Agamemnon on Big Sacred Mountain

The paved road that starts from near Safford, below 4,000 ft., and ends up over 9,000 feet in the Pinaleños

We Anglos tended to name geographical things after ourselves. We used George Washington's name, for example, for cities, counties and states.  McKinley got an Alaskan mountain (thankfully now known as Denali). We also tend to name our housing subdivisions after the trees that were removed to grade and "improve" the sites.

The Spanish named a lot of geography after saints. There is something charming about the names Santa Rita Mountains and San Pedro River. The San Pedro runs south to north. Parallel to the east is Aravaipa Creek and its valley. Again to its east, also running south to north in this part, is the Gila River. The San Pedro and the Aravaipa end up flowing into the Gila which then cuts through some quite hilly terrain (the occasion for Coolridge Dam), then flows into the Peenix basin. The Gila, by this time a dry river bed most of the time, flows west and ends up in the Colorado River, or what's left of it in Baja Arizona. It's in the upper valley of the Gila that the town of Safford (named, of course, after an Arizona territorial governor) is located in some pretty rich farm country.

Looming some six thousand feet above Safford are the Pinaleño Mountains, the highest lift of any mountains in the state. Its peak, Mount Graham (10,720 ft.) is named after an army officer who helped map the area. The Apache name is Dzil Nchaa Si An, which means Big Sacred Mountain. There is something simple and reverent about native names. They didn't need maps so they didn't worship cartographers.  Or astronomers.

Agamemnon in the Pinaleños, looking back towards
Safford and the Gila River valley. 

The Pinaleño Mountains are not in an Indian reservation, which rendered the Apache nation helpless in its fight to keep the Max Planck Institute and the Vatican from constructing telescope observatories on its peak. Big Sacred Mountain is, well, holy to the Apache. Mountains are where ordinary people, with reverence, can get empowered from higher beings. But the Apache didn't build churches for their sacred ceremonies, so they had no evidence to convince the astronomers' friends or the Parks Department ("Land of Many Uses").

A paved road takes you from the Gila River valley, below four thousand feet, up the Pinaleña Mountains to well over nine thousand feet. Twenty-one miles and seemingly endless hairpin switchbacks take you from Sonoran desert to junipers, then pine, then dense fir forests, even Douglas Fir. This is a very special sky island with some five different eco-sytems in its varying elevations.

I am pleased to report that Agamemon and I enjoyed the climb thoroughly. Especially getting to Ladybug Peak where all of a sudden, after yet another hairpin curve, the road comes out the other side of the ridge and you get stunning views of the other side, the Aravaipa valley, and even the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Looking west from the Pinaleño Mountains, near Ladybug Peak:  the Aravaipa valley, 
beyond that the San Pedro valley, and beyond that the Santa Cruz valley where Tucson is located.
But you can't see Tucson from here. That may be Baboquivari in the middle of the horizon.

On a hot Memorial Day weekend (we are already in three-digit highs), the air was clean and brisk at the higher elevations. Gorgeous, invigorating and inspiring.