November 2, 2002

"Bee Careful"

With the temperatures cooling down in the desert, John and Mary and I were beginning to look for more desert wilderness areas for us to explore. One particular wilderness area that had always intrigued John was the White Canyon Wilderness Area, located about ten miles south of Superior, near State Route 77. He insisted that this was going to be the year that we would finally hike there, now that we had the four-wheel drive vehicle to get there. Saturday, November 2, would be the day. John had originally turned down an invitation to do a 16-way skydiving camp because he was scheduled to leave for Chicago on a business trip on Sunday. So, we planned to go hiking on Saturday, to spend time together before his departure. On Thursday, however, the trip was cancelled…meaning that he now had to spend the whole weekend with us! Our plan, then, was to hike in the White Canyon Wilderness Area - a BLM wilderness area in which there weren't any official trails, so most our hike would be in the washes of the canyon floor. John made sure to print a good set of topographical maps to help us find our way through the canyon, without getting lost. On Saturday morning, after loading our hiking gear into the Jeep, we left the house at 7:00 a.m. and began our journey to the trailhead. To get there, we took US 60 east towards the town of Superior, then merged onto SR 77 South. We took Highway 77 for ten miles, to Battle Axe Road - a primitive road that was easily passable in a sedan…until we reached the last mile. That section of the road required a four-wheel drive vehicle, and with good reason. Parts of the road were very rocky, and others were severely eroded…what fun! It gave me a chance to practice four-wheeling. Towards the end of the road, we found a campsite, where we could have parked the Jeep, but instead, we kept going along the road until we reached the wilderness boundary and the trailhead. There, the road ended, and there wasn't much room for us to turn the Jeep around. "Take us over there," John said, indicating a low area next to the wash. "We'll try to turn around here." I quickly surveyed the area around the Jeep and decided that I was not skilled enough to turn it around in such a small space. "You do it!" I exclaimed, and with that, I put the Jeep into park and climbed out. After I got Mary out of her car seat so that she could run around and play, John climbed into the driver's seat and proceeded to turn the Jeep around. He pulled forward as far as he could go without dropping the tires into the wash, then he backed up as far as the trees and the hillside would let him. He repeated these steps several times and managed to turn the Jeep about 90 degrees, so that it was perpendicular to the road. At that point, however, he ran into problems when he couldn't get the front tires past the large boulder at the side of the road. "Why don't we try to move the boulder?" I suggested. He thought it was a good idea, but first he wanted to try something else. He continued to try backing up and pulling forward until he was just inches from the metal trail registry. On his next attempt, the inevitable happened. He damaged the Jeep! The damage was very minor; he backed up alongside of the trail registry but cut it so close that the lid sliced through the button on the back passenger door handle. It was easily fixed with the file on John's Leatherman. After the incident with the trail registry, John decided that it was time for us to move the boulder. With both of us working together, it only took seconds for us to get it out of our way - and once the path was clear, it only took a few more attempts for John to get the Jeep turned around. Now that the Jeep was facing the right direction, he parked behind the trail registry, and we all got ready for our hike. We began hiking into the White Canyon Wilderness Area around 10:00 a.m. Unofficially called the "Battle Axe Trail" (as we discovered on the signs at the trailhead), the trail began by crossing through the wash then followed a narrow path through the desert foliage that was a mix of mesquite trees, palo verdes, and a variety of cactus. It was mostly flat, with the exception of a few short climbs to go up and over obstacles. The trail was marked, for the most part, with a series of cairns that made route-finding through the wash a little bit easier. Along the way, we found a few obstacles, some of which sent chills up my spine. As we passed by any of the flowering trees in the wash, we could hear the distinct buzzing of bees swarming around them, hunting for pollen. We passed by them as quickly as we could, as cautiously as possible so as not to disturb them in their work. There was one narrow section of the trail, however, through which it was nearly impossible to pass without disturbing the bees. On one side of the gully was a group of flowering shrubs; on the other, a dirt wall. Keeping as close as we could get to the wall, we hiked through the gully successfully, without getting stung by the bees. Other obstacles were not so "busy". Parts of the trail involved a little bit of scrambling up huge boulders that lay in the wash. Most of the scrambling was easy and did not require much effort, however, I did find that it was much easier doing so after having lost so much weight! Although the trail was well-marked for the most part and the cairns were easy to follow, we still managed to get lost on the trail. At one point, the trail appeared to climb up and around a huge boulder, but as we tried to follow it, we found that there were trees blocking the way. John climbed to the top of the boulder to have a better look and decided that the wash was the way to go. So, we returned to the wash, where we hopped along the boulders until we finally found another cairn, and soon we were back on the trail again. Up to this point, Mary had been very good riding on John's back in the baby carrier. However, things were quickly about to change… We had been hiking for about forty-five minutes, and we were all feeling quite good. The trail was fun, the weather was perfect, and Mary was happily enjoying her ride. John was hiking a little bit ahead of me, trying to find the best route to take, and he ended up going through some low branches. He passed underneath with ease, but Mary did not. One branch snapped back and whacked Mary in the face! There was a stunned pause, and several seconds later, the crying began. John quickly pulled her off of his back to assess the damage. Aside from a small scratch, next to her left eye, she was not injured at all. In fact, the tears did not last very long at all; she stopped crying a few minutes later and exclaimed over and over, "No, no, tree!" We brought her over to a shaded spot in the wash, and the three of us sat down to rest, while Mary recovered from the tree incident. We only intended to stay there a few minutes, just long enough to give Mary a chance to run around outside of the backpack, but those few minutes soon turned into a half an hour…and then an hour! We eventually decided to have lunch there and make that our turn-around point, because we were much too content just resting there. Mary was having a wonderful time playing with the rocks and the twigs that she found in the sand, and John and I started to feel a bit lazy sitting there under the warm November sun. I guess you could say that it was so nice there that we just decided to stay there and enjoy it until it was time to head back to the Jeep. Now, fortunately, we still had a Jeep when we got back to the trailhead, thanks to a pair of honest hikers that we met on the trail. They had arrived about a half an hour or so after us and had noticed that we had left the passenger door open on the Jeep. They weren't sure where we were, but they decided to close the door anyway, just in case. As they did so, the Jeep honked at them, meaning that the alarm was set. The hikers - a man and a woman - met up with us as we were lazing about at our picnic spot and asked us if we owned a gray Jeep. When they told us what they had done, we whole-heartedly thanked them for their help. "Wow, we really need to be careful!" John said. At that point, our day was definitely over. Soon after the other hikers left us, we packed up our picnic and decided to head back to the trailhead. Our return hike only took us about forty minutes, because we managed to pick better routes. Instead of hopping across boulders, we managed to stay on the trail and discovered where we had gotten lost the first time. We also managed to avoid the narrow gully of bees by finding a better way around them. Mary even got a bit smarter and began to duck, hands over her head, whenever John passed underneath a tree. We arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 p.m. After loading everything into the Jeep, we climbed inside and drove away. On the way home, John announced that he wanted to do a bit of exploring. He wanted to go up to Apache Leap, which is just off of Highway 77 before entering the town of Superior. As Apache Leap came into view, John turned off onto a side road, one that was rough and rocky. It appeared to climb all the way up to the Leap, and we probably could have made it, too, had John not lost interest in it. We made it only a half of a mile before John decided that he wanted to turn around. He said that we had done enough four-wheeling for the day; it was time to go home instead. We drove through Superior and soon found our way to US 60. Our adventure of the day was over...

Return to Naked in the Woods.

This site maintained by John and Heather Verley, © 2008.