Back Road Adventure

Midday on a sunny Sunday in late June, the hottest, driest month in southeastern Arizona. I'm parked beside Forest Service Route 61 on the backside of the Huachuca Mountains, just a few miles north of the Mexican border. The thermometer flirts with 90° F.

I watch a band of boisterous teenage boys scramble to the top of a large boulder just below Bear Creek Crossing. Wrestling for positionlaughing, punching, pulling they leap like frogs spooked from a bank into a deep, cool plunge pool below a waterfall.

I envy the boys. I envy their high spirits, their recklessness. I envy their wild, joyous splashing in that cool mountain pool. Suddenly, they swarm over a pickup parked nearby, filling the cab, overflowing the bed, and roar off down the road in a cloud of dust.

I take note of my surroundings. I've traveled about 38 miles south-southeast of Sonoita, where I started this morning. At an elevation between 5,000 and 6,000 feet, I'm in an oak-piñonjuniper woodland. Driving over undulating land contours coming around the mountain, I'd seen small stands of Apache pines at slightly higher elevations. Rare in Arizona except down here, they're related to ponderosa pines.

The drive along the south side of the Huachuca Mountains one of my favorite back roads any time of the year describes an arc of about 48 miles, running south from Sonoita on State Route 83 and ending at the Coronado National Memorial Visitors Center five miles west of State 92. The memorial commemorates explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's entry from Mexico into Arizona some 450 years ago. From Sonoita the route begins as blacktop, winding across open plains on the outskirts of town, past scattered ranches, each with a small horse barn and corral.

From time to time, I catch a glimpse of the abandoned New Mexico and Arizona Railroad right-of-way. Thickly overgrown, the raised grade is discernible only by carved notches where trestles once spanned arroyos.

After seven miles, the road becomes gravel. Narrow in places and sometimes a bit of a washboard, it's slow going on the rougher stretches. My top speed for most of the way is 15 miles per hour, but for its entire length the road is a cinch for any high-clearance car or truck. My one caution: check local weather conditions before starting out, particularly if you're inclined to take off on side roads.

Except where lines of acid-green cottonwoods trace a dry wash or where watered shrubs and trees define a windbreak alongside a ranch house, the landscape is dun-colored. In a few weeks, though, roiling anvil-shaped clouds will billow in late afternoon above the tallest peaks of the Huachucas, Chiricahuas, Santa Ritas, and Dragoons. Stitched across darkening skies, lightning bolts accompanied by deep thunder rumbles will announce the arrival of the summer monsoon season.

And overnight, these high plains will become a sea of green.

EXPLORE THUNDER MOUNTAIN AND EXPERIENCE A PICTURE-BOOK LANDSCAPE

Huachuca! Thunder. Thunder Mountain, the Chiricahua Apache people called this place, perhaps for the seasonal storms that every year in July surge up out of the southeast and continue sometimes into the first week of September. But the thunder rolls I hear today are man-made: Army artillery practice at Fort Huachuca on the other side of the mountain.

At Parker Canyon Lake, about 29 miles into the drive, State 83 ends and, with a sharp left turn, FS 61 begins. Coronado National Memorial is still 18 miles away. From this point, the road rises steeply away from Parker Canyon, dips to cross Scotia, then Sunnyside Canyon, and climbs, after about three miles, to a high plateau overlooking the San Rafael Valley sweeping away to the south.

The creeks in the canyon bottoms intermittent streams, flowing only after spring thaws or summer rains are dry now. Only Bear Creek, where the swimmers cavorted, contains live water. Not a lot of it, too, needs to be replenished by summer rains but, in this country, enough water to get in up to your neck is plenty.

Leaving Bear Creek, the road crosses several unnamed side drainages before coming to Oversite Canyon and FS 771 which heads up the canyon to the north. At the end of the road, a signboard announces, are trails leading into the Huachucas.

A few miles beyond Oversite Canyon, the road begins a switchback climb toward Montezuma Pass. Narrow and winding, with a steep drop to the south, this section requires caution. Vehicles hauling trailers are advised not to try it at all.

Montezuma Pass is on the west boundary of the Coronado National Memorial. At an elevation of 6,575 feet, the pass offers a picture-book view of the region. South to the Mexican border and west to the Patagonia Mountains lies the broad San Rafael Valley, quintessential high-desert grassland surrounded by oakand pine-clad mountains. Visible to the naked eye are Mexico's Sierra Madres on the southern horizon, Baboquivari Peak, 80 miles to the west, and Mount Hopkins in the Santa Rita range near the town of Patagonia.

Near here, Coronado led an expedition into what later became Arizona and New Mexico. The San Pedro River Valley, lying to the east of Montezuma Pass, was his line of march. His quest was gold.

As I pull back onto FS 61 to descend to park headquarters, fading sunlight washes across a rugged escarpment just west of the parking lot. The rock flares amber to gold then red. Did Coronado, I wonder, catch the glint of gold in these hills?

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

Back-road travel can be hazardous if you are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling in the desert or in the high country be sure you and your vehicle are in top shape and your gear includes at minimum the following: