Pictures from last Fall – watery Hutch’s Pools, a bright moonrise from the West Fork and a beautiful night – but what really sticks in my mind is the lower half of the Box Camp Trail. The rough trail hides other footsteps – hard to guess the last time someone has been here – an hour? a week? Nice to be alone and wonder!
Month: February 2019
A Merry Buster Mountain Christmas – 12/25/2018
Buster Mountain – if it didn’t have a name I wonder how often this spot on the map would be visited – just one of many protrusions on the ribs running west and down from Pusch Ridge. But the question is irrelevant, this rolling hilltop is named for Buster Bailey – probably best know thru Charles Bowden’s Frog Mountain Blues – and the summit register is filled with signatures.
From Frog Mountain Blues, p. 46-47:
He has become a footnote. Up on the mountain, there is a Buster Spring and above Buster Spring rolls Buster Mountain. For the old man this seems a trifle strange. He is Buster Bailey, seventy some years old, a man living in a junkyard with a household bagged at the bump. In a city of half-a-million, he is a ghost. And now they’ve gone and made him into some kind of landmark.
A new bridge over Canada del Oro on the Oracle highway swallowed the land he settled as a boy in 1927. The new Catalina State Park spreading against the north side of the range has entombed the ranches he worked and built in the thirties. Mesquite roots chew the soil of his old corrals, hackberry spreads over the spot where he once put his still, and a bulldozer has sliced off his old house lest it blemish the natural setting.
Frog Mountain Blues was published in 1987 and the details are aging – the city of half-a-million has added hundreds of thousands, nearly double depending on what you consider ‘the city’, and Catalina State Park as anything but new.
A few pages later a Jack Dykinga photograph shows bulldozers under curving utility lines, Buster Mountain in the distance on the left and Leviathan Dome rising out of Alamo Canyon on the right. Giant machines plowing thru the desert is a sort of sad ageless classic, but the 77 corridor thru Oro Valley has had so much construction and development for so long that it is hard to muster any deep emotion for a bit more or less asphalt.
The storm has given us a gift today – clouds and light all around, rain mostly in the distance. In a few more days this area will be legally closed until May, but it will be practically closed until next winter when the summer heat recedes. It is a privilege to be on this landmark, unseen ghosts on the empty mountain side, alone above the city of just-over-a-million.
Setting apart Santa Catalina Forest Reserve, Arizona – 7/2/1902
The power to establish forest reserves from the public domain was given to the President by the 1891 Forest Reserve Act. Other public lands had been set aside before 1891, but the 1891 provision started an impressive flow of land into Forest Reserves. The first reserve – the Yellowstone Park Timber Land Reserve – was created by President Benjamin Harrison on March 30, 1891, and by the end of his presidency in 1893 he had set aside 13 million acres.
The beginning of the Santa Catalina Mountain’s history as a ‘National Forest’ is recorded in the Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December 1901, to March, 1903, Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, and Recent Treaties, Conventions, and Executive Proclamations, Volume 32.
On pages 2012 an 2013, located between proclamations about the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition and the suspension of discriminating duties of tonnage and imposts on Cuban Vessels, Proclamation Number 27 establishes the Santa Catalina Forest Reserve. The 1902 proclamation by Theodore Roosevelt created Santa Catalina Forest Reserve nearly 10 years before Arizona became a state.
The first time I tried to look up the proclamation – slightly unsure if I was even in the correct volume – I was temporarily stymied by a typo in the table of content – ‘Setting apart Santa Catilina Forest Reserve, Arizona’ – the typo is not present in the proclamation itself.
The boundaries of the Santa Catalina National Forest were expanded by a 1907 proclamation by Theodore Roosevelt – now called a National Forest rather than Forest Reserve. The forest was expanded north towards Oracle and south across the Rincons. In 1908 the Santa Catalina National Forest (along with Dragoon and Santa Rita) were absorbed into Coronado National Forest – creating, roughly, the naming and boundaries that are still in existence today.
Forest Road 18 to Radio Ridge, Summer, Winter – MVUM – 5/15/2018, 6/24/2018, 1/14/2019
Looking across Carter Canyon from the Mint Spring Trail you can see Forest Road 18 switchbacking up the burned out hillside, past cabins and water tanks, joining and following power lines up to Radio Ridge. It doesn’t have the same appeal as getting up to Radio Ridge on the Aspen or Aspen Draw Trail but summer flowers, winter snow, interesting views… maybe just worth it…
East of the Mint Spring Trailhead FR18 leaves Carter Canyon Road as Miners Ridge Road – apparently the road was erroneously classified in the Forest Service Infrastructure Database (INFRA) as open to public motor vehicle traffic – corrected in the recently finalized Santa Catalina Ranger District Motorized Travel System where the note for FR18 reads:
In INFRA road is listed as having ML1 and ML2 portions, however, on the ground the road is currently closed to the public, but utilized by authorized personnel. Error in INFRA that restriction to public access not listed. Redesignate in INFRA as “Restricted to Administrative and Permitted Use Only”. ML 2. Radio Ridge access for Mt. Lemmon water district and TRICO Electric. Restricted to reduce intensity of resource impacts.
I don’t recall ever seeing a gate or signage on Miners Ridge Road indicating that it was closed in any way to the public and I assume the note is mainly referencing the top section (the upper section of the road is labeled Radio Ridge Road in Pima County’s GIS Information and Cap Rock Road by Google Maps) where the road has been gated at the Summit Trailhead to prevent public motor vehicle access for as long as I can remember.
I’m sure that FR18 is blanketed by snow every year but in previous years it hadn’t occurred to me that the snow covered road would be an interesting hike. This year I was a little smarter – lower on the road there were vehicle tracks, but they eventually disappeared and I plunged into untracked snow up to Radio Ridge – alone for a cold sunset – before making my way down partly by headlamp.