A Merry Buster Mountain Christmas – 12/25/2018

Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 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.

Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.

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.

Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain - Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.
Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain – Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.

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.

Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.

Cottonwood Tank, Touching Catchment Canyon – 12/30/2018

Cotton Wood Tank with Table Mountain in the background. December 2018.
Cotton Wood Tank with Table Mountain in the background. December 2018.

A 2017 post shows Cotton Wood Tank sadly covered in graffiti (picture below) – thankfully between then and now the graffiti has been painted over (picture above). I was slightly surprised, since this hasn’t felt like a very wet year, to see that the tank is to-the-rim full at the moment, even higher than last year.

Graffiti covering Cottonwood Tank. December 2017.
Graffiti covering Cottonwood Tank. December 2017.

Our destination for the day was the bottom of Catchment Canyon – I thought we would have time to explore up canyon but it took longer than I guessed to reach the canyon so we touched the bottom, took some pictures and, with the Bighorn Sheep Management Area closing in two days, said goodbye-until-next-year…

Looking up at Table Mountain from the shadowed bottom of Catchment Canyon. December 2018.
Looking up at Table Mountain from the shadowed bottom of Catchment Canyon. December 2018.
Buster Mountain and Alamo Canyon - Sunset. December 2018.
Buster Mountain and Alamo Canyon – Sunset. December 2018.

Buster Mountain Fire – 7/14/2015

Reported at 60 acres with some expectation that it will burn out or be put out by rain I wasn’t really sure what this lightning caused fire would look like. I stopped briefly near the Linda Vista trail and watched flames peak over the ridge and highlight the smoke in the sky – interesting but not so impressive. Driving farther north the view changed quickly and soon I stood with a handful of other people just inside Catalina State Park watching the fire – from here quite a bit more impressive…

1507 Buster Mountain Fire 01
Watching the fire – just off the road into Catalina State Park. July 2015.
1507 Buster Mountain Fire 02
Buster Mountain Fire. July 2015.
1507 Buster Mountain Fire 03
Buster Mountain Fire. July 2015.
1507 Buster Mountain Fire 04
Buster Mountain Fire. July 2015.

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