Venturing Into Wildness

Touching Wildness, Rugged and Remote

East Clear Creek cuts a deep, challenging path above the Mogollon Rim Text and Photographs by Nick Berezenko

Just northeast of Pine, atop the 8,077-foot-high bubble of Baker Butte, I watch the approaching storm. Ranks of blue clouds pile up above the swath of green forest beneath me. The largest continuous ponderosa pine forest in the world rolls out forever, and the storm promises to engulf it.

Feeling the first splotchy pellets of raindrops hit, I am at this moment-in spite of the grandiose panorama at my feet-thinking of East Clear Creek to the north of me. For when a raindrop falls, a matter of mere inches can determine entirely different routes of travel for the precious water. Depending upon the vagaries of wind and weatherupdrafts, currents, elevation-if the rain is blow anywhere onto the southern slope of this little mountain that I'm on, it'll quickly tumble off the precipitous lip of the Mogollon Rim on which the mountain perches. Below the 2,000-foot-high escarpment, the water will soon meld into one of numerous drainages heading directly south for the desert surrounding Phoenix. But if it falls just a few inches north, it'll undergo a much different journey-a long, circuitous odyssey that will take it either through the Verde Valley to the west or the wind-blown plains of Winslow to the north before eventually reaching the same desert. If the rain settles onto the northwest quadrant of the butte, it will wind up in wild and woolly West Clear Creek-a canyon deep, remote and quite spectacular. But if the rain inches east, it takes a more curious courseif slightly less gaudy, at least much more accessible. This, then, is the story of the lesser, but nevertheless big-hearted, brother. The wonderful, cantankerous stream known as East Clear Creek.

At first you don't even know that it's there. On the spongy, fern-covered slopes of Baker Butte, no water runs. No rills, no tendrils spring. In the strewn forest compost, all precipitation suffuses underground, and where it first appears aboveground offers quite a revelation and a surprise.

Set in a deep bowl ringed by pines and aspens, Potato Lake-just about 2 miles northeast of the butte-depicts the classic picture postcard-view of a mountain lake. One of the few natural lakes on the Rim, it's an ideal spot for picnicking, for lazing the afternoon away watching butterflies flit among the purple locusts in the spring. Or in autumn, listening to the aspen leaves tam-bourining down in showers of gold coins. During the night, campers hear the eerie, melodious bugling of elk during the fall rut. The shallow, round pond of Potato Lake forms the first real water below Baker Butte. Actually a basin spring, it gives birth to East Clear Creek, though officially that doesn't happen until a mile northeast of the lake. Here, where Potato Lake Draw and Quak-ing Aspen Canyon meet in a quiet pool, East Clear Creek begins.

On a drive four months earlier-it was a brilliantly sunny spring morning-1 had reached down and cupped a handful of cold water out of the pool. Looking down on the smooth surface that I'd disturbed, 1 watched it return to quietness, to a still mirror once again, reflecting soaring ponderosas and drifting clouds. Even though I was by the side of a road, I was again in wildness. Marvelously strange country, this Mogol-lon Rim. The deceptively difficult terrain can fool you. Initially you may think it's flat forest, the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. But then you discover that the Rim actually slopes gradually to the north. All the water that runs on this barely noticeable declination cuts long, parallel channels, deep fur-rows that quickly become incised little canyons. Eventually, by hook or crook, myr-iad canyons meet and, like a swelling sym-phony, form the larger drainages like East Clear Creek. But before they do, each forms its own Lost World, its own moist hideaway where pristine purple monkshood, blood-red cinquefoil and royal-blue lupines bloom, and deer, coyotes, turkeys, elk, bears-all manner of wild denizens-hide and roam.

For the first 8 miles of its run down from the confluence pool, burbling East Clear Creek sashays through open meadows filled in June with the splashy yellow centers of oxeye daisies.

Shortly before Jones Crossing, 2 miles southeast of Clints Well, the creek walls begin rising up to form a canyon, but just below the crossing the creek throws you another curve. It entirely disappears. It goes underground beneath a wide, rubble-strewn watercourse of bleached streambed gravel, rounded river boulders and brachiopod fossils. As the canyon continues to deepen, the creekbed remains crunchingly bone-dry for 7 more miles, until it reaches Big Dry Wash. The Battle of Big Dry Wash occurred in 1882 when most Arizonans held their breath that the Apache Wars had finally ended. On July 6, a band of about 75 renegade Apaches broke out from the San Carlos Indian Reservation. They marauded north, killing isolated settlers and stealing cattle. Troops were dispatched from all corners of the state, and the Indians fled onto the Rim.

On July 17, the soldiers caught up to them at East Clear Creek near what is now the end of the dry watercourse and the upper reaches of Blue Ridge Reservoir. Peering through a dense tangle of mossdraped pines and firs, the sharp-eyed trooper scouts somehow discerned that the renegades waited about 700 yards away on the opposite side of the steep canyon.

Flanking parties were dispatched to find a way down the almost impassable pitches and up the opposite precipices. They did make it up the other side, and so successful was their reverse ambush that at the end of the day, after a furious tree-to-tree firefight in which 8,000 rounds were exchanged, only one trooper was mortally wounded. At least 20 Apaches lay dead and the rest had fled back to the reservation. The battle holds significance as the last major conflict between the U.S. Cavalry and the Apaches. Today, navigating 4-mile-long Blue Ridge Reservoir by boat or canoe compares to passing through a Chinese dragon. The narrow lake twists and turns upon itself in serpentine folds and oxbows, while the nearby banks on either side rise so steeply that the majestic 100-foot-high Douglas firs climb on each other's shoulders. The reservoir appears particularly lovely at morning, when there's a chill in the air and the fog starts to lift off the water. Ducks and coots skim silently across the surface, and a great blue heron flaps its slow, great wings, momentarily flashing golden in a shaft of sunlight penetrating into the canyon.

Built by the Phelps Dodge Corporation in 1962 as part of a complicated water-exchange arrangement that allowed the company to mine copper at Morenci, the 160-foot-high Blue Ridge Dam backs up one of the prime trout fisheries in the state. Because of the steep banks, fishermen are mainly boaters. So the dam has transformed East Clear Creek into its fourth-and perhaps most quixotic manifestation-that of a cold, deep, azuregreen ribbon, an entity half-canyon, half-lake.

East of the dam, East Clear Creek returns to what it once was: a hiker's canyon and a challenge. Severe rock cliffs appear, and, beneath them, somnolent deep pools ringed by upright, congregated coneflowers. Here, gaining access to the creek is difficult. Once past the bridge at the confluence of Barbershop Canyon, 2 miles east of Blue Ridge Reservoir, the wilderness trails that take you down to the streambed are rugged and not for the fainthearted. Kinder Crossing, Horse Crossing, Mack's Crossing, Soldier trails-all require nearly vertical 600-foot-or-so descents.

The few backpackers, dayhikers and fishermen who brave the trails are rewarded by hard-won solitude and exultation. Wild and undisturbed 4-pound trout will still take a well-placed fly. And the silver-flashing, rainbow-speckled fish still bend rods across clear graveled pools.

Here, East Clear Creek has finally come into its own. It's as glorious a canyon as those seeking the untrammeled wild could wish for. Deep, remote and ever-flowing, it gives its big heart to those who win it.

By the time it reaches Soldier

Trail at the edge of the Coconino National Forest, East Clear Creek has completed slightly less than half of its 90-mile run to Winslow and the Little Colorado River. Beyond Soldier Trail, it becomes mostly terra incognita, seen by few and rarely visited. Soon the creek will run out of the pine forest and will flow beyond the ApacheSitgreaves National Forests boundary as well. It enters private land, formerly the old Gene Autry ranch, now the property of the Hopi Tribe.

In this portion, the creek will undergo several more spectacular transformations. It will: become a bare rock canyon hiding Sinagua Indian fortresses and ruins; get lost in a convoluted and intricate maze below the shadow of Sunset Mountain; turn into a magnificent, close-walled slot canyon. And finally, just before Winslow, East Clear Creek becomes a reservoir once again. Eventually its waters will even run through the Grand Canyon. A fitting place to come to its end. Al