Ten Great Horse Trails

Great Horse Trails

Not much more than a century ago in these parts, men were measured by the horses they rode and the way they rode them. Today only their trails remain. Some are forever grassed over. Some are being rediscovered and re-marked by militias of volunteers. Finding the best horse trails in Arizona is an impossible task. As Emory Henderson of the Arizona Horsemen's Association said, "A person could ride every day of his life on Arizona trails and never see them all." In my quest for the best spots to ride, I talked to more than 100 people, including the Elgin ranch manager who told me, "I don't like horses. I don't even like people who like horses." I rode. I tried to find trails with stock water and trails on which the average rider would not likely come to serious harm. I aimed for diversity. My final criterion was simply my desire to return. Here, then, are the trails that cast a spell on me. So tighten your cinches. Stretching before you are trails I hope will make you long to return.

Mount Baldy Wilderness

Loop Trail, 14 miles At 11,403 feet above the sea, the air is glassy and brittle. Spread around us is a blue battlement of mountains. Far and away to the north, blond plains bleach in autumn's waning sun. Our little party sits on sun-warmed rocks, eating sandwiches and cookies, drink-ing coffee. Our horses get the health food. After the ascent from Sheep Crossing, they are content to stand and blow.

The trail through deep forests is steep, rocky, and slick when wet, but not too difficult for horses that are shod, in top shape, and accustomed to high altitudes. More dangerous are the afternoon thun-derstorms that blast the mountain in summer. In July or August, start out early and carry a slicker.

Access to the trail is from State Route 273, past Sunrise Lake. You can start from Gabaldon Horse Camp or Sheep Crossing. You can also get there via Phelps Cabin Trail. Day rides are limited to 12 persons; overnight camping, to six. The 7,079-acre Mount Baldy Wilderness is heavily used by hikers in summer. The best time for your pilgrimage is October when colors are at their peak. A good map/guide is available from the Springerville Ranger District, P.O. Box 640, Springerville, AZ 85938; telephone (602) 333-4372.

Superstition Wilderness

Weavers Needle Circuit, 18 miles We trailer the horses to First Water Trailhead off State Route 88 north of Apache Junction and head toward the Boulder Canyon and Peralta trails, which lead us into the heart of the 159,780-acre Superstition Wilderness. Weavers Needle looms over us as we circle it and return by way of Black Top Mesa. It is a long 18 miles.

It is December, and water is running in every wash. The desert smells like an herb bath. Despite heavy use of the 180-mile trail system, we pass only a few backpackers quietly paddling along between the abrupt formations of volcanic rock. Almost impossible, here in this thorny solitude, to imagine you are just a few miles east of Phoenix. Amidst saguaros and cholla, the spectral past materializes. Respect the silence. It was here when ancient hunters stalked deer; when prehistoric Salado people built homes, raised corn; when, in the late 19th century, "Dutchman" Jacob Waltz claimed he found a lost Spanish mine.

Wear a brush jacket. Ride in winter or spring. Watch for snakes. You will need a stout surefooted horse, a big canteen, and a map/brochure from the Mesa Ranger District, 26 N. Macdonald St., P.O. Drawer A, Mesa, AZ 85201; telephone (602) 379-6446.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument Canyon del Muerto, about 20 miles one-way

Our unshod ponies wring their tails. They want to run and splash in Chinle Wash. Eddie Begay tells me the hands painted on the canyon walls by the Navajo are a kind of signature. We stop often to ponder petroglyphs, Anasazi ruins, and Navajo pictographs of Ute warriors and conquistadors. Eddie grew up in his family's sheep camp in this canyon where people have lived for 2,000 years. He is a horse wrangler/guide.

It is already noon. Canyon del Muerto absorbs time. A ghostly coyote slinks past a cliff dwelling 300 feet above us. Bedded on thermals, a pair of golden eagles scans the tumbled rocks. Sheep bells ring like wind chimes from a grove of cottonwoods. A shaggy pony rustles through a thousand-year-old cornfield. The "Canyon of the Dead" is alive. At an altitude of 5,500 feet, the canyon is cold in winter, sunny and brisk in fall and spring, warm in summer. Horseback is the best way to see either Canyon del Muerto or Canyon de Chelly. You can haul your own horses and go with a Navajo guide or rent horses from one of two licensed horse operators. For information, contact Superintendent, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, P.O. Box 588, Chinle, AZ 86503; telephone (602) 674-5436.

Blue Range Primitive Area

Foote Creek Trail, 16 miles Ask any seasoned Arizona outdoorsman what his favorite country is. Chances are he'll say, with a faraway look, "The Blue." Remote, rugged, and remorseless, its brakes and canyons and grassy mesas rock the cradle of legend. The Blue is a tough old sister. Be ready for her.

Naturalist Aldo Leopold wrote in Sand County Almanac: “To the south lay the tangled canyons of the Blue River, full of whitetails, wild turkeys, and wilder cattle.” Game still thrives in this roadless enclave, which ranges in elevation from about 5,520 to 9,200 feet.

Foote Creek Trail is part of a 200-plus-mile trail system in the 187,410 acres managed as the Blue Range Primitive Area. Start from the Hannagan Meadow Trailhead, 23 miles south of Alpine. The early miles follow a foot trail and old logging road through dense forests until one-half mile beyond P-Bar Lake, where the trail narrows and drops into the Foote Creek drainage.

You'll need to be picked up at the Blue Camp Trailhead on Forest Service Road 281, unless you want to retrace your route on horseback. May through October is the best time to go. Maps and sound advice are available from the Alpine Ranger District, P.O. Box 469, Alpine, AZ 85920; telephone (602) 339-4384.

Muleshoe Ranch Scenic Vista and Bass/Hot Springs Loop, 8.5 miles

Coyotes dance through Hot Springs Canyon. Daybreak halos the broken ridgeline above me. I am submerged to my nose in a galvanized hot tub outside Muleshoe Ranch headquarters. Last night I slept in a 100-year-old casita and woke to the past. Here early-day health seekers soaked in "Hooker's Hot Springs" after a sooty ride on the Southern Pacific Railroad to Willcox and 30 miles by stagecoach to the spa. For a century, the ranch's owners came and went - at least one was shot in a dispute with a neighbor. In 1982 The Nature Conservancy brought peace to the Muleshoe at last. The 49,000acre Muleshoe Ranch Cooperative Management Area is operated jointly by the conservancy, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. Within its solitude are found the headwaters of seven perennial streams; rare riparian forests of cottonwood, willow, sycamore, and velvet ash; five species of rare native fish; and 190 recorded species of birds, including the gray and zonetailed hawks. (See Arizona Highways, October '89) Check road conditions before you go. For information about Trails and horse tours sponsored by the conservancy, contact Muleshoe Ranch Preserve, RR 1, Box 1542, Willcox, AZ 85643; telephone (602) 586-7072.

Monument Valley

From 10 to 20 miles Monument Valley may be the most familiar landscape in the world, but it looks different on this blustery spring day when the cold wind seeps down my jacket collar. I have waited 40 years to return to this land of sunlight and shadow. In an easy lope over soft red dirt, I remember the summer I spent with friends exploring ruins, riding down the Tsegi to Keet Seel with old Pipeline, who cut me a willow switch to use on my skinny Navajo pony. I don't need a switch today. I can hardly hold back the big black roping horse. It wants to run, to sweat the winter out of its system. It is happy, feeling the call of spring. My attorney friend on the shaggy Appaloosa is calling herself my "Navajo guide." Our real guide is a high school junior who thinks we are as ancient as the monuments and a little crazy. "Most people come in summer," he says. He works for one of the local stables that will water and corral your horses or provide you with mounts and a guide. Plan ahead for this trip. It's a long way from home. For detailed information, consult the Monument Valley National Park Headquarters, Monument Valley, UT 84536; telephone (801) 727-3287.

Nothing could have prepared Army bride Martha Summerhayes for her view from the Mogollon Rim in September, 1874. After an "insufferably hot" journey up the Colorado River by stern-wheeler, a "dreary" ride across the Mohave Desert, and a "blood-curdling" climb from Camp Verde to the Rim, Summerhayes wrote in Vanished Arizona: "The scenery was wild and grand; in fact, beyond all that I had ever dreamed of; more than that, it seemed so untrod, so fresh, somehow, and I do not suppose that even now, in the day of railroads and tourists, many people have had the view of the Tonto Basin which we had one day from the top of the Mogollon range."

Gen. George Crook's old trail is still, arguably, the best horse ride in Arizona. Built as part of a military supply route from Fort Whipple to Fort Verde to Camp Apache in 1872-73, the full 220-mile trail hasbeen ridden by only two people in modern times: Barbara Wolfe and Mary Lou Wilson, both of Prescott. Much of the route between Dewey and Cottonwood Wash near Show Low is blazed with chevrons nailed on trees. (See Arizona Highways, July '82) Research your ride before you go. Contact the Fort Verde Museum, P.O. Box 397, Camp Verde, AZ 86322; telephone (602) 567-3275. To inquire about a permit to ride on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, call the tribal game and fish department at (602) 338-4385.

Heber-Reno Sheep Driveway

100-plus miles This unmarked trail is for pathfinders with two weeks to travel and one to get lost. The sheep and pack burros that use the trail know every turn, water hole, and bed ground, but it may not be as easy for you.

The historic stock driveway is still used in spring and fall by bands of sheep, which have the right-of-way. Starting from Blue Point off State Route 87 northeast of Phoenix, you climb Stewart Mountain and pass through desert to Sugarloaf. There you attempt to ford Sycamore Creek and head north. Rest your horses at Sunflower for the ride over Reno Pass in the Mazatzals. Camp again on Tonto Creek and make ready for the long dry roadless trek across the Sierra Anchas. Wooded hills and grassy draws will lead you, at last, into Pleasant Valley. From Young it's a steady climb through timber and across brushy ridges into the high counTry where black bears and lions have the right-of-way. You'll want someone to pick you up at Sheep Creek Point, where you top out on the Mogollon Rim, unless you intend to keep going another 100 miles to Big Cienega. Call home from Forest Lakes Estates south of Heber on State 260.

Empire/Cienega Conservation Area Cienega Creek, about 20 miles round-trip

Stockman that he was, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino must have thought he was in paradise when he delivered 150 head of cattle to Rancheria Sonoita on Cienega Creek in 1699.

Spanish settlements came and went. The Apache held sway in the high-desert basin rimmed by blue mountains for 200 years until they were crushed by the Anglo drive for land, water, and silver. These flowing grasslands and mesquite-wooded hills became part of a 1,000-square-mile cattle empire. When the last owners sold out in 1960, the finest grasslands in Arizona were threatened with development.

A series of complex land exchanges in mid-1988 placed 45,000 environmentally critical acres in the hands of the Bureau of Land Management. (See Arizona Highways, September '90) Cattle ranching continues under a BLM lease, but the native grasslands, riparian communities, and wildlife are protected.

There are no marked trails here, but you can follow Cienega Creek from its headwaters near the old adobe ranch house for 10 miles north. The Empire/Cienega Ranch headquarters may be reached from State Route 83 near Milepost 40, seven miles north of Sonoita, or State 82 between Mileposts 35 and 36, five miles east of Sonoita. For information, contact the BLM Tucson Resource Area, 12661 E. Broadway Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85748; telephone (602) 722-4289.

Sycamore Canyon Wilderness

Silence, solitude, and wild scents await as you ride from red rock canyons to steep piney mountains, from 3,000-plus to nearly 7,000 feet, from cactus and mesquite to Douglas fir. Snow usually blocks the high country until April.

Sycamore Canyon west of Sedona was the state's first area to receive protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act. In this lonesome 55,964 acres, signs of black bears or mountain lions are sometimes seen. You may even find signs of that most elusive of all endangered species: the American cowboy. This shy creature waters at night. Rolled up in your soogans (that's cowboy for bedrolls) under the stars, you sometimes hear him howling at the moon.

One favorite trail starts from Forest Service Road 131 west of Sedona and goes to Taylor Cabin via Packard and Sycamore trails. The next day, you can return via Dogie Trail, Parsons Spring, and Summers Spring, or keep going north two to three days to Sycamore Trail southeast of Williams. For detailed information, contact the Sedona Ranger District, P.O. Box 300, Sedona, AZ 86336; telephone (602) 282-4119.

While dismounting on The Blue, Lakeside-based novice rider David Widmaier got his boot stuck in the stirrup and slipped beneath his startled mount, which stepped on him, breaking his foot. Nevertheless, Widmaier plans to continue riding.