Carr Peak in June

Since this was the absolute last time I could attempt Carr Peak this month before the Coronado National Forest shut all its trails at noon today, I had to get up early. I got no other offers to hike with me at 5:30am (it was more like 5:45am by the time I got to the Lower Carr Canyon Road parking lot) so it was just Sadie and me and the early morning breeze.

And, I must admit, I liked it! Although I packed a windbreaker, I never needed it. I also didn't need to stop for water as often as I would have had I started later. We didn't drink water until we made it to the peak at 7:45am

We started at 6:06am. We were the only people anywhere. The Ramsey Overlook campsite was deserted and the parking lot was empty, nor where there any people anywhere along the drive up the mountain. It felt creepy and for a brief moment I felt perhaps this morning hike was a bad idea.

But it wasn't. Although the wildfire smoke from the Chiricahuas was very obvious (as well as smoke from a fire in Cananea, Sonora), there were many birds flitting about and I was serenaded with chirps, tweets, caws, coos, and hums. I need to do these early hikes more often!

And there was plenty of flora blooming. Purple lilac, red cardinal flowers, yellow flowers and a few other unknown flowers dotted the trails. I spotted a beautiful Swallowtail and a few other butterflies. Where all these here all this time and I just never noticed?

It took me 1:40hours to get to the stop. This was a slow hike for me, but I was stopping a lot to photograph so much, as if I were never going to see this beautiful landscape again.

I felt like I was paying homage to a threatened mountain range, after we have lost the most precious sites within the Chiricahuas and White Mountains from all our current fires.

Sadie was a sweetheart and stayed by my side the whole time. She did her share of sniffing the flowers and other scents, but she never wandered far. She was probably wondering why I was taking so long, or why I kept stopping along the way.

When we got to the top, though, she was a lovebug. Initially she kept her distance from me, but once I set up the camera she was by my side, licking my mouth when she could or trying to cuddle with me. She isn't normally this demonstrative!

We stayed on top no more than 15 minutes, just enough time to drink water and for me to have an apricot. I enjoyed the breeze on the peak, but as I sat there I wondered how much more wildlife will die in our fires, and how much more wilderness will be destroyed. Arizona is losing so much of its natural beauty this spring (and the fire season in young!) that when this is all over with we won't have much else left to enjoy.

I figured the hike down would be faster since we were going downhill, but I was stopping just as often to photograph butterflies and birds. I noticed a pretty brown-orange wren-like bird several times, and one seemed to enjoy posing for me.

We never came across another person the entire time. We got back to the van at 9:45am and made it down to the lower parking lot just as the 10am news on NPR came on. Another fifteen minutes I was back home, feeling satisfied that I got this hike out of the way so early, with so much left of the day to do.

I really do need to do these early hikes more often.