Sacred Mountain

A bull elk whistled its bugling love call into the evening shadows, a piercing clarinet squeal that lingered afterward like a memory on the cool mountain air. Otherwise, an abiding quiet settled into the steep, piney valleys of the Mount Baldy Wilderness, about 16 miles southwest of Springerville in eastern Arizona. Feeling the chill, the mosquitoes of autumn finally stopped probing our defenses.

Robert McDonald of Flagstaff prodded something healthful in a saucepan over a propane burner. He was cooking in the stern of his yellow 1968 Ford Bronco. Mount Baldy, anchored in lush, wet alpine meadows with its naked pate often in the clouds, rates among his favorite haunts.

We car-camped together, but separately prepared our meals. Steak sizzling in the skillet is more my style. The ancient Bronco, with 400,000 miles on it, served McDonald like a sheepherder's wagon. In it he stored photographic equipment, cooked meals and slept-along with his rheumatic Labrador, Cocoa. I popped a tent, cooked on the truck tailgate, ate at a folding table and stretched out on an air mattress. Like the Odd Couple, we struck contrasting lifestyles-two outdoorsmen yielding to middle age in our own fussy ways.

We'd settled for the night in the wooded cove beside a grass park on the edge of the Baldy Wilderness. A log fire could discourage the mosquitoes, but we spurned wood smoke for clean-burning gas. It was about the only camping technique that we shared. We'd gone together to hike 11,403-foot Mount Baldy, the crowning knob of this wilderness. McDonald brought his own special knowledge to our adventure.

In the 1960s, as a Forest Service civil engineer, he surveyed a route that redirected the trail beside the East Fork of the Little Colorado River away from sacred Apache lands near the top. That would be our route up.

Coming down the mountain, we planned to follow the popular trail alongside the West Fork of the Little Colorado, a clear, cold stream that's stocked with rainbow and brook trout. Both of the tributaries flow northward toward the great ochre maw of the Little Colorado River basin and, finally, into the main stream of the Colorado River.

The Mount Baldy Wilderness embraces 7,000 acres of timberland, willow meadows and grass parks within the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. The main trails lead from a road that begins on Apache land near Sunrise Lake as State Route 273, then becomes graded-dirt Forest Service Road 113 at the national forest boundary.

In winter, snow there piles deeper than a man is tall. Spring ushers in dazzling green brilliant with wildflowers and fills the two streams with meltwater. Summer brings suckling elk calves to the meadows. Aspen golds gild the mountain flanks in autumn, when animals forage for food to fatten themselves against the coming cold.

Just before sundown, a flash of white caught my eye at the woods' edge, 300 yards from our camp beside FR 113. Gradually a coyote assumed definition, a big prime male standing half-concealed in tawny grass. He slunk from the safety of the woods and began hunting field mice along a fenceline, rearing to tamp the grass to flush out dinner. A pigeon hawk high in a spruce watched for strays the coyote might dislodge. After a while, it silently flew off.

The rains stayed late that September, and Baldy was damp and buggy. As soon as the sun rose the next morning, the mosquitoes returned, adding urgency to our departure. We were headed for the East Fork turnoff to the Phelps Cabin trailhead, where a beaver dam pools the East Fork in a meadow about 6 miles east of Sunrise Lake. It's an easy trail we followed through an

arizona highways.com evergreen world of Engelmann spruce and thick old-growth Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees. Blue spruce marched along the creek, pushing aside the willows for sunlight. Harebells tossed their striking blueviolet heads in the grass.

"You can still see traces of the old trail," McDonald said, pointing to a vague scar partly covered by grass. The revised East Fork Trail keeps its distance, avoiding confusion. Where wind-sculpted hoodoos poke out of the pines, the trail leaves the creek bottom and climbs laterally along a wooded slope. Eventually, we emerged from the trees onto a rounded bluff of lava ash that testified to the volcanic origin of Mount Baldy.

From this vista, Big Lake and its smaller companion, Crescent Lake, sprawled like silver coins across a vast grassland park 10 miles away. Big Lake attracts trout anglers. Boats can be launched from a store landing near Rainbow Campground. Beyond the lakes, the forest continues onward toward the distant hump of 10,912-foot Escudilla Mountain. We made our way alone on the trail until, at 10,800 feet, we met backpacker Holly Flint, an architect from Tempe. She offered an exuberant endorsement of Mount Baldy: "This is my favorite Arizona hike," she said, "and if I didn't hike it once a year, I would feel deprived. I can't think of a prettier hike, and it's not hard.

She proved to be the rear guard for a family group on an overnight hike, led by her father, Hollis Flint of Tempe, a retired entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "This is my 10th trip up," he boasted. "My first trip was in 1977." That's when the East Fork route picked by McDonald was fairly new.

The U.S. Geological Survey maps don't show the spring that trickles across the East Fork Trail, nurturing wildflowers at an elevation of 11,000 feet. Once a cabin stood there, too, but the Forest Service razed it after Baldy became protected wilderness. You can still see the remnants, bits of an iron stove and some lumber.

A quarter-mile farther along the trail from the spring lay evidence that Mount Baldy can play rough. A wing of an old Beechcraft airplane stenciled with "U.S. Army" marks a World War II crash site. In an opening in the pines plowed clean by an avalanche, sprays of blue delphinium bloomed among blood-red wild currants as though in honor of the crash.

At that high elevation, the spruce trees have learned to grow small against battering winds that always seem to blow atop Baldy, McDonald explained as we stopped for lunch in a clearing sprinkled with yarrow blossoms. At 60, McDonald is wiry and spare from a light diet and plenty of outdoor exercise, an easygoing, cheerful man, yet also very private. We seemed a lot alike, I thought. Yet I packed a lunch, he packed a snack. He drank from a spring; I won't touch the stuff for fear of Giardia, a parasitic protozoan that sometimes lurks in wild water.

As I considered these differences, Stewart Lewis, water boss for an irrigation district at Snowflake, stepped out from a screen of spruce with the mule he was leading. Guiding his wife, Betty, a schoolteacher, on her first climb up Baldy, Lewis remarked on the pleasant false-summer day.

"This is the best time of year to come up here," he confirmed. "The rains are over and it's cooler." Even the mosquitoes had given up 2,000 feet below us.

The East Fork and West Fork trails merge at a windswept place where the national forest and Fort Apache Indian Reservation lands abut, a quarter-mile short of Mount Baldy's treeless summit. The trail continues, but markers warn that the peak belongs to the Apaches. A permit is required for the rest of the way.

The Dullago brothers-David, a Gallup, New Mexico, construction company president, and Anthony, a mechanical engineer who lives in Chandler - were enjoying their annual outdoor experience. "We hike a lot in New Mexico," said David. "For a change, I suggested we hike here." They had set up camp farther down and had ventured higher for firewood.

They, too, had heard the bull elk bugling. David said they saw where the elk had bedded down at night in the meadow beside their campsite.

McDonald and I started on the 6.5-mile route to the Sheeps Crossing trailhead and parking lot, but we were sidetracked a halfmile down. A path led us to the brink of a breathtaking bluff that looked across a valley to Sunrise Mountain.

John Douglass and Danielle Dake, students at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, paused to sightsee at the spot where the West Fork seeps from a spring to begin its parallel course beside the trail. For Douglass, who was writing a master's thesis on the landscape

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 41

evolution of the Little Colorado gorge, the creek's headwaters held special interest. The West Fork snakes through a succession of lush alpine meadows. At a sharp bend, Sean Hickey, a Flagstaff television advertising salesman, cast a Mepps silver spinner for trout. He had hiked the trail but never fished the creek.

His buddy, Mike Frick, a Flagstaff graphic artist, emerged from the woods with an armload of firewood and headed for their camp, which they'd located upstream on some high ground in a wet meadow dotted with bog orchids. They had enjoyed luck with their angling and planned a fish-fry feast.

"My best was a 13-inch brookie," Hickey said. He cranked the spinner past a dark hole under the bank. "We caught four others, all about 7 or 8 inches, and quite a few smaller ones that we released."

If anyone knows when Mount Baldy trout are biting, it's Roger and Dorothy Ziegler, the hosts at nearby Winn Campground. With 62 spaces, spring water and a flush toilet located within minutes of both streams and Big Lake, it's the overnight place of choice for weekend anglers.

Roger reported that other anglers' luck had been thin. "The problem around here," he added, "is there's not enough fish." Trout dumped weekly into the creeks and lake by a state fish hatchery truck didn't survive the heavy angling pressure for long."

"A week ago, we had 47 people wanting A sign on State 273, a mile past the Phelps Cabin trailhead, pointed toward the Gabaldon horse camp. There we found Jed Duncan, a Show Low farrier, preparing to saddle a chestnut filly.

Duncan was skipping work that day to shoe horses for a Baldy ride with his father, Sam Duncan, a schoolteacher on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. "I make a good living," Jed said good-naturedly, "and I can pick and choose when I go to work."

Lee Valley Reservoir, more puddle than pond, was just down the road. While others dangle bait for hatchery fish in nearby lakes and creeks, this is where the purist anglers come, with angling restricted to flies and lures, electric motors and a two-fish limit of Apache trout, brook trout and graylings. Seven more miles down 273, we arrived at Crescent and Big lakes. On the way, we saw seven elk cows grazing with Hereford cattle a mile from the nearest cover. At the lake, where marshes shelter land birds and waterfowl, offering great bird-watching, McDonald and I parted with an agreement to camp again. He turned north. I went southdifferent even in the end. Al

humors

"I'm not confident about my doctor. He got an 'A' in penmanship." * FATHER: "Tommy, stop pulling that cat's tail." TOMMY: "I'm only holding the tail. The cat is pulling."

Unusual Perspective

By Linda Perret Surprise, Arizona, was named after a town in Nebraska. I guess the real surprise came when they found they weren't in Nebraska anymore.

HIGHWAY DILEMMA

While driving along Interstate 40 in northern Arizona, I saw a young woman driving alone in a car carrying a "Just Married" sign. The question in my mind was answered when another car passed with a lone man in it, and as it went by, it was sporting another sign that read, "And Already Separated."

TIME TRAVELER

After moving to Phoenix from Wisconsin, I spent several months exploring Arizona. On one weekend trip, I stopped at a gas station north of Payson to fill up and get cash for the weekend. In Wisconsin, our ATM machines are labeled with their brand, Tyme, so a common question heard is, "Where is your Tyme machine?" When I asked the gas station attendant this same question, she looked up at me with curiosity and asked, "Where you wanna go, sweetheart?" JENNIFER MAYNARD, Chandler

DUST DEVIL

A farmer had grown cotton for decades. It was a difficult existence, nursing crops from the parched earth beneath the boiling desert sun. Still the farmer had fallen in love with the land and the sunsets.

One year he went to the bank on a blustery day and filled out a loan application.

"Everything looks in order," the banker told him.

"All that remains before I can give you the money is to drive out and look at your farm."

The farmer pointed to a dust devil whirling past the window, the miniature tornado carrying dust, small rocks and twigs as it blew past.

"You don't have to drive all the way out to the farm; there goes a piece of it now."

BIG TIPPER

As a young girl, I took summer vacations with my parents. One time we drove through Arizona to visit Grand Canyon National Park.

While traveling, we ate most of our meals in restaurants. We were coming close to the end of our vacation when my dad turned to my mom and said, "We're running out of money. We better head for home."

I quickly piped up and said, "Daddy, I've got some money." "You do? Where did you get it?" he asked, surprised.

"You've been leaving it on the tables, so I picked it up for you," I said. DIANE M. JOHNSON, Bellevue, WA

HATS OFF TO THE CHEF

My wife and I were visiting Tombstone. Near the exit of one of the tourist attractions, we passed a local old-timer. A dog of indeterminate breed sat at his side.

He apparently heard me ask my wife, "Where to now, love?"

The old rascal looked over at me and asked, "Wha'd you call her?"

I thought he was kidding or maybe looking for a friendly conversation. "I called her 'love,' of course," I answered.

"Don't you love your wife?"

His "no" was short and to the point. "Well, why don't you leave her?" I asked him.

The old man looked at me as though I had suggested the end of the world.

"I couldn't do that," he said. "Who'd cook for my dog?"

Reader's Corner

Ranching is dirty work because, along with 1,500 head of cattle, comes 1,500 of the other end as well.

This month's topic is: ranching. Send us your ranching jokes and we'll pay you $50 for each one we use.