The Chiricahua Mountains rise out of the Chihuahuan Desert in southeast Arizona and extend into Mexico. Driving from the relativity lush, cactus-filled Sonoran Desert to the east, the Chihuahuan Desert is pretty barren and bleak. Then suddenly, high mountains with snow at the peaks rise up. These areas are called Sky Islands with richer biology.
Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona
The spectacular geologic features of the area led to the creation of this national monument in 1924. The Rhyolite rock created by massive volcanos over 25 million years ago has been uplifted and then weathered away.
When the lava cooled, vertical joints formed. Over millions of years, water froze and cracked open the joints. Further erosion carved pinnacles, spires, and columns. Time to get your hiking boots on.
As you hike down among these features toward the creek running below, you wonder when some of these features may come crashing down.
Many of the rocks seem like giant creatures keeping eye over visitors to this wonderland.
Or perhaps a massive mummy walking among the cliffs.
The hike we took into Echo Canyon was certainly one of the most fun, spectacular hikes at a national park site. It reminded us a lot of the Queens Garden Navajo Loop trail at Bryce Canyon. You walk thru hoodoos and giant rock features, down into a high elevation garden of trees and other greenery. Unlike the red rocks of Bryce, here they are brown and grey and covered in green moss and colorful lichens.
In this year of its 100th anniversary at a national monument, a bill is in Congress to designate it a National Park. While it certainly has the vast wonders of many of the western Parks, the current infrastructure would not handle the likely crowds that would follow such a designation. Single road into the park is narrow and twisty and the parking lots are small. I hope the change does not occur. The beauty and diversity of the place will be the unchanged. Just more people will visit. Now you know about it, so come and enjoy the Sky Island wonderland.
