Alps of the Desert

Alps in the Desert

Seen from the stratosphere, the Hualpai Mountains are a startling patch of dark blue-green against the tawny dessert. Westward the giddy crags of the Black Mountains, burned into mammoth clinkers, are jumbled against the Colorado; far to the south the river's course is lost in a maze of blue-white ridge lines; the northern horizon is the great sweep of cliffs beyond the Grand Canyon; to the east a succession of arid hills and valleys loses its monotonous pattern on a horizon broken by the faint outlines of Bill Williams Mountain and the San Franciscos.That is how I first saw them these desert Alps, their highest peaks poking through a cool forest blanket, fingerlike, cupping the greenest of summit valleys, their wrinkled chaparral skirts spread out against a vast grim background of seared wasteland. It was wartime, and an immediate exploration was out of the question, but mentally I filed away “mountains south of Kingman” as one of the places to visit at the first chance; in the same way I had been introduced to the Kofa Mountains, the Black Mountains, and California's Wonderland of Rocks, all of which show up magnificently from the air, and none of which suffers at all by close inspection.

No visible scars of civilization were on the Hualpais, but from Kingman a thin white line, winding through the canyons until it disappeared in the forest, suggested that the way into the range might not be too difficult.

“Not too difficult” proved to be a poor description of the excellent road into Hualpai Mountain Park. It does have an ignominious beginning an unmarked turnoff bumping over the railroad tracks a couple of hundred yards east of the inspection station on Highway 66 at the eastern edge of Kingman as if reserved for that iconoclastic breed of western travelers who painstakingly shun the beaten path; but in a few rods a faded, half-legible sign welcomes the stranger on behalf of the U. S. Forest Service and the State of Arizona, and the rest of the route is nicely graded, with only three or four stream crossings to halt a car for a moment.

The road rises in easy curves from the sloping flats, with their gay mounds of golden desert senna, into foothills decorated in spring with the purple blossoms of beavertail and the tall, waving wands of beard-tongue, pentstemon cyananthus most beautiful of all the pentstemons. Indigo larkspur appears at the level of the first pines, along with the wild sweet pea. The brilliant little claret cup cactus is found farther up on sunny rocks, even on some of the highest points in the range.

A mile or two of woodland road leads to the stone house of the park custodian, where a left turn leads to picnic grounds and to Pine Lake and its lodge. The fork to the right goes into the improved campgrounds and the cabin area, where immaculate private and public cabins are spaced picturesquely in the oak and pine woods.

The limit of car travel is just at the beginning of the real glory of the Hualpais. Beckoning are the brown granite heights, where snow lies late in the crevices and crowds of virgin aspen march up the sheltered couloirs almost to the very summits.

The trail is a repetition of the road—unseen, unmarked at the start, virtually a hiker's highway after a hundred yards. To find it one must go left (roughly south) from the little road through the camp ground, to the crest of the first small ridge. The trail gradually takes form as one proceeds up the ridge, and in a little way the first of many helpful signs points up a little side path which ends in a stone staircase to the Lookout, from which an unbroken panorama of the mountains ahead is seen. Aspen Peak, the highest point in sight, hides Potato Patch, the lovely summit valley bounded on its far side by Hualpai and Hayden Peaks.

From this point the trail plunges into the deep forest of aspen, pine, and fir, from which occasional openings afford exciting glimpses of the cliffs and snow-gullies of Aspen Peak. Engineered switchbacks rise easily to the crest of Aspen Peak ridge. A short distance beyond is a side trail marked "Aspen Peak;" it crosses a dangerously rotten log bridge over a tinkling brook, makes its way up the slopes, but never gets to the summit.

The main trail, showing little evidence of recent use, goes on a few yards to a junction, the left fork going down into the grassy, flowery "Potato Patch" and following this Alpine valley around to the left until the stream plunges off the heights in a series of cascades that end in Pine Lake, far below. Nearby a rusted stove and a ruined fence are all that remain of the Patch's last settlement.

The pathway climbs out of the lower end of the flat and continues northeast, then north through a grand forest of giant fir and pine, and finally directly west across the forbidding north face of Aspen Peak, past little wispy waterfalls and shade-loving wildflowers.

The right hand trail from the junction, proceeding southward, goes up through moist meadows and sunflecked aspen woods to Hualpai Peak, 8233 feet high— the highest place in western Arizona. The last stage of the easy climb follows a stairway carved out of the summit rocks and provided with a log handrail. The top is a pile of smooth granite slabs, ideal for lunching and resting, overhanging the fresh greenery of Potato Patch on the one side and the contrasting barren sweep of desert far, far below on the other.

Hualpai Mountain Park merits more than a stay of a night or two, but for the person with limited time it may be helpful to know that with an early start all the principal peaks can be climbed easily in a day, and the scenic loop around Aspen Peak can be included on the return walk from Potato Patch. Whether you go for a week-end or a month, you are sure to keep with you for a long time the memory of cool glades detached from the lowland summer, sweet bird-songs echoing down from trees and rocks, blue smoke of early morning campfires curling up out of the woodland twilight into level rays of the sun.