To Those Fleeing California

DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."

We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw. Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks.  Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you.  Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built.

Arizona Governor Issues Stay-at-Home Order

Here:

Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday issued a statewide "stay-at-home" order to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, preventing Arizonans from leaving their residences except for food, medicine and other "essential activities."

The directive, which also allows for outdoor exercise, will take effect upon close of business Tuesday [3/31] and apply through at least April 30.

You extroverts will suffer, and it will be a moral challenge for us introverts to contain our Schadenfreude.

Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold

Superstition Mountain Peck

(A re-post, with corrections and additions, from 13 January 2010)

Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. Out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time I found out about his passion from his wife, Joan, he had passed away. Sadly enough, Joan unexpectedly died recently.

Joan had me and my wife over for dinner on Easter Sunday a few years ago, and my journal (vol. XXI, pp. 34-35, 28 March 2005) reports the following:

Joan's dead husband Rick was a true believer in the Dutchman mine, and thought he knew where it was: in the vicinity of Weaver's Needle, and accessible via the Terrapin trail. A few days before he died he wanted Joan to accompany his pal Bruce, an unbeliever, to a digging operation which Bruce, a man who knows something about mining, did not perform. Rick to Joan, "I want you to be there when he digs up the gold."

Richard Peck, 44, is a Princeton graduate, the father of three children and the owner of a Cincinnati advertising agency. He has spent the past 16 months trying to find the famed Lost Dutchman gold mine in Arizona's barren Superstition Mountain range. "The more I read about the Lost Dutchman," he recalls, "the more I kept coming back to it. Finally, I was sure I knew where the Lost Dutchman was. I was going to tear this thing open. I thought I was going to have it wrapped up in two weeks." So far his search has cost him $80,000. "I had to try something like this because it was so impossible. But if this mine is ever found it's still going to hurt in a lot of ways. Something is going to be lost out of this world."

I Introduce Two New Friends to the Superstition Mountains

One of the great boons of blogging is that the blogger attracts the like-minded.  Below are two medical doctors I had the great pleasure of spending the day with in a satisfying break from my Bradleyan reclusivity. Dave K. found me via this weblog and initiated correspondence, so I knew he would be simpatico. I didn't know about his wife, Barbara C. , but she turned out also to be a member of the Coalition of the Sane, a Trump supporter, and one charming lady of Italian extraction.

DaveKBarbC15Oct2019

On the Dutchman’s Trail to Parker Pass

BV and JK 19.II.19 near Parker Pass Western Sups

My e-mail to Jeff and Dennis:

Weather forecast looks favorable. The Sage of the Superstitions will take you boys on a pussy cat hike and introduce you to Parker Pass.   I don't believe you two have been out this way. Out and back, 4. 6 miles. Little elevation change, but a number of creek crossings. If we feel like it we can  explore an unmarked side trail.
 
Sunrise at 7:06. Please be at my house at 6:30.  No hike if rain.
 

Weather proved more than favorable. Cold but clear after a few days of rain. Distant ridges flecked with snow. Ethereal wisps of cloud wreathed some peaks. Streams running strong; one even babbled in a language indecipherable. Numerous stream crossings tested our agility. Not too much mud and dreck, just enough to add interest and texture. The hike commenced at the First Water trailhead at 7:15 AM. A leisurely climb brought us to the pass at the stroke of 9:00. A half-hour at the pass for coffee and snacks, and then we mosied on down, making it back to the Jeep at 10:45. I calculated our pace to be about 1 and 1/2 miles per hour. Nothing to crow about, of course, but not bad for old men in rugged country.

Access road in very good shape despite all the rain. Didn't even need the four-wheel drive, but used it anyway to give it some exercise and keep the fluids viscous and happy.

From Peralta to First Water: A Tribute to Lloyd Glaus

This morning I received the news that my neighbor and fellow hiker Lloyd Glaus had died. What follows is a redacted entry from an earlier pre-Typepad version of this weblog in which I reported on a memorable trans-Superstition hike we took together over ten years ago, on 29 October 2007, when Lloyd was 75 years old and I was 57.

………………..

How long can we keep it up?

I mean the running, the biking, the hiking and backpacking? Asking myself this question I look to my elders: how do they fare at their advanced ages? Does the will to remain fit and strong pave a way? For some it does. Having made the acquaintance of a wild and crazy 75-year-old who ran his first marathon recently in the Swiss Alps, uphill all the way, the start being Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the awesome Eiger Nordwand, the North Wall of the Eiger, I invited him to a little stroll in the Superstitions, there to put him under my amateur gerontological microscope. Lloyd's wife Annie dropped us off at the Peralta Trailhead in the dark just before first light and we started up the rocky trail toward Fremont Saddle. 

Eight and a half hours  later she kindly collected us at First Water, the temperature having risen to 95 degrees. Lloyd acquitted himself well, though the climb from Boulder Basin to Parker Pass left him tuckered. And he got cut up something fierce when we lost the trail and had to bushwack through catclaw and other nasty flora.

But he proved what I wanted proven, namely, that at 75 one can go for a grueling hike though rugged country in high heat and still have a good time and be eager to begin planning the next trip. Some shots follow. Click to enlarge. Weaver's Needle, the most prominent landmark in the Superstition Range and visible from all corners of the wilderness, but especially well from Fremont Saddle, our first rest stop, is featured in several of them.  

This is how I will remember Lloyd, and this is how I suspect he would want to be remembered — with his boots on in the mountains.

 Tribute to Lloyd Glaus