Hidden Canyon-Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

 I went here so you don't have to. That may sound like a bit of ego, but it's really only a little bit. Really, you don't want to do what I did a couple of Saturdays ago.
A long time ago while driving over to Aguirre Springs, I briefly spied some splashes of fall color tucked away beneath Baylor Peak and ever since I've had a small, but lingering desire to go and investigate. Well, back on the 3rd( 11/3/2018) I did just that. It seems like I have to do at least one crazy off-trail hike in the Organs each year. Some years it's been more than one, but I think it averages out over the twenty years I've lived here. I used to Google Earth to figure out the best place to park the car. Unfortunately there is no shoulder and almost no  parking at all on the road up to Aguirre Springs. I ended up  at a lone pullout more than a 1/2 mile from where I wanted to start. I crossed the road and jauntily began striding back to the northwest. My energy was  high and at first I didn't think much about pushing through the grasses and thorny acacia. I didn't mind rock hopping on the protruding boulders which provided a respite from the desert thicket either. But eventually it all began to wear me down. There was no wildlife or cattle path. Nothing. Rarely was there even an obvious choice about which might be a better way to proceed, but I just kept pushing on. And I do mean pushing. It was a very few times when I took more than ten or so steps unimpeded. I thought when I reach my first arroyo, I'll just follow the clear path in the bottom on upward. Wrong. The arroyos were even thicker than the flats or the ridges in between.

The smart thing to do would have been to quit, but early on. Once I was an hour or more into the hike, I had invested too much time to turn back without reaching my destination. I had invited my friend David, but luckily he didn't come. I'm sure he would've quit on me, and he would have been right to do so.
 Up on the ridges there were juniper branches to dodge and did I mention the prickly pear? I continued to wear my denim jacket even though the day had gotten rather warm and my sweat was soaking through, just to minimize the punctures. Even so my hands were bloody and my knees, ankles and thighs were thick with un-removed cholla and cactus spines.
Alas, as if all the preceding were not enough, this sojourn had one additional problem. From the direction I was approaching, the entrance to the upper canyon remained completely hidden. There was also a "false canyon" similar to a false summit, which appeared to drain from the upper canyon but was actually cut off by low dividing ridge. Luckily I wasn't fooled, I got on the right ridge and made it to the "gate" of the upper canyon which was almost completely blockaded by grapevine strung across hackberry trees.
 I began to hear water running and for the first time since I left the truck, my heart felt a little lighter with just a bit of mountain joy. I broke through and beheld a tiny stream of water trickling over the whitish gray bedrock.  I was at the bottom of a two tiered waterfall of 40 or 50 feet. There was crack on the left side that I easily scrambled up to the small pool of water in between the drops. There was a second seam to follow also on the left side, only this one required bending back the sharp points of several intervening lechuguilla plants along the way. Once that was all negotiated there was some easy walking on bedrock along the stream where several more flowing( but barely) cascades appeared.

A lovely lone cottonwood with leaves in full fall color stood in the middle of the canyon, and just bit further, a spidery old maple denuded of leaves sat in the stream bottom as well.


After climbing a large boulder to get a better look around, I continued up stream where the going got really thick again. The grapevine that grew everywhere was particularly troublesome and at times seemed determined to not let me through. There were ash and oak trees now, and in the very back of the canyon huge junipers seemed to be pasted against the steep hillsides just below the orange and pink cliffs. I finally decided I'd had enough at a copse of maples( that patch of red I had seen so many years ago) that seemed virtually impenetrable although perhaps not significantly more so than the rest of the hike.


 

Now for the return. A trip made worse, not better, by working with gravity instead of against. Grapevine constantly snared my ankles threatening to send me headlong down the canyon. Once back in the desert and chaparral country, fallen sotol stalks hidden in the high grass were a near constant obstacle. Once again I made the mistake of believing I could find some easier passage in the canyon bottom itself. Right when things were getting their thickest, including the stream of expletives flowing over my lips, I took a tumble in some shrubs that I was trying to push through and proceeded to do a nice little roll in their sweet arms. All I could do was laugh at my predicament as I lay my on my back still buoyed up off the ground by the plant life.
 I was hoping to find a direct route out to the road and then hike back however far was necessary on the merciful pavement. It didn't work out. I was tired now, with no decent energy left so that all the impediments I had encountered on the way in now seemed vastly multiplied in their degree of annoyance.  Falling was more frequent. It felt like it was taking an inordinate amount time and as it turns out, it was. The three and a half hour hike I had initially estimated was now in its fifth hour threatening to go over six.
 I did make it back to the road. I wrapped my flannel shirt around my head for additional protection from the sun and did the what turned out to be a thankfully short walk back to the truck.  It seems I do at least one of these crazy off-trail hikes in Organs each year, and this one, like almost all the others, is never to be repeated.