Desert Canyon: Ford Canyon Trail White Tank Mountains Part 2

Higher elevation (around 3,000 feet) in the White Tank Mountains west of Phoenix.  Here grasses are a lot more common and cacti, trees and shrubs a lot more rare.

Towards the middle of the canyon eventually a small dam will be reached.  Personally I really wonder why this dam was built.  I can guess that it was built by ranchers to form a water hole for their thirsty cattle.  But really, how in the world would they ever have carried so much cement up into this rugged and remote section of the canyon?  Beyond that, the dam doesn’t hold much water at all.  It is extremely effective at holding sand though and the entire area behind the dam is completely filled with it.  All that work hauling cement up into a rugged and remote canyon to build a dam that doesn’t hold water but rather holds a lot of sand.  Talk about a disappointing work project.  After the dam however, the wash bed becomes a lot less rugged and more sandy, with much of the trail going directly through the wash.  Here the wash becomes much more wash-like and less canyon like.  The banks are lined with mesquites, catclaw acacias, wolfberry bushes, grasses, canyon ragweed, and the invasive tamarisk tree.  All indicators of increased water availability in the wash due to infrequent flash floods.  Fortunately, the tamarisk doesn’t seem to be causing much of a problem here. 

When hiking in the sandy area of the wash above the dam, there is a remarkable increase in the grasses along the hillsides.  Tobosa, three-awn, and big-gallete are the most common grasses.  All of these grasses require the slightly greater amount of precipitation and slightly cooler temperatures present at this elevation of around 3,000 plus feet.  The grasses are most abundant lower on the hillslopes where soil is slightly more developed and holds water better.  After leaving the wash the trail continues through several areas with high amounts of grass cover, which is a nice change from the ubiquitous cactus and shrub studded landscape below this elevation.  Continuing upslope however, the soil becomes increasingly rocky with brittlebush becoming the dominate plant.  Brittlebush has a strong preference for rocky, unstable, and dry soils more typical higher up on mountain or hillsides.  Also, looking closely along the trail you may find some charred stumps.  This is a result of infrequent grass fires at this higher elevation.  At lower elevations it is pretty rare to find charred woody materials due to sparse vegetation that is not able to carry fire far.  The greater amount of grass cover at higher elevations though more easily carries fire.  Fire generally promotes more grasses to grow and kills shrubs, trees, and cacti.  At least partially for this reason cacti and palo verde are far less common at these higher elevations.  Wire lettuce, buckwheat, brittlebush, and globe mallow also are common at these elevations and seem to be able to colonize bare ground quickly after a fire.

After a few miles of hiking through desert grasslands of the upper elevations of the White Tanks
the trail will come to an end at the Mesquite Canyon Trail and Goat Camp Trail.  I currently am 105 miles towards my goal of 150 miles in 2012.  Hopefully I will be able to reach 150 miles in the next two months or so.  Then maybe I'll extend my goal out another 150 miles.  Due to my schedule being quite busy these last few weeks I haven't done much hiking.  And I have definitely missed it.  The health and relaxation benefits become quite clear after missing a few weeks as I become a little more stressed out and feeling a little less in shape.  I am planning a lot of hiking in the near future though.

Desert Canyon: Ford Canyon Trail White Tank Mountains

Ford Canyon Trail is my favorite hike in the White Tank Mountains.  The rugged terrain, diversity of landscapes, and mixture of easy and challenging sections makes this hike worth repeating.  For my recent hike I took a loop from the parks Ramada Picnic and parking area starting with the Waddell Trail, to the Ford Canyon Trail, then to the Willow Canyon, and finally returning to the parking lot by the Mesquite Canyon Trail.  Entire length is just over nine miles.  For this particular post I will be highlighting just the Ford Canyon section starting at Waddell Trail and ending at Mesquite Canyon Trail.

The trail approaching the canyon ascends a gently sloping bajada.  This bajada is beautifully surrounded by mountains to the north, south and west, opening up to the basin desert below.  Millenniums of decaying granite in the mountains have been carried down through the Ford Canyon, depositing a composite of alluvial fans, and forming the bajada we can see today.  This particular bajada appears to have been extremely stable being the surface is relatively flat and shallow rooted triangle-leaf bursage and cacti indicate a layer of caliche just below the surface.  The area also, though not grazed for three decades or more, still shows evidence of trampling by cattle.  This trampling is evidenced by the large and nearly barren areas where the soil is too compacted to support plant life.  After a relatively short hike up this bajada you enter the canyon.

Saguaro Cactus along the Ford Canyon Trail.

Ford Canyon is the roughest hike in the entire White Tank’s park.  But its rugged nature is exactly what makes it so appealing.  Within a short distance into the canyon you will begin hiking and even climbing over house sized blocks of granite.  Large sections of the canyon have nearly vertical drops of tens of feet just off the edge of the trail.  The wash bed in this section of the canyon is not nice, sandy, and smooth.  It also is extremely rough with lots of high drop-offs and large sections of smoothly worn granite.  The ruggedness of this canyon is witness of the decay of this mountain.  In extremely ancient times, all of these blocks of granite, the house sized blocks down to the sand sized fragments, were all part of one massive unbroken mountain-sized block of granite.  Pressure from movement of the surrounding geology began to crack and break this block.  Very likely Ford Canyon began as one or many small but long cracks in this mountain sized block of granite.  Extreme desert heat caused further cracking and breaking down of the rock enlarging the initial cracks.  Water flowing into and through the crack or cracks eroded and dissolved the rock, enlarging it further.  Plant roots working their way through smaller surrounding cracks continued to enlarge the initial crack.  All of these processes continue their work to this day, and continue to form the present day Ford Canyon. 

Canyon in the White Tank Mountains.

The many large drop-offs in the canyon means many large waterfalls, which unfortunately only flow for a few hours a year and only after large rainfall events.  I only hiked through this canyon once, during a heavy rainfall with the wash flowing and water dropping over the many falls.  Unfortunately, but dramatically, much of the canyon was shrouded in fog so I could only see portions of a few of the waterfalls.  The combination of rain, fog, and sound of flowing water through the canyon is a desert rarity.  Typically, the desert is peacefully quiet with only the sound of occasional calling birds, giving it a strong sense of solitude.  Further up in the canyon there are many holes in the unbroken granite bedrock where water accumulates and can hold many months after rain.  When the rest of the desert is dry after months without rain these water holes will often still hold water and become magnets in the landscape for wildlife.  In a recent hike I found and abundance of water in many different holes, even though there had been no rain for a month.  The surrounding landscape was nearly bone dry and the high density of mule deer and javelina hoof prints around these holes attests to their importance to these animals.  

Part 2 will be continued on Monday.  So far I have hiked 101 miles this year.  Unfortunately, I haven't added any miles to this over the past three weeks due to a busy schedule.  Hopefully this weekend I will be able to put in a few miles though.  

1957 BBC's April's Fools Day Spagetti Farming

Thought this was one of the funnier things I came across on April's Fools day.  Apparently it did fool a lot of  British people into trying to grow their own spaghetti trees when it originally aired on April first in 1957.  Below is another humorous spaghetti farming video.