Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Hello there, and thanks so much for joining us here! You are probably wondering what this podcast is all about? In this podcast, we will talk about all sorts of outdoor adventures, but primarily, for now, we will focus on hiking and backpacking. No other outdoor adventure is so accessible to so many people! So please join us as we talk about how to hike/backpack and learn how to hike any length trail from your local neighborhood parks to those long trails such as the Appalachian and others worldwide! Remember... "in every walk with nature; one receives far more than he seeks... - John Muir " See you on the trail!
Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Balanced Rocks and Buffalo Soldiers: Arizona's Strangest National Monument
Note: Audio Only, Please see YouTube for Video Version
Standing among the towering hoodoos and balanced rocks of Chiricahua National Monument feels like stepping into another world. These extraordinary formations weren't crafted by human hands but by 32 million years of volcanic activity and persistent erosion. Located in southeastern Arizona near the small towns of Bowie and Wilcox, this hidden gem offers visitors a chance to explore one of America's most distinctive landscapes.
The scenic drive to Massai Point reveals panoramic vistas stretching up to 80 miles across the desert. From this vantage point, you can see the distant Dragoon Mountains—once the stronghold of Apache leader Cochise—and connect to an impressive network of trails. While the full 9-mile loop requires 5-6 hours, shorter options like the Echo Canyon Trail to The Grottoes provide accessible ways to experience the monument's signature formations. Walking through these natural stone corridors, with massive boulders suspended overhead, creates an almost mystical experience.
Chiricahua's significance extends beyond its stunning geology. Designated as a "sky island" wilderness, these isolated mountains form a unique ecological refuge surrounded by desert. The monument also preserves important human history at Far Away Ranch, where the Erickson family's homestead evolved from a primitive cabin to a working guest ranch. Walking among these historic structures prompts reflection on the legacies we leave behind—a thought that resonates whether you're admiring volcanic sculptures shaped over millennia or pioneer buildings constructed by determined hands. Whether you're a geology enthusiast, history buff, or simply seeking natural beauty off the beaten path, Chiricahua offers a profound connection to the forces that shape our world. Come prepared with water and sturdy shoes, and don't rush your visit—this remarkable landscape deserves time to appreciate its wonders properly.
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Okay, folks, I am standing in front of the visitor center at Chiricahua National Monument, located in southeastern Arizona. The closest town would be Bowie or Wilcox. I'm going to check out the things here. Talked to the ranger inside. He said best time is late September, the tail end of the monsoon season. You get wildflower blooms and lots of other cool things. The weather's not so fierce and the crowds are not bad. Probably will take a look at the campground on the way out and then, far away ranch also, off we go. I think the plan is to head towards Benita Creek campground in Maasai point. Let's go this spot right. Here was the one I was going to pick for tonight. I did pick it on the recreationgov. It looks like a nice site but it's going to be pretty brisk tonight, wind wise and temperature wise, so another time. But looks like a nice campground.
Speaker 1:I'm at the very top of the scenic drive, which is a place called the side point. It's a good overview of the whole park. You can connect to a bunch of other trails. One thing I did notice from my research here that you can connect a lot of trails and do a big, giant loop which is almost nine miles and takes about five to six hours, which I don't have today. Let's look at the map for a second. I'm up here at the top, the uppermost portion of the drive, there's a little exhibit area. You go down there. I'm planning on doing the Echo Canyon Trail. I'm working my way back down to the park entrance and on to Tucson. You can add these up quickly the side point, inspiration point, heart of rocks loop, perimeter loop plus the heart of rocks loop. There is no further paved road beyond this point which loops around and goes back down. But you can combine things. Definitely want to check this out some more, but for now we're gonna do this.
Speaker 1:Come on Now. All these weird shaped rocks that you see. They're very interesting. You have columns, balanced rocks, pinnacles, all formed through various joints and solid pieces of rock. Over time those joints widened due to water, erosion and weathering. That will continue to shape these rocks.
Speaker 1:This is Maasai Point at the Chukawa National Monument. Nice panoramic view of the surrounding area. Hey, future Craig here. If you're liking this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. That's the best way for YouTube to get it out to other people. And stay tuned to the rest of this video to see this small yet interesting and diverse park. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Some of these are not going to turn out on camera very well, but this little tube here points out some viewpoints On the trail. Right there, directly across from us, which is 40 miles away, is the Dragoon Mountains, which is a stronghold for the Apache under Cochise 1876. Let's go left so they'll go forwards. I can't really see it because it's hazy or dusty. It's straight out there. It's at Saguaro National Park, 70 miles away, and it's like a mountain 8700 feet, 75 miles from this point Pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:This is the highest point accessible in the park called Sugarloaf Peak. On the top of it you can probably see a little structure that's a fire tower fire. Look out. Here you have the heart of rocks trail if you follow that v of the rocks. Right there there's a totem pole which at some point is four feet around at the base, so it's very narrow. One of these days is going to fall over. If you look down to the canyons you can see a lot of narrow. One of these days is going to fall over. If you look down to the canyons you can see a lot of interesting trees Douglas, fir, ponderosa thriving in that moist environment. Over here there is a mountain known as flies peak, one of the two highest peaks in the Chiricahua Mountains. Almost a thousand feet up there is Aspen, indicating a cool, wet climate on the top. And then, lastly, there's a red top, a formation called the mushroom. One thing that's happening as we speak is the process of weathering and a particular plant called lichen which forms the green and gray colors on the rock. It's a symbiotic relationship. It's actually a fungi and an algae that work together and they release a very weak acid which contributes to weathering of rocks. One thing to think about is all landscapes but it seems to be more prominent in a landscape like this are undergoing a continuous process of change, as heat, cold, rain, wind, like today, that just helps break up these formations and make them what they are today. Some of them look like faces or heads or something, of course.
Speaker 1:One thing I've talked a lot about in previous videos is the establishment of wilderness, the Wilderness Act. Even though Aldo Leopold was paramount in getting legislation to set aside the wilderness, that was a full 40 years before that happened. The Wilderness Act came about in 1964 and here in Chiricahua they designated 9,440 as Class I pristine wilderness, one of the last strongholds of the Apache was the Dragoon Mountains, which I've already pointed out earlier, straight across over here on the western horizon. They were named for the Dragoons, which was the cavalry who could fight on foot and horseback. He often retired Cochise with his people to hide out from the military and when he died they buried him in those mountains and no one's ever been able to find it Pretty crazy to think about Rincon Peak and Micah Mountain. Rincon is 70 miles away and micah is 80 miles away. They're visible, maybe not on the camera that I'm showing you right now, but they're definitely out there.
Speaker 1:We do have air pollution that is contributing to this, so the clean air act was established to try to clean up the air. We still have lots of things that contribute to impairment Nitrates, sulfates, coarse materials, elemental carbons, organic matter and so on. Now, inside the monument itself, there's all these different things to check out. Whatever time of year it is, make sure you try to check out whatever you can. This is a map of the monument. We are at the east side of the monument. In the park, plants, animals, etc. The night sky has fascinated people and you might see some really cool things if you are out here at night.
Speaker 1:So if you look here, this is talking about wilderness, which we touched on before. Only a very small portion of the monument is wilderness. It says 10,290 acres. The Coronado National Forest, which is also part of the Chiricahua and is also named the Chiricahua Wilderness, is 87,700 acres. One thing we can do to help is the Leave no Trace principles. They call this a sky island. Sky islands are places that species can come as refuge. They're more like remnant species, but they're isolated through the surroundings and form their own ecosystem in that particular place, which is why they set aside Cherokee in the first place.
Speaker 1:This talks about nature's sculptures. This is what caused the volcano itself. In the very middle. Here we have a little scale model of the monument. Looks like a brain. Some of these stones look like heads. This is Cochise's head. If you look right there, he's laying on his back. His head is sticking up there. There's his nose, eyebrow Pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm going to continue down the hill here and go to Echo, what's called Echo Canyon, to try to do a hike there. Hope you'll join me. So I probably spent a little too long at my side point, but it was pretty amazing. I don't have time to do the entire Echo Canyon loop trail, but I will do it another time. Let's take a look at the map here. So Echo Canyon trail goes here in a big loop with the Edward Riggs trail and the Hailstone trail making. The entire loop goes among the pinnacles to Bonita Creek, usually dry. Before circling back, I need to be in Tucson by 8 o'clock. I just go to the Grottos which is showing on the map here. One mile, 40 minutes, so it's half mile in half mile back and save the Echo Canyon loop for another time.
Speaker 1:Just running out of time today, definitely want to be prepared. Carry your 10 essentials, plenty of water there is no water available out here Stay on the trail and be aware of changing conditions. Plus, leave everything that you find undisturbed. Okay, let's go down, go to the Grottoes. It's about four tenths of a mile or .6 kilometers. Upper Rhyolite Trail, 1.6, hailstone 1.6, ed Riggs, .2, and then Nature Trail .5. A
Speaker 1:lot of choices. I think I'm going to go this way to the Grottoes and check that out and see how it goes. I don't anticipate it'll take me too long to get to the grottoes, but we'll see. Even though it's off season, we had a lot of nice people on the trail today. Pretty cool indeed, but I think this is probably going to be enough for me today. I have to come back sometime camp camp in the park and do the entire loop. I just met some guys that were going over the entire loop and that was pretty wild. They did every mile of trail that there is in the park and that's pretty neat. I feel like I'm walking past monoliths from Easter
Speaker 1:Island or something. The big giant heads. Look at this. This is crazy. See a sign down there. It says Grottoes. Let's go
Speaker 1:check it out. You have Grottoes here. You've got these big old giant boulder looking things. It's really not a boulder, it's just like the wore down parts of the rock. You can go in here and check it out. I'm going to do just that. I'm going to walk up in here and see
Speaker 1:where it goes. I'm not sure how far it goes, but this is wild. Look at this boulder just suspended up here. There's a rock just up there. This goes back down to the trail. There's some further stuff up here. I hope the big boulder doesn't follow me. There's a little crack there. Some cracks lead back to
Speaker 1:the main trail. Here's some more areas over here. This is wild y'all so wild and there's another boulder just hanging out. This is the way out, so we're going to take that. This is so crazy to think about. This is the end of the grotto here. Turn it around, you've got the big rock up here, actually got a couple of big rocks that are hanging out, so to speak. And then look over here we have a beautiful view. Look further down this way there are some more rocks up top and there's the trail down there. So I'm going to head out. I don't know if this is a famous balanced rock, but it is a balanced rock. There's some other pentacles out here. It's really cool. If you look close enough and use your imagination, you can probably imagine shapes or faces. This one kind of looks like a cat or a lion sitting up, like one of those Chinese lions. That thing is just crazy looking. I wish I had more time to do the entire Echo Canyon Trail, but I have to wait
Speaker 1:for another day. If you're looking over the top of my vehicle, this material was ancient stream beds that was deposited 32 million years ago, ready for oxidation or rust with the iron in the soil. They were buried by volcanic ash from the eruption that formed what we know as Chiricahua National Monument. There's those white veins over there, which is interesting. I thought they were roots at first, but they're actually gypsum, which is used to make plaster of Paris. That was deposited as percolation through fractures in the stream deposits. Over time it precipitated from the water-filling cracks, probably difficult to see in the bright sunlight. But there's a formation up ahead called China Boy. It formed from erosion from the layered rocks which had volcanic eruptions millions of years ago. There was another volcano called Turkey Creek 10 miles south. That erupted at least nine times. So you had a lot of different layers that were popped out, the final depth of about 2,000 feet. How
Speaker 1:crazy is that? Here's a graphical representation of it on the sign China Boy up on the top right here. I'll try to get a little closer so you can see it. Right here they're trying to show us a sea captain which is a shape up there. If you look way up there, let me zoom in. Right above, where the tree goes, looks like there's a face. He's up there going argh. They're calling this the organ pipe formation and I can see why. Look at those massive columns of rock there. It's just
Speaker 1:wild to me. It's getting dark but I wanted to go to the Farway Ranch real quick. I won't be able to make it to all the little stops here. Let's look at the map. Here you have the ranch home. It's a round-trip hike of half a mile. Probably have time to do that one. You have the stafford cabin, built in 1880. That's about a mile or 20 minutes, so I might be able to go to that one. That's probably about as far as we go today. But this is the historical story of people here the prehistoric, the chiricahua, apache, the spanish people, the buffalo soldiers, ranchers, civilian conservation corps they've all been here and this trail you can take your dog on, but you have to have them on the leash at all times. This talks about the deal here. I definitely want to go to the ranch house. I wanted to go to the furthest one first because I want to try to get back to my vehicle and it's still somewhat okay. Look, there's a deer over there going across the road. I don't know if you can see them. There's a couple of them. There's some that I came across by the main house, which I'll talk about
Speaker 1:in a minute. Stafford built this cabin with a dirt floor. In one room. Additions are made. You can see on here. They built the cabin using logs cut from the canyon here. Originally it was unpeeled logs, squared, notched corners, chinked gravel with mud. There was a Sonoran earthquake that shook the chimney, knocked it down in 1887. The Eriksons purchased it from the Stafford children in 1918, which that's
Speaker 1:Farway Ranch people. Let's take a look at the cabin. You can see some of the additions. The wooden part on the side is an additional room that was added on. The original wood was the original part. How would you like to have lived in that cabin back there. Leave me a comment and let me know what would be your worries,
Speaker 1:fears and expectations. There's Farway Ranch, almost like something out of a Hollywood movie. The Eriksons owned that. They actually operated it as a working ranch, a dude ranch, for many years until it was sold to the federal government to make the park in the 1920s. There's a closer view of the home. Look at this old bathtub. That's crazy. Bet a lot of you out there have never seen a bathtub like this. Yep, just like the other home, it evolved. It was a primitive structure and they built around it, increased its size. They called it Far Away Ranch because it was so
Speaker 1:far from everything. Over here we have some outbuildings. I believe some of these were cabins for the dude ranch operation. Of course you got barns, stables, that type of thing. This was probably a pump house or an outhouse, that stone building. Here's a beautiful view as we get close to finishing up. Look at this old windmill blowing the breeze. But that windmill's seen some things. What
Speaker 1:do you think? Now we come back full circle to the Erickson's Cemetery. They were pioneers on this land as far as making permanent European settlements. You had several Eriksons that were buried here. It just makes me think as I approach my 50th birthday, what legacy am I going to leave on the earth? Hey, future Craig here Left you with a deep thought, didn't I Think about that legacy that you're going to leave on the earth? Is it going to be something meaningful? I hope so. I hope I myself will do the same thing. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up, think about subscribing to the channel and if you have any questions or comments, leave those below. Thanks, got more content coming that I think you will enjoy and you don't want to miss that. I do appreciate you watching. I do appreciate your comments and your likes and everything that you do to help me, and hope that you're having a great year so far. Until next time, watch one of these videos and I'll see you on the trail. Okay, bye.
