Miller Canyon Trail in the snow

I woke up to a foggy morning. It was cold. I forfeited any plans to hike today with "the guys" in the Chiricahua mountains. I didn't want to drive that far for a long hikle. I had planned to take a shorter hike nearby with the dogs up Ash Creek once the sun came out.

But just my luck Ellen asked me if I were interested in hiking this afternoon to check out the snow in Miller Canyon. This was a perfect hike, but it wasn't until we met at the trailhead at 12:30pm that I learned Ellen wanted to hike up to the 8525' Tub Springs. That was four miles up an icy, steep trail! People were coming down the trail as we started it, and never came across anyone else for the duration of the hike.

I needed the exercise, though. I hadn't hiked since before Thanksgiving and I have gotten lazy lately with motivating myself to hike around the trail. The Miller Canyon Trail is not an easy trail, and with the Lutz Canyon trail is one of the steepest in the Huachucas. With the flood damage after the wildfire in June, loose rocks also add to the peril, and many of these rocks were also icy as we hiked higher up.

We chatted with Tom Beatty, owner of the Beatty Guest Ranch, in the Forest Service parking lot. His property borders that with the forest and I'm sure he sees plenty of hikers pass his land. Today he was giving away trees off his property to anyone interested. Ellen showed an interest but not until after the hike. With our late start we needed as much sunlight as possible.

A mile up the road we saw the construction workers for Tombstone tearing up our prized bird habitat so that that meth-infested city can take the water from the creek. Nevermind that Tombstone has enough wells to support their drug addicts. The mayor is claiming a century-old water claim to the creek water in the wilderness. The mayor had approved the new pipe laying without permission from the National Forest in which the springs are located. The legalities are still pending, but I am curious to see how this will end. The National forest Service is known not to have a backbone and always gives in to for-profit businesses.

We began our hike at 12:45pm. There were three of us: Ellen, Steph and I. Steph brought his dog Supai along, who got along well with Sadie once they did the sniff test. Supai followed Steph out of Supai Falls this summer (thus the name) and is a Yellow Lab-Shar Pei mix boy. The two dogs were a bit rambunctious at first but calmed down once they realized we were on a serious hike.

I wore my new Italian-made Zamberlan boots. They were comfy straight out of the box when I got them a few months ago. I've worn them around the shelter these last few weeks, but hiking up the steep rocky trail was not easy! I had no traction and feared all the icy rocks. I realized later it wasn't the boots' fault at all: the snow was freezing to ice as we made it higher along the trail, adding to the danger of slipping. Getting down later was even worse, as my toes were pressing against the toebox. My right big toe has a small hematoma from the constant pressing of the feet against the shoes hiking downhill. I should have taken at least one trekking pole along for better traction.

The snow got thicker as we climbed higher. The snow at the 5750'trailhead was minimal and relegated to the tree limps above us. But as we got above 6000' last night's precipitation was obvious. My eyes were locked on the ground.

The sky broke out at times to reveal the sun. The frosty trees near the Crest Trail sparkled in the sunlight as we got to the Crest Trail near 4pm, jut long enough for me to drink some water bfore we all quickly turned around for the descent. It was cold at the tub! Ice hung off the pine needles around us. We wanted to make sure we had enough sunlight to make it to the cars; sunset was slated for 5:13pm.

We made it back down to the cars at 5:45pm, with barely enough light to see the trail. We were lucky! Sadie was glad to be back in the car. I pulled out of the trailhead parking lot with my headlights on.