Copper Canyon

 I didn't know which area to explore, either the Mormon Battalion Monument off the San Pedro River east of Palominas, or Copper Canyon in the southern Huachucas.  I ended up doing both.  I took Wolfie, Gretchen, Hansel, Sahne and Sweetie.  Wolfie got the lucky dog for the weekend.

It was a warm and sunny morning when I got to Palominas and let the dogs out at the trailhead behind the old Trading Post restaurant off SR92.   That place has been vacant since it closed in 2005, but the building, despite its fading paint and rotting wood, is still standing.  A shame it has not been upgraded and turned into a diner of sorts.

The dogs did fine on both hikes.  I was afraid they'd explore the backyards of the homes along SR92, but they stayed near me on the trail.  Field fencing kept them off private property.  The road to the monument is a wide dirt road, but near the entrance to the Mormon campsite, the trail got muddy and then saturated in water.  It was too deep to walk through.  The dogs didn't mind the mud.

I really wanted to take the dogs to the river and tried a second approach.  According to my tracker, there was another dirt road going south just a bit west of the river, but that proved to be an overgrown road that also ended in mud.  Again I turned around and tried a third road south.  By now it was getting too warm and too boring, fighting the growing heat and the prickly pig weed that I just scraped the idea.  I found a Guatemalan passport off the trail.  The dogs found a few mud puddles in that last half mile.  Those puddles always seem to be on the way back to the truck!

We had walked a mere 2.25 miles.  I wasn't ready to go home just yet with four muddy dogs, so I drove another 20 miles to Copper Canyon, the first major canyon west of Montezuma's Pass along the border.  There is always water running here, and water was the main goal today. 

Copper Canyon was once the site of a busy copper mine, which is at the end of the short, steep, rocky trail just 0.75 miles up the road.  This short hike is perfect on hot days due to the heavy shade and reliable water.  But I somehow didn't pay attention and took a left turn at the Y and ended up at the former miners' site, instead of going right at the Y and continuing to the mine.

This error wasn't so bad, though, as storm clouds moved overhead and loud thunder soon came while we were walking up the drainage.  There were yellow wildflowers everywhere!  A photographer's delight!  But Sweetie had trouble jumping over the fallen snags and I turned around at the half-mile mark.  I didn't want to be caught in a downpour with four wet dogs.  I must come back and explore this canyon while the flowers are out.

Not wanting to stop the hike just yet, I put Sweetie in the truck and walked another mile with the younger dogs, heading south to the old cattle corral. Sweetie looked tired. I could see the dark clouds above the Huachucas now, and rain was moving from the southeast toward my location.  We shortcut around the corral on the way back to the truck, stopping at a stockpond where the dogs jumped in yet again.

We had hiked a mere two miles more.

I managed to evade any rain while on the drive back home, but to the east and north it looked dark.  It finally rained in the early evening.  It was brief and intense.