Western Arizona's Popular Sky-island Park

It's the only place for miles where you can breathe pine-scented air. The road is open to the park in all weather, but there are good months and bad ones.

Owner Elaine Jeffery was glad for the guests. "This place is a well-kept secret, considering it's been here a very long time," she said. Kingman residents, driving up to beat the heat, are her usual customers.

Change may be coming, I learn from Mohave County Park Ranger George Toten. With a bigger Lake Havasu City, and with nearby Bullhead City growing along with the casinos across the Colorado River in Nevada, park use is up, reports Toten.

"You've got a better chance at a cabin during the week," he advises, referring to the county-owned facilities at the park. Mohave County rents 15 cabins, including a bunkhouse that sleeps 10, and it collects fees at the ranger station for the cabins, fullservice recreation vehicle camp, and tent campground.

The cabins of native rock and clapboard were built 60 years ago for CCC laborers, and "staying in them is like camping indoors," says Toten with a grin. "You have to bring everything with you, including your bedding.

Despite the no-frills arrangements, "Right now, for a cabin on a Saturday night, you'd need to reserve 10 weeks in advance."

From the gate house, Toten hands out free park maps which show 6.5 miles of maintained hiking trails, plus other trails that are unmaintained by the county. There's also a horse path. A five-car parking area marks the start of Aspen Springs Trail, which leads to all the others in the 2,262-acre park.

After the dragonfly show, I'm ready for new trails. Returning to the ponderosa and white fir forest below the wind-polished knob of Aspen Peak, I continue on, eventually passing a miner's old potato garden before I arrive at his gold mine.

Along the way I bird-watch. More than 75 species of birds are reported in the Hualapais, including the uncommon lazuli bunting. Hawks command the high places, owls terrorize the night, and a flock of turkey vultures picks up the pieces. Through a spotting scope, I count 24 vultures jockeying for dominance in a pine snag, before they disperse at sundown.

I also glass for elk and deer. A bold mule deer buck walked up to the lodge, and Margaret Moerbeck told me, "We have lots of elk." Moerbeck owns a bed and breakfast inn beside Pine Lake, a half-acre dammed pond. Pond regulars, she said, include three elk bulls. I noticed flower beds and saplings armor-plated behind wiremesh enclosures.

"The elk eat everything," she said, explaining the need for protection. "It's difficult to have fruit and vegetables here."

Like a granite knuckle, Hualapai Peak looms over the Moerbeck pond, and the 157 private homes and cabins of Pine Lake Village. No trail leads up. So sure am Ithat's where the elk are, I set my course in that direction. And run into scoutmaster Tod Becker of Kingman and 300 Boy Scouts midway through a week-long encampment. The Scout camp is under siege, Becker says. "Four or five skunks came walking through last night."

I get the picture. The Hualapais are home to both spotted and striped skunks. Both species are aggressive raiders. I make a mental note to hang food high whenever I tent-camp in these mountains.

A real estate appraiser, Becker confirms more desert people and out-of-state visitors now come in summer to the Hualapais. It's the only place for miles where you can breathe pine-scented air. The road is open to the park in all weather, but there are good months and bad ones.

Winter hushes the high peaks, driving out the songbirds. Snow can hug the high ground for days. About 24 to 30 inches of precipitation fall annually above 6,000 feet, most occurring between October and May.

"My broker lives up here in the village," Becker says. "He'll drive in with this much snow on his car" - he gestures about four inches "and it won't even have rained in town."

Winter is short and spring brings wildflowers. Botanists list more than 100 species of trees and plants, including the whiteblossomed Apache plume and Fendler bush and pink cliffroses. Toward autumn black walnut trees shed their ironclad fruit, and groves of quaking aspen turn golden and tremble in the frosty air.

Summer is best, from May to September, with pleasantly warm days and cool nights and an occasional rain shower to help recharge the groundwater wells that supply the mountain people.

Apparently 19th-century miner W.H. Shoulders found enough water to grow spuds at 7,000 feet, in the red-dirt inner basin concealed by the circle of peaks. His unlikely garden enterprise gives the place its name, Potato Patch. The main trail splits there, with the Potato Patch Loop doubling back to the trailhead and Hayden Peak West Trail continuing on, across Shoulder's old potato ground, through ponderosa to a saddle between Hualapai and Hayden peaks.

That's the way I head. Two hawks flush from an old-growth pine, wings noisily sucking at the air to gain altitude away from me. There's elk scat, and I think I may be getting close.

And I quickly discover Shoulder's trace. He lived in a cabin near his mine, climbing to tend his spuds. A Fire Escape Route sign on the ridge marks the probable location where his trail topped out. Pushing my way through scrub oak thickets that draw blood, I climb down a ravine toward a dirt road a half mile away.

Shoulder's cabin is gone, but the 1878 American Flag Mine, worked after the Hualapai Indians were banished from the mountains, still attracts the curious. An angle-iron barrier keeps them out. Just as well, too, because the mine is dangerous, with two flooded vertical shafts that steadily leak icy water a commodity more pre-cious in the desert than gold.

Mine seepage forms puddles in the road. Elk and deer water here, tracks show. But not me. I take a pull of tepid canteen water, wary of possible lead or mercury that may be coming from the mine, and move on.

My map shows the graded road rambles 30 miles through high desert mostly overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, past Wild Cow Campground, more abandoned gold mines, across the Wabayuma Peak Wilderness Area, and then on to Yucca Flats on Interstate 40 leading to Los Angeles.

The road in the other direction traverses the midriff of Hualapai Peak, the upper slopes cast in the midday shadows, where I still hope to see an elk. Finally I come full circle, back to Moerbeck's pond. No elk and no red dragonflies, either.

I find Herman Dale Coger, 59, of King-man, instead. They say Coger has the best job around. He digs around the village with his backhoe. Afternoons he goes fishing or looking for gold.

"You can always find him afternoons, down at the pond," I was told. Right on schedule, Coger flicked a rubber jig into the dark pond water.

"I've caught a pound-and-a-half bluegill, and my best was a three-pound bass," he says. They're likely still there, too. The Moerbecks require all fish be thrown back. Coger gets to catch them again and again.

When they're not biting, Coger pokes around old Hualapai mines for overlooked color. "There really ain't much to be found," he says.

Oh yeah? A lot of gold, and also silver, has been dug in the Hualapais. Miners thought enough of the prospects to have the Hualapai Indians driven out by the U.S. Army in the 1860s.

Hardly anybody cared about the recreation potential of the Hualapais until the CCC camp opened in August, 1936, to put 200 Americans to work during the Depression. The first thing they did was cut a decent road into the mountains. By the 1950s, however, almost everyone except local residents forgot about the place. It's being discovered again. Nevertheless, you can still find plenty of solitude left in the woods and be the only climber on the mountain. And you can still find room at the inn.

WHEN YOU GO

To get to Hualapai Mountain Park from Phoenix, take U.S. Route 93 to Interstate 40; from points east and west, 1-40 to Kingman. Leave the freeway at Andy Devine Boulevard, then take Hualapai Mountain Road. To reserve a cabin or campsite, write or call the Mohave County Parks Department, P.O. Box 7000, Kingman, AZ 86402-7000; (520) 757-0915.

THE WHITE MOUNTAINS A Favorite Summer Getaway for Fishing amid the Pines

WHEN I TOLD HER WE WOULD SLEEP OUT UNDER THE STARS, SHE ABOUT (HER WORD) SWOONED. "Out under the stars!" she shrieked. My bride explained that growing up in Connecticut, her family's recreation centered around Grandma Sullivan's civilized compound of cottages on the beach in South Lyme. They'd sail a Sunfish, go clamming, swim, explore tidepools, have tea. "Grandma told us that only gypsies and lunatics camp out," she said. "One summer in a neighboring woodlot a band of gypsies did pitch camp. We peeked through the blueberry bushes at them. But nobody, nobody, in our social circle ever slept on the ground. "What of bears?" she mewed. "Coyotes? Snakes? Rain?" "Not to worry," I soothed her. "Mother Earth will hold you so close, you will feel her beating heart. You will sleep as a child on her bosom." Later my Yankee wife would jot these lines into her diary: He stopped on the shore of Luna Lake just east of Alpine, cast five times, and landed two beautiful brook trout. So easy! How did he do that? Then we sped southward along the Coronado Trail of eastern Arizona, as if across the top of the world. Two-hundred-mile vistas. Cumulus skies. Grumbling horizons. Vast conifer forests. Charming mountain towns. Indian ruins. Picture-postcard fishing streams. Late in the afternoon, my spouse abruptly swung the Blazer onto a narrow path that gained height above Hannagan Meadow. Beside a rivulet, next to a perfect picnic table - a tree stump four feet in diameter my man went about making camp. "Where do we pitch the tent?" I asked. "No tent," he said. He unrolled some scruffy tarps and blankets and a foam mattress. He built a small hot fire which quickly reduced to coals. He combined the fishes, dry onion soup mix, and a cup of wine inside a double foil cocoon, soaked the unshucked corn, and casually piled all on the coals. We walked, sat, talked. A blossom-scented sigh pressed down the side canyons. I gathered a sprig of lupine, a lavender thistle, a pastel wild rose, a canary-tinted columbine, a black-eyed Susan, a sunflower, and an aster for a table setting. Back at camp, the aroma could perfume a French country kitchen. The soup had married with the trout and wine, and the corn was ever-so-slightly scorched to create a surprising caramel flavor. Then, abed. Only once did I wake. Huge raindrops were drumming down on my cheeks. "We must run to the truck!" My Arizona man opened one eye. "Gather your belongings, pull the tarp over your head, shut up, and go to sleep." The rain loudly raked the canvas only an inch above my nose. I knew I would never, ever sleep. That was my last thought, until dawn. He was extending a cup of coffee, brewed with a hint of amaretto, steaming in the thin, frosty air. "How'd you sleep?" "Like a gypsy lunatic," said I.