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| | | Rhyolite Deming Heart of Rocks Lasso, AZ | | | |
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Rhyolite Deming Heart of Rocks Lasso, AZ
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| Hiking | 7.20 Miles |
1,700 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.20 Miles | 4 Hrs 9 Mns | | 1.73 mph |
| 1,700 ft AEG | | 18 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | Being my first time in the Chiricahua National Monument, a Heart of Rocks lasso loop would be quite appropriate for the first of two hikes on day 2 of our hiking vacation.
Starting from the Visitor Center our route was Lower Rhyolite to Sarah Deming to Heart of Rocks, which we hiked clockwise before returning by the same route. The Lower Rhyolite & Sarah Deming trails were in great shape (nothing like yesterday's wilderness hike) but that said, the rock steps were a real pain. If they were only 2-3" steps hiking up the steady 500'/mile grade each would be almost like a normal step, but the majority were in the 5-8" range, and when they are spaced so every step up uses the same leg the knee begins to suffer. To minimize that issue I took either larger or smaller steps forward, but in the end it was just suck it up and don't think about what it will be on the return... worse on the knee. Oh yeah, of course the hip joints were squawking loudly the first mile or so before I no longer noticed.
At the upper end of the Sarah Deming Trail we turned onto the Heart of Rocks Loop Trail and upon reaching what we thought was where the trail splits so as to make it a loop we turned and in short order came to a dead end. After retracing back onto the trail we kept going and only a few hundred feet later was the actual turn, marked by a sign. From there it was reasonably easy to followed the trail... although at a few points enough traffic had taken slightly different routes so one had to stay vigilant.
Side Note: What likely set us off at that first turn was due to glancing at my US Topo map which only showed the original trail from years ago, and the current trail deviated quite a bit from it... very likely due to the need to recreate the trail after the massive Horseshoe Two Fire in early May 2011, of which 100% of the park was burned to some extent. We would see evidence of the fire on all four hikes we will do in the park.
Back to the Heart of Rocks loop...
With so many very distinctive boulders practically everywhere one looked, if one let their imagination wander for a moment, there were literally hundreds of images that came to mind, whether the likeness was of an animal, a person, or some other thought from a distant memory. Punch and Judy was one of which I had memories from a long distant past... to almost 70 years ago when I was in school in South Africa.
(Once back home, after a quick search to bring back to my mind where Punch and Judy came from, it is essentially an English puppet show originating in the 1600's, so of course with South Africa still being in the British Commonwealth in the 1950's it was natural I would have first heard of Punch and Judy)
Sorry... with ADHD and 74 years of memories it's easy for me to go off on a tangent.
Anyway, we eventually got through the loop and started back down the Sarah Deming Trail. Surprisingly the descent was not as bad as anticipated... as long as I kept switching which foot to step down with. And as Tracey mentioned, it seemed a shorter trip on the return, and soon we were on the Lower Rhyolite Trail and quickly back to the Visitor Center.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention one thing which just could be THE HIGHLIGHT of all 6 hikes over four days... the sighting of an Elegant Trogon.
Note: I said could be, as the Elegant Trogon, which was endemic to the park years ago, had not been sighted in all the years since before the Horseshoe Two Fire in 2011.
Just short of a mile of the Visitor Center on the Lower Rhyolite Trail 'something' caught my eye next to the trail about a hundred feet ahead and before my mind could decipher what it was, what turned out to be a bird took off flying ahead of us. So of course my first thought was 'it's just another of the many birds we'd seen today' but the moment it swooped up to the left and I saw its brilliant colors I realized it wasn't just another blue jay or finch, but an Elegant Trogon. And the only reason I would even think that, was the night before I was glancing through a few old Arizona Highways magazines and came across an article with a photo of a 'rare Elegant Trogon'. Unfortunately before we could get a closer look it flew away through the trees.
Anyway, once we got back to the Visitor Center I went in to mention the sighting to the staff but being mid-day it was a zoo of tourists (none looked to be dressed for hiking) and all the staff were busy either describing or selling items so we left to knock out Natural Bridge Trail for the second hike of the day, planning to check in again later. On their whiteboard of various bird and animal sightings, we noticed it said May 7, 2011 was the last previous sighting of the Elegant Trogon. We wondered what the deal was with that, but at that moment we were not aware of the devastating Horseshoe Two Fire the day after that.
After our Natural Bridge hike and some three hours later with the Visitor Center almost like a ghost town we stopped in again. When I told the first staff member of my sighting she got so excited, calling to others from the office hear about it. The first thing I was asked was do you have a photo of it? Sorry, it wasn't about to pose for a portrait. I was asked about its size and coloring, of which I couldn't be super positive due it being in the shade when it took off and once in the trees it was impossible to get a good look. They had a display which had a side portrait of the Trogon and near as I could tell, that is what I saw.
After one of the staff got my name and phone number for some expert to call me about the sighting, and another grabbing a pack to go out on the trail see if they could get a sighting (she did not realize my sighting was almost 4 hours prior) a third member asked a few more questions, at which time it became clear to me I was not being believed. So be it, but for half that night I kept going through it in my mind, exactly what did I see and is it likely to be an Elegant Trogon? And what came to mind was the most colorful bird I had sighted over two decades of hiking in Arizona, was a Western Tanager on Mount Graham in 2014, and it definitely was not that. Of all the other birds 'common' to the National Monument, none even came close to what I saw, so I'm still convinced it WAS an Elegant Trogon and I'm sticking to my story!
Average and max heart rate on this 'Heart of Rocks' hike was 93/133 |
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