge was largely confined to bugs, animals and plants, were puzzled that in such a dry country a solid, hard rock could be so erod ed by water. The story was before them but they could not read. The black lava which poured down the slopes had been at such a temperature that when the edges were cooled by contact with the centuries old lava beneath, the center of the stream still ran swiftly downward and as the lava gradually cooled from the sides to the center it left the last remaining river's hot flow to rush to the foot of the mountain, taking a few chunks of the already cooled but broken sides of its banks with it. In other words, the river poured down the mountain and suddenly was shut off at its source, but whatever was liquid followed the law of gravitation and what was solid stayed, and there it is today, exactly as it was the day Vulcan shut off the watery fire and opened up another factory farther north on old Pinacate's sides.

force our car into the lava and cinder beds to the west, from Crater Colorado, we will be able to go about five miles nearer to Pinacates foot and thus save a lot of walking. This we do at the risk of broken springs, axles, or planing off the lower part of the engine on some sharp lava rock.

We have not said much about camping for the simple reason there is not much to say. You stop the car, throw off the bed rolls and there you are. A fire of dead ironwood branches will make heat enough to cook all the grub in the outfit and still be hot enough in the morning to cook the coffee and hot cakes, if any. The most wonderful place to sleep in the world is a nice slight depression, almost a small wash, in which the soft cinders have been collecting for years. Roll the bed with the head to the north so the magnetic currents will draw the tiredness from the head down to the feet, and then roll in. If you are able to keep awake one minute you will notice the absolute silence in a land that once bellowed and roared for year after year. Just before you fall asleep you cannot help thinking of what forces may be even then at work far below you, forces that will some day burst forth without warning and blow the ground where you lie to the sky as a new Pinacate is in the making. Just before you fall asleep the silence is so intense that you will swear you heard a subterranean grunt as if old Pinacate had awakened and might start something that very night. The constellations pass in review in the southern horizon as they parade in the infinite depths of space. You will sleep as you never slept before.

Cerro Colorado is an isolated cone of yellow and white-ish red cinders that spouted many days before it built up its three thousand foot diameter mound and its two hundred foot pit connecting with Vulcan's workshop.

Its sides were very soft for a long while and the few rains that fell since it was finished with its uproar have

If we take danger in our teeth and

JANUARY, 1935 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 5 Border Exploring the Mysteries of Age-old Infernos and Virgin Terrain Man Seldom Sees

Papago Indian cowboys, the last humans you will seen enroute to the remote region described by the author. The Papagos occupy the largest reservation in the United States. They roam far from their homes, however, and in the picture above they are ready to weed out horses and break them to the saddle.

In the climb to the top of Pinacate you might have noticed a long ridge about two or three miles to the north. It is only one hundred and fifty feet high but about one and one-half miles long. It is apparently only a low ridge but it might afford a good view in all directions. Pack the large view camera on your back like the mushers do their packs in Alaska, and start.

On arrival at the foot of the long ridge, it is apparent that it is composed of hard compressed yellow cinders and not much lava. The cinders lie in almost level parallel lines like sandstone. A few grunts and cuss words on stumbling over a large chunk of cinder and a rest or two will bring you to the top; but is it the top? It is a good thing you were tired and not on the run as you arrived. You stop and shrink back a little. There is only one other place that gives one the same impression, and that is the first look down into the Grand Canyon.

The supposed top of the ridge hides a gigantic hole difficult to describe. It is a hole that for size is larger than any in North America, to the writer's knowledge, and surpassed only by the craters of the Hawaiian Islands. The size of the hole gradually dawns upon the explorer as its depths unfold before the gaze and its wide, graceful sweep, in almost perfect circular form, curves away and back to the observer. The one hundred and fifty foot ridge has turned into a hole in the earth nine hundred and more feet in depth and to the opposite side it is over six thousand five hundred feet by measurement with an instrument.

The giant cactus grove on the flat floor of the pit is barely discernible, and the two hundred vertical feet of its complete circular sides seem like a mere rimrock that anyone could jump off of and not notice the height.

To see from actual observance the character and size of this mighty pit, the writer invites the reader on his walk around it. There is a well-worn path around the crater, but this trail was not made by human feet. Hoofs formed it as the big mountain sheep walked in single file in their search for feed, and have done so for centuries.

As we walk around the crater, the side on the right, or east, seems to be much higher and more vertical than the rest of the walls around the pit. We have to gradually climb perhaps two hundred feet higher to the highest edge of the circular rim, gradually curving around in an easy movement so that it is difficult to realize that we are walking in a circle.

At the top of the rim we stop to rest, and see an eagle at play. He is not doing anything but having some eagle's fun. There is a breeze blowing from the gulf, distant twenty miles, and the eagle spreads his wings to their fullest extent, while the breeze takes him up (Continued on page 19)