November 1996: Bo convinced me we should leave the Chiricahua Mountains where we were camping and hiking, and go see this amazing canyon she'd hiked a few years before. That was McKittrick Canyon. In the Fall. The colors were stunning. And the trails deserted.
November 2022: Dimly we might have thought there might be colors--it was November, they had had a wet year--but were unprepared for what we found. We drove straight in and found the small parking lots--another lot added in the last 26 years--almost full with license plates from all over, and people gearing up to go into the canyon.
McKittrick: It's a wide canyon bordered by the Permian Reef on the north, filled with more Texas Madrones than I've ever seen anywhere else, some small but many huge; and they were full of red, sweet berries, coloring the trees and the trailside with deep red. Yellow, Orange, Red leaves clinging to trees or already littering the ground, formed a deeply colored tunnel that seemed so unreal it was almost disorienting. And the hikers marveled as they walked, taking photos almost every step of the way.
So many people didn't disturb the easily found aloneness and quiet along the trail. The crowd at Pratt Cabin was too great for us so we kept going to The Grotto where we ate lunch, then to the end of the trail--the creek keeps going a while farther--to Hunter Cabin, the old line cabin from the ranching days. We then hiked up toward McKittrick Ridge and turned around just below The Notch, which is the span past where the high mountain trails take over. We barely made it back to Pine Station Campground in time to put up our tent and make dinner before dark.
It was a freezing night and we sat in our camp recliners looking at stars, the Milky Way, the constellations diffused by all the stars we can't see above our own homes anymore due to light pollution. I declined to set up the tripod for an attempt at astrophotos and dived into the tent.
Sunrise and coffee, I snapped a few shots before we broke camp and drove back to Frijole Ranch to admire the old ranch stead, before hiking to Manzanita Springs--dammed up a century ago to provide a pond for water storage and the family's summer pleasure--then up to Smith Spring where these photos end.
November 1996 was Bo's and my first real trip together. We'd camped alone at the end of Rucker Canyon in the Chiricahuas, bears with cubs strolling past our tent at night, snuffling the bear box 10 feet from the tent. We'd hiked up into the mountains for views one doesn't think exist in southeast Arizona. I thought our time was sheer magic.
But the real magic was when she convinced me to leave our solitude in Rucker to head to Guadalupe's McKittrick. We've done high mountain hikes in two more backpacking trips where we went up McKittrick Ridge one trip before crossing the mountain; and up Tejas Trail to posthole through thigh-deep snow the last half mile to camp, on another trip. But, the drive was so far from Corpus we took Guadalupes off our list until a few weeks ago.
The deserted McKittrick Trail we knew 26 years ago was gone, replaced by people from all over the country--and world--who came for the colors and, like us, got lucky. And they acted like they knew they were lucky to be where they were at the time they were, which makes them welcome trail friends.