Backpacking the Gila Wilderness

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Before I left White Sands National Monument it should be noted that I showered in the sink of their very basic bathroom at 7am. I even washed my hair, and my feet and everything hoping that no one would come in and think I was weird or gross. But it had to be done. The bathroom only had one sink, so whomever came in after me--if they saw me--would realize they would have to use the same space and I was worried about being judged. At the same time, I hadn't showered in four days by this point and was starting to feel pretty desperate. After I showered and filled up my hydration pouch I felt much better and ready to tackle what came next.

I wasn't as certain about the next leg of my adventure but I knew generally that I wanted to head to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, which was about three hours away in Gila National Forest. I knew next to nothing about the park except that it was supposed to be very beautiful and have historical cliff dwellings made by the Native Americans carved into the cliffs. And so I drove there, through a lot of open, arid, empty expanse, which is what a lot of the roads in the southwest are like. But if you keep searching you'll find lush pockets of beauty permeated with life.

My Spotify playlists sustained me through the desert. I had created a new playlist for each leg of the journey so far, this is a great way to fend off the loneliness of the drive. I arrived in Gila around 1pm, after taking a turn up highway 15 through Silver City. The climb up the winding road into the forested mountains was gradually inspiring, which thicker and thicker trees and higher cliffs all the way. I saw cyclists riding up the road, I saw mountain stores that advertised "last chance to buy beer", which is a pretty good selling point except they weren't open on a weekday. When I arrived I went into the ranger office as I had been doing, with my map out in my New Mexico book, ready to obtain my permit.

The ranger looked at the trail route I wanted to do and said, "wow, that's a long one," but didn't say much else and didn't say I required a permit or seem wary of letting me go alone, or anything. I didn't even have to pay a fee to park. This was a wilderness, he explained. I could arrive anytime I liked and wander into any part of it and no one would come looking for me if I went missing for a few days longer than anticipated. This was the first time I had encountered anything so lax and it was at the same time liberating and terrifying. Still, I left the office to drive up to the Middle Fork trailhead and packed up my gear. The ranger had mentioned that the first segment of the trail had over 20 river crossings, which I still at that point naively thought meant that I would have to walk across stones and carefully placed logs. I was excited because I was anticipating doing a three day loop, which was to be my longest consecutive hike without resupplying. I put on sunscreen and headed out on the trail. Immediately there was a river crossing, through a steep canyon with towering red rock formations on either side. It was already so beautiful, but I was surprised to see that the crossing demanded that I just walk straight through the water. I considered taking off my shoes, but I remembered there would be 20+ of these so I just walked straight through it. The water was cold but refreshing in that high desert heat. And I was glad I had my hiking poles to balance on the slippery rocks.

I walked onward for a few hours without seeing anyone except a red, white and yellow stripped snake slithering across a fallen tree. I was noticeably not as scared hiking here where there were definitely still mountain lions, bears and wolves as I had been in Yucca Canyon. I felt braver, somehow. Eventually I came across some young men who looked around my age, but were significantly younger I would discover later, they were heavily laden with gear and I said hello to them but passed them by as my gear is only around 15 pounds in total. I was excited to see other people on the trail though. There were a few technical aspects to the trail besides river crossings, like hopping over fallen trees, but it was more or less easy to follow. I even talked aloud to the Native American spirits that I imagined I could feel in the place. It felt very close to history somehow, more than other places I'd visited in the US.

The Gila river is magical, hidden and deep in the still raw wilderness of America.

Eventually I made it to Little Bear Campsite, which was a beautiful, spread out open space filled with well-used campsites under towering, sturdy trees. I set up my camp at one of the best sites and began making my dinner. A while later the three young guys I'd passed on the trail wandered through, seeming very tired and worn down but they kept going, despite it being already twilight, saying they were heading on to the Jordan hot springs. By the time I was ready to get into my tent a very loud boy scout troupe arrived. Though they were very noisy it was comforting to know I wasn't totally alone in the wilderness.

In the morning, I made my coffee, filled up my water pack directly out of the stream using my Sawyer Squeeze water filter. I hadn't yet figured out that I could just attach my Sawyer filter directly to my pack so that I could drink straight out of the filter instead of squeezing the filtered water slowly into my pouch.

Then I determined to hike onwards to the hot springs, but I messed up and accidentally turned towards the dry, canyon route and hiked a loop straight out of the wilderness. The whole roundtrip was around 11 miles, but it brought me out to a different parking lot so I had to road walk an extra two miles back to my car. On the way out, I met a middle aged man from East Africa who I had a nice chat with, he told me I had bypassed the hot springs and that he had found them by mistake last time he had hiked there and made himself a cup of tea and sat naked in them. I was very disappointed that I had missed the springs and the whole morning walk out I determined to hike straight back into the wilderness that afternoon to find them. But first I wanted to resupply from my car, and to visit the actually cliff dwellings, where the ranger had mentioned at 1pm would be a tour.

I made it to the Cliff Dwellings by 1pm, but was frustrated to find a mass of tourists bumbling around them, improperly dressed for even the short hike up to the dwellings, and out of shape. I found it an affront to my senses to be around so many people after being out in the wilderness. And so I didn't linger too long on the tour, though I did self-guide myself all the way through the cliffs and I asked the ranger why the Apache natives would have based themselves so high up above the water, when I had been hiking through the canyon walls of the Gila river and hadn't seen any cliff dwellings there. He joked that there must have been a consulting geologist that suggested the specific cliffs they found but also told me that the high canyon walls I'd seen along the Gila also had ruins all atop of them, they were just comparatively flattened and nothing much was left there but piles of rocks on the mesa. At the cliffs I saw black marks on the carved out roofs of the caves, which was from all the smoke off of the fires that would have made the community's meals and heating centuries ago.

After visiting the cliff dwellings, I briefly stopped by the only cafe in town that had been around since the 1940s and seemed run by a Native American family. They had everything you could possibly need for days out in the wilderness. It was a really special store and you could tell that the moment you walked in. I actually visited it three times and each time was helped by a little boy who couldn't have been more than 11. He was a natural at customer service already, even answering very maturely that he didn't get to hike as much as he'd like to when I asked him if he spent much time in Gila Wilderness.

Around 3pm, I hiked back into the wilderness, this time from the direction I had left the trail from. I was determined to walk straight to the hot springs this time and that's exactly what I did. I walked so fast, even through the scorching heat and through the wet rocky canyon of Little Bear on the trek back in that when I rounded a corner of a rock that had a huge rattlesnake on it that rattled at me, I actually jumped a full two feet forward. It was horrible. My skin felt like it was crawling after seeing the zigzagged snake on the rock so close to me. I had accidentally snuck up on it and it gave me the creeps. But I pressed on without lingering long to look at it.

I made it back to Little Bear Campsite first where I asked for the right trail from there to the Jordan hot springs. Two young guys pointed me in the right direction but one of the stopped me and asked in dismay, "are you hiking alone?" I hesitated and smiled at him. "Yes," I said and saw his dubious expression. The other guy, to his credit, didn't seem wary at all of what I was doing. The first young guy questioned me further, "are you camping just for fun?" I thought this was a very strange question and almost laughed out loud. I wish now I had told him I was a consulting geologist and if he didn't mind not to hold me up any further as the report I needed to submit in two weeks wouldn't write itself! But instead I just said, yes I was. Then he looked further surprised and said, "well, just be careful," I laughed and said I would instead of telling him to be careful in return. And I continued on to the hot springs.

I arrived around 6pm and to my surprise ran into the first group of three guys I had passed up the day before on the trail into the wilderness. They were camped on a slight overlook of the Gila, near to the hot springs. I was really happy to see them and I think they were equally surprised to see me. I set up camp near them and we decided to share our dinner and hang out that evening, but not before I explored the hot springs. To be honest, the hot springs were a bit of a let down after all the hiking I had done to reach them. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe a mystical fairy place or a refuge filled with friendly and interesting people. Instead, it was just a relatively small hot spring (I've been to bigger ones in California off the PCT and in Thailand near Chaing Mai) with one very quite dude eating a yogurt cup in it. The water was tepid but I have to admit it was pretty wonderful after a full day of hiking as my muscles were very sore. I tried to make chat with the anti-social man in the hot spring but it was a no-go. I asked him if he had seen any snakes that day and he did answer that he had seen one right next to the hot springs. On that note, I decided it was time to go make dinner and make an exit of the springs.

When I returned to my campsite space the guys I had met had managed to catch a carp fish on their makeshift fishing rod they had fashioned out of a long stick and duck tape. I was impressed with their finesse. I offered my potatoes and garlic I had brought alongside my jar of pesto to cook the fish in. As I joined them they actually caught a second fish and then I watched them skin and debone them. I realized that though I had a lot of lightweight gear on me I would never be able to actually fashion a fishing rod, catch a fish with live bait and then skin and cook it. But it was a mutually beneficial exchange as we shared our food and dinner together. It turned out they were from the very town in Texas I had just been housesitting in, small world.

The next morning I woke up and sat on my ground tarp (I use my emergency blanket as a tarp) while I had my morning coffee in the woods. It was such a lovely and peaceful feeling, especially as I saw another woman hiking out of the forest from the further-in direction I was planning to head that day, hoping it would lead me to The Meadows where I needed to go. And so I bid the three new friends adieu and began walking deeper into the wilderness. That whole day I saw no one, I crossed at least 30 more river crossings but they felt wilder, more remote, more hidden in the network of deep canyon walls. I could respect how magical this whole place felt and grieve for what had been lost here. There was a feeling of a lost battle in the air, and though I admit to not reading much of the area's history before, I had seen posts around the town about the Native American Geronimo who was from this region. It all seemed very grand and tragic. I thought about this a lot as I walked deeper in, hoping I was heading the right way and hoping I didn't encounter a mountain lion more than anything. I saw another rattle snake. I saw a massive toad try to eat a smaller frog and then spit it out in failure. Then they set next to each other as if nothing had happened (not a healthy relationship).

It was very hot. The part I hated the most was that near some river banks were very tall, dense reeds that were as hard as asparagus shoots and so thick you couldn't see anything around them. The path through them was narrow and seemed to go on forever. I hated walking through these because I felt they were dens for snakes and other creatures. I clattered my hiking poles together as much as I could in order to fend off any predators or at least hope they wouldn't be startled by me. I heard a third snake rattle in some of these reeds. When I finally saw another person after a few solid hours of hiking with no one I actually yelled out at them and waved down the river because I was so excited. They were two fly fishermen who I at first wrongly assumed were a happy gay male couple. I think this impression arose because when I approached them one of them had just broken his sandal and was trying to tell the other man about it in a manner that struck me as particularly flirty and yet also annoyed, like an old couple. I liked them immediately and asked them if they were close to The Meadows where I was trying to head. They told me I was and that they had their camp set up there. I was relieved and then headed across a deep valley floor which I assumed were the way to The Meadows. Eventually, I saw the fly fishermen's camp. Based on my delicious fresh dinner from the night before, I was certain that the fishermen would return with a whole bounty of fish. But that wasn't the case. They returned miffed and irritated, saying that something had happened to the water in the last few years, that it was now only filled with "white fish" meaning carp or bottom feeders and not trout or nicer fish like it used to be. One of the men named Claybourne who was the most avid fisherman, said that it used to be one of the best places to fish in the Southwest.

They let me camp near them and they shared their dinner with me. I felt really lucky to make so many new connections out in the wilderness. They let me look over their map and I found the route I needed to take out of the wilderness the next day.

The next morning after I had coffee with Claybourne and David, I hiked up the cliff wall on a narrow and steep trail and out and over the mesa towards TJ Corral where my car was parked this time. The top of the mesa was very wooded and chilly. It was deadly quiet. I even passed the very clean, white bones of a full deer that had been neatly lined up on top of a fallen tree. I felt very eager to get out of this space which seemed like a haven for big predator animals. Finally, I made it back to the arid ridge line which would lead me down to my car after twelve miles of walking. It was boiling hot but I went very fast and managed to make it out of the mountains by 11am. I washed my hair in a water pump I found by the trailhead and changed clothes. Then I drove to the little cafe again, refreshed myself before heading onwards to my next adventure.