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Day 26 - Chiricahua

Chiricahua is my new favorite place on earth.     It fees like walking on the moon.  Imagine towering, slender rock monoliths grey in color with neon green lichen highlighting their irregular shapes. Imagine 75 degree temps mixed with 40 mile an hour wind gusts. Imagine a bright blue HUGE sky with low hanging clouds and bolting rays of sun bringing everything to a crescendo like a master conductor. 

I arrived to Chiricahua at 5pm just as the ranger station was closing. The campground was full but there was a national forest with free dispersed camping (aka no facilities) five miles down a dirt outside the park. I learned that the hoodoos of Chiricahua are far different from the hoodoos of Bryce. Where Bryce hoodoos were formed from water flows in an ancient sea bed, Chiricahua hoodoos were formed from an ancient volcano eruption 1000 times greater in size than Mount Saint Helens. 2000 feet of ash was deposited on top of the earth, compressed to rock, and overtime earthquakes and rain erosion caused cracks in the soft compressed volcanic ash rock to form. 

I drove up the (only) scenic road to the Massai point overlooking the hoodoo scene. Then I attempted to hike up a mountain via a mile uphill climb but was nearly knocked over by fearsome winds as the trail turned toward the sun and decided to turn back. Pic 1 shows Cochise rock, a hilltop grouping of rocks that closet resembles a face and it said to be the face of Cochise, a legendary Indian Chief who's s ancient stronghold was close by).

Then came my favorite hike of the whole trip: a sunset three mile loop hike called Echo Canyon Loop down into the hoodoos. The trail descends to a Grotto (pic 2) and amazing close-ups of the growing green lichen on the hoodoos (pic 3). Continuing down, this special trail designed by Ed Riggs (you know it's special when the trail designer is named) the views open up in each direction surprising and delighting the senses (pic 4 of hoodoo rows and artsy pic 5 of black and white hoodoos) before landing down the outer edge of the hoodoos in a sculpted picnic area (pic 6) with a Jurassic Park- like sunset view (pic 7). The brightness of the lichen, the moon-like shapes of the hoodoos, the vastness of the sky, the howling cool wind and the solitude of this place were extraordinary. 

Getting dark, I sped back up the mountain to a fading light and got in the van just as night fully fell. I drove down the mountain, my mountain-- seeing that only two other people were up here during the amazing sunset time, and drove out of the park and up the rutted country road to the national forest, where I pulled off just past the first boundary and fell fast asleep. I had not planned to hike more than five miles today on my hurt ankle but had totally ten with the unexpected Chiricahua stop. I would have to decide in te morning if I would stay and hike the steep seven mile round trip to the "city of rocks"-- the most famous and inspiring section of Chiricahua-- or save my foot and drive on to wherever was next. 







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