The Mazatzal Wilderness

ALONE AND VULNERABLE IN + HE MAZATZAL WILDERNESS

Half my water is gone; it's hot; and I've lost the trail again. I place a pebble in my mouth to produce saliva and circle until once again I'm on the trace leading down the stony backside of the Mazatzal Wilderness. Red-orange mariposa lilies spangle the hills, but already the water is gone from the land and the earth baked hard. I pick my way slowly toward the Verde River, eight miles off.

But there are things worth stopping to see, no matter what. I glass my back trail while savoring a mouthful of warm canteen water. High up is 7,903foot Mazatzal Peak, foremost of the bull-backed mountaintops in the preserve. Beneath the summit, chaparral bluffs collapse into canyons so tangled and twisted it would take days to get free of them.

This is mean country, all right, hellishly fickle between snows and rains, bristling with all manner of spines and thorns; squeezed upward in a tectonic vice, fractured by earthquakes, forged in volcanic fire, worn by wind and water; treacherous at all times for someone afoot.

MAZATZAL WILDERNESS

The Mazatzals also are full of the unexpected. Once I blundered onto the lip of a box canyon carved by two rills that poured 180 feet into a shadowy grotto, the artistry of a million years. On the upper trails, I traversed ancient seabeds and a pebble beach left high and dry at 6,000 feet.

Loaded down with food and water, I had set out three days earlier from popular Barnhardt Trailhead (No. 43) located 20 miles south of Payson, on State Route 87. Day hikers generally walk only to year-round Chilson Spring. I hiked farther, to Horse Camp Seep, then, late in the day, to a pool worn in granite, chilling tired muscles.

Bears, deers, cougars, bobcats, and bighorn sheep prowl the 252,016-acre Mazatzals. In 1873 the range was a hide-out for Tonto Apaches on the run from Brig. Gen. George Crook's saddle soldiers. The Apaches surrendered, but not without a fight.

Lt. John G. Bourke, 3rd Cavalry, was among soldiers ambushed by Tonto Apache archers. "Then over the precipice they went, as we supposed, to certain death," he wrote in his book On the Border With Crook. The Apaches knew a trail and slipped away. "It was so hard to believe that any human being could escape down such a terrible place," Bourke marveled, "and for that reason no one could do his best shooting."

A joyful haaawunk! scattered my daydreams. Here came a mule to water, leading Craig Eckstein, a Forest Service wilderness ranger from Payson. With Eckstein was assistant Bill Barcus, who preferred a horse.

Eckstein snaked chewing tobacco under his lip with a practiced forefinger. His skin looked smoke cured. He and Barcus had been out six days. Barcus, chew in place, tossed coffee grounds into a blackened pot on a juniper fire that pushed the moonless night back about 15 feet.

They had read Bourke's journal and tried to match events with places. "Twenty years ago, I found some .45-70 casings along the Wet Bottom Trail," Eckstein said. "I didn't realize then what they were, so I left them."

Next morning, we part. I hoist a 55-pound backpack and head for Wet Bottom Trail-new country for me by following the Divide Trail (No. 23), past flowing Hopi Spring, high and cool in the pines. At Knob Mountain, I take the Brush Trail (No. 249) to Brush Spring and camp.

The deeper into the Mazatzals I hike, the harder are trails to follow. Sometimes only boulders clipped by shod hooves mark the way. Chaparral arral swallows whole stretches. There is so much loose rock everywhere, it's like walking in loose ice skates.

At the end of another challenging day, 2,000 feet lower, and with only a half can-teen of water left, I drag myself into the LF line shack below Bull Spring, which isn't flowing. But a creek beside the shack is full and sweet.

The clapboard shack, which the LF Ranch uses for roundups, has survived many win-ters. There's emergency food and fuel, a cookstove, two bunks, a table, and a logbook for hunters and hikers who are welcome to stay.

The outside air is cooler, so I camp below the corral. A night bird sings somewhere, and sleep comes easily after a 14-mile day.

Sunup, and I step onto Wet Bottom Trail (No. 269). Except for a cow wallow a half mile from the shack, Wet Bottom isn't wet anywhere for 12 boot-eating miles of roller-rock that won't stay put underfoot.

By midafternoon the air quivers with heat and is fragrant with the scent of overheated plants. The trail becomes plainer and faster in the bottomland, where disturbed soil heals slowly, and, finally, there's the Verde. I strip, jump, and drink and drink.

A half mile upstream from Horseshoe Bend, where river runners have built a fire ring on a shoal shaded by willows, I throw down, snap together a small rod, and soon catch and release smallmouth bass. I feel marooned in a sea of desert.

Before the hike, I talked with rangers Vicky Collins and Mark Heppler at the Cave Creek Ranger Station at Carefree. During the high water of winter, many rafters and kayakers run the rambunctious Verde, a protected Wild and Scenic River.

Beyond the riverbanks, however, "we rarely see anybody," Collins reported. In the middle of the Wilderness, I see no one, nor any recent tracks.

People were more common in the Mazatzals 1,200 years ago than today. Salado and Sinagua Indians homesteaded around the Verde and its tributaries all the way to Wupatki National Monument, 80 miles to the north near Flagstaff. Then, 800 years ago, they moved on.

Crook's troopers thought the ruins were built by Spanish explorer Coronado during his search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. In modern times, pothunters have plundered them.

"It's hard not to find stuff along the Verde Trail," Heppler had said. "Every mesa along the river has Indian ruins on it of some type."

My eyes search the Highwater Trail (No. 20), and where the rangers said to look I find a rock foundation. Upstream, Squaw Peak Butte, an 800-foot-high volcanic plug, marks the confluence of the East Verde River. I fast-step toward it.

MAZATZAL WILDERNESS

A mesquite jungle grows by the East Verde. Cardinals, Scott's orioles, warblers, and doves nest in the thickets. Gambel's quail fidget on a limb as I slog by through hipdeep foxtail and keep on going.

Away from water, all the north end of the Mazatzals is parched paloverde desert or, higher up, mountain scrub, piñon pine, juniper badlands. To move through quickly, I stretch the day, hoping by nightfall to reach Childs, a hydroelectric generating station and tiny community 12 miles upstream, where there is a soothing thermal hot spring.

Canteens get topped at Hardscrabble Creek, near the bushy valley cowboys call Hells Hole. Gnats swarm as I study a Forest Service map that shows Trail No. 41 crossing the creek, up and past the bluffs above the Verde. I look for it.

Three and a half hours later, I've advanced a half mile. Back and forth, up and down; there is no safe way around a loose rock slide, and no Trail 41. (I find out later, it no longer exists.) I have drunk two canteensful, am exhausted and shellacked with salt, alone and vulnerable in a dangerous place. I entertain dark thoughts about Forest Service mapmakers.

Sunset signals the hour of the rattlesnake. Like a blind man, I feel ahead with a walking stick in the grass and around rock and spot a three-foot diamondback. There's no rattled warning. The rattler yields, after a prod.

Beauty is hard to appreciate when the land is trying to kill you, but I stop to slow my pulse and look around. The Verde is tantalizingly close below, backed up in green holes too deep to ford, where mossback bass surely live a protected life of isolation. A raven soars in the thermals above the 300-foot cliffs of Ike's Backbone, which bars the way to Childs. Old sycamore andcottonwood trees anchor themselves in the boulder banks of Hardscrabble Creek.

That night my dreams take me on a treadmill up rocky bluffs without end, and, like a television set on the fritz, I cannot make the horizontal control work, or the picture go away, no matter how I try.

By candlelight before dawn, I ponder ways out. The map shows a trail (No. 17) up the vertical face of Deadmans Mesa, but I am put off by the name and have lost confidence in the map. Instead of backtracking, I choose the Verde River Trail (No. 11) leading to the Twin Buttes trailhead, south of the town of Strawberry. The map shows no water along its 13-mile length.

Spare stove gas is flared, and the flask that held it filled with water. Anything extra is cached in a juniper on a ridge beside the trail for others. "Here goes," I say aloud.

Stone markers make the upper half of the Verde River Trail easy to follow. A weeks-old bootprint cheers me. The trail becomes wide, passes two cattle tanks, and in under five hours I'm out at the Twin Buttes Trailhead with water to spare.

Time for a look backward. To the south, a jagged edge of rimrock raises a barrier to the Mazatzals. I have a new respect for this dangerous land. Names like Dutchmans Grave Spring and Deadman Canyon are reminders that some people didn't survive their wilderness experience. Where I started out is 12 miles straight away. A vulture could cross the distance in a half hour. The journey has taken me 67 miles and six days.

When Tom Kuhn isn't risking life and limb in the outback, he enjoys the comforts of home in Phoenix. Pine-based Nick Berezenko has hiked the Mazatzals for four years and calls them "the greatest place on Earth."

WHEN YOU GO

Only hikers with desert and mountain experience should attempt the Mazatzal Wilderness backcountry. Early spring and late fall are best. Wear stout boots, carry plenty of water, use a walking stick. Expect mud in spring, dry springs in summer, frosty nights in autumn. Don't take the weather for granted. Don't make the trip alone.

To get there from Phoenix, follow State Route 87 north to about 20 miles south of Payson. Signs mark the Deer Creek and Barnhardt trailheads. Both lead to springs. East of Strawberry, take Forest Service Road 194 to Twin Buttes Trailhead. From the Verde River side, drive to Horseshoe Reservoir on FR 205 east of Carefree. If water is low enough for safety, ford the river below the dam, then proceed two miles on the road to Davenport Trailhead. Good horse trail. Otherwise take FR 24 (Seven Springs Road), then turn right onto FR 269 to Sheep Bridge Trailhead above Horseshoe Dam.

For more information, contact Payson Ranger District, 1009 E. Highway 60, Payson, AZ 85541; (520) 474-7900.