Cibola National Forest - Datil Mountains

Datil Mountains

We did get out earlier the next day, but it's never early enough once summer begins. Really, we should be ending our hikes at 9:00 AM, not just beginning.  As I have spoken about before, the indirect nature of most of the roads leaves access to even the nearest ranges to Horse Mountain an hour away, which was just the case here.  We went up Davenport Canyon, over the Monument Saddle on Forest Road 6 and down the other side a short ways to park at a clearing on the right just little ways past a livestock tank that is very close to the road.

 These are not graves but memorials. William Raymond Morley was the brother of  No Life for A Lady author Agnes Morley Cleaveland. He was a prominent rancher and leading citizen in the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Almost back to the 4Runner

 My original plan for this hike had been to use these two narrow canyons on the north/northwest side of Madre Mountain to access the peak. That wasn't going to happen this day, but I did hope to at least make it to their juncture about a mile and a half away.

 Quickly leaving the pine park of mostly younger ponderosas, we headed for the thicket right along the dry stream bed. This was a mistake that we just as quickly corrected  when we got out of the  branches and onto what looked like the very indistinct remnant of a road on the south bank. 

This area must have been logged at some distant time for even though the narrow area on both sides of the silty creek bed was heavily grown in with oak, juniper, ponderosa pine, piñon, Douglas-fir and even a few spruce trees way up, there were no larger, older trees to be seen, save for one gnarly one-seed juniper.

 Either that, or perhaps the very narrow, steep nature of the canyon makes it prone to being cleared out by wind and floods periodically. It could also be that the same very narrowness limits the amount of sunlight severely thereby slowing the growth of the trees.

Eventually the road remnant became a wildlife path that crisscrossed the creek as we continued our steady ascent. Above us, along the way, rocky cliffs and buttresses could be seen when there was favorable gap in the abundant tree and shrub growth, which was infrequent for sure, but happening just enough to keep the hike from having an entirely closed in feeling. 

The hike became more of scramble as the sloping canyon sides squeezed tighter and tighter. Finally, while my wife took a breather, I made to the junction with the canyon in from the south, where things opened up quite a bit.

 I wished it was a different time of year, and I wish I hadn't pushed the limits of my still healing knee. I knew we weren't going to on this trip but I still had that urge to make the right turn keep going all the way to the grassy top of Madre Mountain.

 It will happen though.