[at-l] Way off the trail...

[ccatalan@williams.edu (Cosmo Catalano)]

Way off the trail, but a hike all the same.  This is the first time I’ve hiked 
outside the Northeast since I was a Boy Scout at Philmont.  Even then, we were 
in the high country most of the time.  Red Rocks is the desert, folks.  Complete 
with cactus, Blackbush, and lizards.  The hike I chose was a loop around what is 
called White "Rock".  These of course are a 4 by 1 mile long blob of huge sheer 
cliffs jutting up from the desert about 1500ft.

There are no blazes on these trails, first of all because there’s nothing to put 
blazes on.  The ground is covered with lots of small shrubs with stands of 
Juniper and Cresote bush here and there.  But in this country you don’t need 
blazes.  The landscape is there for you to see, not hidden by the green tunnel.  
So if you have a hike that goes around White Rock, that’s what you do.  

The biggest problem was I kept tripping over my jaw, and my eyes got dried out, 
being open so wide.  This is really a different place.  All of creation is out 
there in your face, the air is so clear you can see individual tress on 
mountains that are 10’s of miles away.  

The official name of this area is the Red Rocks Management Area.  It’s run by 
the BLM (Federal Bureau of Land Management), and I must say that here at least 
they are doing a pretty good job.  The Visitors Center is informative and there 
are lots of friendly people there to answer your questions.  The trailheads are 
accessed by a 13 mile loop road.  I did about a 8 mile loop including a 2 mile 
side trail to a spring in the foothills between the Rock and the taller 
mountains to the West..  

I start out westbound around the south end of the Rock. The trail begins on a 
"dirt" road.  Of course there’s very little dirt here, it’s moistly just gravel.  
The concept of "duff" just doesn’t exist.  Vegetation doesn’t drop it’s leaves, 
and what little plant matter is on the ground doesn’t decompose at all.

The road is a bit tedious as a trail, and I begin to wonder if this was just 
going to be a road walk.  However, when I get to the catch basin where the 
spring comes out of the hills to the west, the trail changes to single track and 
follows the water up through a steep walled gully full of grasses and somewhat 
larger trees.  Lots of birds.  As it is still early spring, not much greening 
has taken place.  The output of the spring is quite impressive for such dry 
country.  The benefits of the water are extremely local, maybe 20 feet on either 
side of the stream bed, then the desert plants predominate again.

Coming back down the gully is very difficult, the "V" shape of the hills frames 
the near by White Rock against the more distant mountains (well they are 
probably hills, but they look plenty tall to me).  It was very hard keeping my 
eyes on the trail.  

I finally get back down to the end of the gully where the loop trail breaks off 
from the spur to the spring.  Still on the west side of the Rock, and in the 
cool early morning shade, the trail meanders about near where the cliffs meet 
the desert floor.  Large boulders are strewn here and there and you can see 
where water rushing down the gullies and hills as flash floods have shaped the 
landscape.  Not a good place to be in a storm.  

Gradually the trail climbs a shoulder of a hill, curving back and forth to keep 
the grade reasonable.  The path underfoot changes from gravel to sunbaked red 
mud— it must be slippery the two or three times it gets wet every year.  Topping 
the hill I had a (breathtaking is wholly inadequate to describe this) view:  The 
White "Rock" towering on my right, brilliant in the sun, with stripes of red 
shooting through it.  In the distance to the left, Turtlehead rock (a mountain 
about 1500ft above the valley) looms over the Calico Cliffs—a red and white 
banded sandstone formation.  Red clay under foot.  The ridge I am on drops away 
gently to the immense valley floor before me. Las Vegas a yellow smear of smog 
on the horizon.  Now admittedly, my perception is skewed by a lifetime of green, 
mostly gently rounded hills, more often than not obscured buy clouds and haze.  
Distant mountains are often seen as humps on the horizon, barely distinguishable 
from the sky.  Here the furthest peaks are sharp edges against a clear sky, and 
the closer ones loom sharply over head, every detail clear and crisp.  This is 
nature of a different sort.  Honest, unprocessed(?).  You can see the history of 
the place before you, even without much geological knowledge. 

Descending the ridge, the trail continues to meander across the landscape, until 
I reach the loop’s midpoint trailhead.  Already at 10:30 on a Tuesday the 
parking lot has almost a dozen cars in it.  I have met 4 people on the trail so 
far (two were running).  

I’m now skirting the east side of the Rock, some climbers are working on this 
face, the air is so still and the desert so quiet I can hear their voices 
clearly, but I have to look closely to find their tiny forms moving about on the 
cliff face.  Only when I can see other humans does the scale of this place 
really sink home.  Because of the clear air and large size, it looks like things 
are much closer than they are.  At first glance, I think I could easily 
bushwhack (carefully, they’re sharp!) across to the base of the Rock, but seeing 
the climber’s ant sized brings the scale home.  The quiet is also astounding.  
Back on the west side of the Rock, I couldn’t hear any sound except my own 
footsteps.  It took me a while to figure this out: There was no background 
rustling of leaves, whirring of bugs, chirp of birds.  Just me and the rocks.

There are different cacti here on this side of the loop, Staghorn Cholla are 
very frequent amid the ubiquitous Blackbush.  I see a couple of lizards scurry 
across the path and hear several more in the dried plants as I tromp by.  The 
trail gets a bit indistinct here, but because the topography is easy to see, I 
know I’m headed in the right direction.  After a while I reach another wash 
coming out from a cleft in the Rock, and the footpath becomes more obvious.  
Back East, this path would plunge straight into the wash and then back up the 
other side, here it sidehills along the slope crosses the bottom, and then just 
as gently goes up the other side.  This probably doubles the distance it takes 
to get from ridge to ridge, but there’s plenty of land out here to keep the 
grade reasonable.  I get the feeling that although it doesn’t rain much, when it 
does, a lot of erosion happens all at once. 

Rounding the SE corner of the Rock, I turn West once again into the cleft 
between White Rock and the neighboring mountain, again the vegetation changes, 
Barrel Cactus replace the Cholla.  The dirt underfoot looks the same, so it must 
be the southern exposure that encourages the growth?  I’m now passing close to 
several picnic areas and a nature trail.  The place is quite crowded with people 
and kids.  I can’t imagine what it must be like here on the weekends.  
Considering the heavy use, I’m even more impressed with how these trails are 
being maintained.  

There is one more thing awaiting me before I finally get back to the car.  
Rounding a corner, I come to a three rail wooden fence.  Surprisingly intrusive 
after 8 miles of dusty footpath.  I look around and see it’s protecting a rock 
face, looking closely, I can see six handprints (4 left and 2 right) painted 
onto the rock, left here by the Anisazi many centuries ago  The sounds of the 
picnickers and cars fades:.  Graffiti?  A house address?  Or just fooling 
around?  They are unquestionably human from a time long before, and are 
strangely moving.  

Returning to my rental car I slide my salty, dusty self into the seat and head 
back to the airport.  As I’m driving through the flat "wasteland" of scrub and 
Blackbush southwest of Vegas, the towers of the casinos just start to poke above 
this utterly undeveloped landscape.  It’s very weird, like something out of an 
old adventure book (a golden city in he desert?).  Soon, I can see the sprawl of 
housing developments, walled off from the adjacent desert.  Street signs already 
indicate where planned cross streets will go as the country’s fastest growing 
city creeps across the desert. 

Cosmo