Denisa had read that there is a hiker shuttle that runs once a day at 9:00 a.m. So we set the alarm early this morning to make the hour-long drive to the park to sign up when the office opened at 8:30. It was a full shuttle, as the ranger took us to the top of the mountain that morning. Our first glimpse at the area below Massai Point was breath-taking. The valley below us was filled with an army of stone columns.
The trail took us immediately downwards. It is a great service to have a shuttle drop-off at the highest point, allowing us to walk down-hill most of the day.
The Chiricahua Indians called this the "land of standing up rocks."
This area fell victim to a fire in 2011, so many of the trees in this section are now charred sticks among those standing up rocks.
We continued deeper into Echo Canyon, filled with more unusual rock formations. We couldn't begin to understand how this see-saw rock was formed, but it was perfectly balanced on the huge boulder beneath it.
During the shuttle ride, we had struck up a conversation with our new friend, Doug. He was on a road-trip from his home-state of Kansas, and he had just hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (and of course back to the top). Since we made that hike two years ago, we had lots of hiking adventures in common. We had also planned to hike the same 10-mile route here at Chiricahua, so we gladly invited him to walk with us today. He took this picture of us together beside another unusual rock.
We all agreed that some of the views across Echo Canyon reminded us of Bryce Canyon National Park--another place that we all had hiked. The endless sea of columns here were much like the number of hoodoos at Bryce Canyon.
By the time we hiked to the grotto section, we were shedding our jackets and rolling up sleeves. It was going to be another perfect-temperature hiking day for us!
Like he often does, Mark was climbing on top of the grotto, taking this picture of the large rock formations around us.
It's hard to describe the grandeur of the scene, and the size of these columns. Mark is standing beside one, and you can barely see him at the base.
This area was part of a volcanic explosion, that settled many layers of ash that cooled and hardened. Over thousands of years, cracks formed and weathering separated these cracked rocks into columns. Some of those large columns were leaning heavily on each other.
We enjoyed hiking with Doug, telling stories of our favorite trails and giving each other travel advice. We could seldom finish a story, however, before we were interrupted with more exclamations of "Wow!" as we turned another curve into another field of beautiful rock formations.
Our hike today actually took us on 8 different trails. Now we are on the Mushroom Rock Trail, named after that rock high atop the stone columns at the cliff edges.
Occasionally we found ourselves in shaded areas, where the snow had turned into slippery ice on the trail.
At one point we were on the ridge. Looking one direction, we saw a normal high desert valley below us.
On the other side of the ridge was a very abnormal valley filled with stone columns as far as we could see. That's because this area is called a sky island--an isolated mountain range that rises above the usual grassland.
The rock formations began to have more personalities as we hiked further down the Balanced Rock Trail.
This was one of our favorite formations--"The Big Balanced Rock." It seems that a more superlative word should be used as a descriptor than "big." You can barely see Mark's silhouette at the base of the pedestal rock, so that entire formation must be over 50 feet tall. The signpost said the stone balanced on such a tiny point weighed 100 tons, and was 22 feet in diameter.
The view from another angle of the Big Balanced Rock reminds us that we have wandered into many of His wonders today!
Named "The Pinnacle Balanced Rock," this unusual formation shows up on postcards and park t-shirts. Mark certainly looks handsome standing beside such a handsome stone.
Believe it or not, we are just now entering the "Heart of Rocks Loop" where some of the most-photographed formations can be seen. Between the beautiful skies and perfect temperatures, all three of us feel like we have been richly blessed this day.
This loop is filled with massive columns that just happen to have some unique shapes. We'll run through some of them, such as the "Camel's Head" in the center of the picture below.
There's also the "Duck on a Rock",
and the "Kissing Rocks."
While Mark is good at scrambling onto rocks, Denisa is only good at crawling under them. It's a good thing she was holding up these boulders so no one was hurt.
From the top of the "Heart of Rocks" loop, we could look down into the valley and view rock columns as far as our eyes could see. Our conversations with Doug were peppered with words like, "blessed" and "so pretty!" and it was a joy sharing this hike with him. We knew we had a lot in common when he brought out his home-made energy cookies--and they were made from the exact same recipe as the ones we had packed as well! But we could tell that our picture-taking pace was slowing him down. He was on vacation, instead of on retirement, and he was planning to make another stop today.
At 1:30, he finally decided that he needed to speed to the park exit if he was going to make it to another park before he ran out of daylight. So we bid him safe travels, and stopped to eat our picnic lunch among these massive stone faces. We get to eat with some of the best views on our lunch breaks, with tables and chairs sculpted by the Maker's hand.
By now we had hiked for over 4 hours, and we were on sensory-overload. We'll remember this zig-zag path through Chiricahua National Monument for many years.
As we hiked the last three miles of the hike, we were just a tad bit bored. The standing columns on the opposite cliffs were bathed in sunlight, but they weren't as grand and impressive as the giants we had just walked through. The good news is we were continuing to walk downhill, and our side of the canyon was in the shade.
By the end of the hike, Denisa's Vivo-smart recorded that we had hiked over 11 miles, and walked up the equivalent of 95 flights of stairs. We felt like most of the hike was downhill after our shuttle ride to the top, but there was obviously some positive elevation change in those 11 miles. We were tired and hungry by the end of our day, and we decided that cooking sounded like too much work. So we stopped at a little place in Willcox, Arizona, that served barbecue in a railroad car.
After a great hike and a big platter of barbecue, we have to admit that we are spoiled and blessed beyond our retirement dreams.
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