Friends of Cave Creek Canyon and National Public Lands Day

The Friends of Cave Creek Canyon celebrated National Public Lands Day by completing the next phase of the public gardens at the Cave Creek Canyon visitors center.  Eighteen friends showed up for a morning of moving rock and material to create walking paths and planting areas next to the visitors center.  The work went rapidly and within several hours the job was done.  The new garden area has a swale allowing water flow across the garden, several benches, and a picnic table for visitors.  Native plants and vegetation will surround the area and the Cottonwood trees provide shade.  Of course it was impossible to move all the rock without building a couple of balancing stone sculptures.

New garden area next to the Cave Creek Canyon visitors center.

Inuksuk

Balancing Stones

Portal Irish Music Week

Portal Irish Music Week is rapidly approaching soon the canyon will be filled with Irish music from students learning and improving their Irish music skills.  There will be a concert again this year on Saturday, October 13th at the Portal Peak Lodge.  Last years concert was great and this years should be even better.  Hope everyone can make this special event.

An unexpected visitor at the Painted Pony Resort

The other day, upon returning from a Friends of Cave Creek Canyon board meeting late in the afternoon a visitor was spotted off to the side of the driveway at the Painted Pony Resort.  A desert box turtle was slowly making his way west across the property and was just reaching the turn in the driveway when spotted.  Perhaps another interested visitor looking for a place to hold a wedding or family reunion.  After some photographs he continued his journey west eventually crossing over onto New Mexico State Land.
 

Desert Box Turtle

Box Turtle at the Painted Pony Resort

Waterfalls of the Chiricahua Mountains

Waterfalls are inspiring, evoking images of cool mountain streams and dense lush forests, but in the desert southwest there are also many waterfalls.  Found in the sky islands of the basin and range province of the southwest these desert waterfalls rely on moisture from the winter rains and summer monsoons for their displays.  Depending upon the time of year these waterfalls may range from a trickle to something truly spectacular to see.  In the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona the best known waterfall is Winn Falls.  This 400 ft high waterfall is viewed from the Greenhouse trail and may explain it's familiarity to many.  But there are a number of other waterfalls without names which are not as familiar.  These seldom visited sites are high in the interior of the Chiricahua Mountains and access takes time and energy since these waterfalls are off trail and generally require a significant elevation gain to reach.  An interesting observation about the waterfalls in the Chiricahua Mountains is their location.  A string of waterfalls is is located on a north/south transect in the interior of the Chiricahuas, see below.  Each waterfall or set of falls is reached by hiking up a series of canyons that bisect a band of harder material that comprise the base material of each waterfall.  This line of waterfalls may be extended north and south where other little know waterfalls may exist, but will require some further exploration to to test this idea.

Waterfall transect in the interior of the Chiricahua Mountains.

Road Work around the Painted Pony Resort

It is 2.75 miles from Highway 80 to the entrance to the Painted Pony Resort which is on dirt roads.  With only 3 paved roads in the 330 square miles of the San Simon Valley (south of I-10) dirt roads are a way of life and road work is a necessity, especially on roads that are not maintained by the county.  This is important for guests visiting the Painted Pony Resort since they have spent time and energy driving out to visit and the last thing they would wish is travel over bad roads.  Dirt roads are subject to wash boarding and washouts during heavy down pours so constant attention is required.  The Painted Pony Resort maintains a road grader and tractor for use in road and property maintenance.  While most of the road is fairly easy to maintain, with cleaning side ditches and cattle guards, digging out wing ditches, and occasional roadbed raking, the corner from Night Hawk to Painted Pony Road is in a low spot and has a tendency to collect runoff.  Reshaping the road eliminated boggy spots but drainage and associated erosion is still an issue.  A potential remedy to the problem is to slow the water that drains onto and crosses the road so erosion is minimized and silt may be redeposited building up the road bed.  To that end small check dams have been built along bare areas and developing drainage's on the high side of the road where water flows off the land and rock was placed along the down slope side of the turn from Night Hawk onto Painted Pony.  The results of these efforts should start to become apparent with the ongoing monsoons.

Turn from Night Hawk to Painted Pony Road