We took a family trip to camp for the weekend in
Chiricahua (cheer - i - caw - a) National Monument in south-eastern Arizona about 4 hours drive from home. Chiricahua is known for rock spires and columns, caused by partial erosion of rocks in the mountains. There are a lot of hoodoos, and other rock formations which look like people and other things (other than rock...). It was really pretty interesting to see some of the rock formations, and some of the other things in the park. The park is a 'sky island' - a group of mountains rising up from the plains, and providing cooler environments at altitude, with a little more water than in the lower grasslands. So there are more trees, and some species that can't survive in the lower desert, like coatis. We didn't see any coatis, but we did see plenty of very bold Mexican Jays. The campground was full of jays that were willing to approach very close to us, steal food from the dogs bowl, steal food from our hands, and generally watch us like little robbers. I don't have any good pictures of the birds, but there were
quite persistent and annoying.
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| Hoodoos in the park |
Being mid April, and some abnormally cool weather in Arizona in general, the days were great for being outside and hiking, while the nights were a little chilly, causing us to turn into the tent pretty soon after dinner. According to the ranger station, the low temperature on Friday (our first night) was 38 degrees, Saturday was around 70 for a high and 40 for the low. Both days warmed up very quickly once the sun was up. The campground is at about 5400 feet elevation, the high point in the park is over 7000.
Saturday morning we took advantage of the shuttle from the campground to the upper parking lot at the Echo Canyon trailhead. Our plan was to hike back to the campground, a distance of about 7 miles. We hiked on the following trails back to the campground:
- Ed Riggs trail
- Mushroom Rock trail
- Big Balanced Rock trail
- Heart of Rocks loop
- Sarah Deming trail
- Lower Rhyolite Canyon trail
Along the way there were plenty of sights to see:
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| Cochise Head formation |
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| Yogi bear checking out a pic-a-nic basket |
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| Steve from the Bloom County comic strip |
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| Cactus in bloom |
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| Horsing around with rocks |
Ed Riggs dropped down into a canyon, then we climbed up on the Mushroom Rock trail to join with the Big Balanced Rock trail. Most of the hike on the Big Balanced Rock trail was in the open - the Horseshoe fire in 2011 burned most of the this area in the Monument, and much of what we saw was charred trees on this trail. The Big Balanced Rock trail ended at its namesake rock - a 2000 ton boulder balanced on top of a column (and here sticking out of John's head).
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| Ouch - the weight on my head! |
The Heart of Rocks Loop has a number of formations in one place that were interesting:
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| Kissing rocks |
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| Rock duck on a rock |
After the Heart of Rocks loop, we descended back to the campground over about 3 miles - all downhill, with views into the surrounding grasslands, some flowers, and more rocks. And a lizard sunning on (what else) a rock.
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| Blending right in |
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| Something is on my shoulders |
7.7 miles hiking back to the campground, arriving back in the early afternoon after about 5 hours. We only explored half of the trails in the Monument on this trip, and may be back to see some of the other sites in the area, like Fort Bowie and Cochise Stronghold. After the hike, all of the kids were tired of looking at and learning about rocks, so it might be a while before we go to a park based mostly on the rock based scenery...
