Cactus Hunting: Saguaro National Park

“You alright!?” I heard a thud and a few timid footsteps short after on the quaint ridgeline above me. “We’re chilling,” AJ announced out loud enough for me to hear over the insulation of the desert bush between us. I looked up to the sky. Shortly after 2:45PM and the sun was still beaming down on us from high in the atmosphere. It was early March in southern Arizona, but that never guaranteed that it wasn’t hot. We were dead-set in the northeast corner of the eastern section of the park, making our way down from the infamous “Finger Rock” formation near Wasson Peak. This place had a thing or two to leave me with before it’d let me leave with some pictures and a good tale to tell. Behind the red-washed and pink sunset pictures of high-desert hills teeming with the quintessential large Saguaro cacti, sprawls one of the most underrated wilderness areas in the American southwest. Encircling the northeast, east, and western sides of Tucson, Arizona, lies the very large expanse of Saguaro National Park. Named due to the unique cacti found amply only in this area, it covers a few hundred miles of wild river beds, rock formations, mountains, and unforgiving high-desert. Even in the winter as it seems, the desert still finds enough ways to kick your ass.

I had arrived in Tucson the night of about a day earlier, astounded by the mountains that encircled the city in their various ranges. Being the planner that I was, I brought with a laundry list of peaks and places that I intended to visit, stand on, and of course, take pictures of. Not one of the items on the list included Finger Rock (it had Wasson peak on there, but for the sake of the story, stand by). Just my luck then that as I looked up from the balcony of my best friend’s apartment after my morning run did I see that curious formation jutting from the peak below it on the range to my front. From that moment, I made it my goal to be able to say that “I went up there.” Just my “luck” then too that at that same moment I forgot how much trouble hastiness to a goal gets me in time to time. I enlisted the help of my friend’s roommate, and new very good pal, AJ, set the rendezvous time for the next day to tackle this “little” backcountry mission, and slept soundly not knowing what the following day would bring.

We set out shortly after noon on the trailhead. I admit, it was pretty late for any kind of proper “peakbagging,” but these were not near the monster distances that I’d have to cover if cragging my way through Colorado’s 14’ers. These were desert mountains. Steep enough to take the wind out of your lungs, but craggy enough to skip a trail every now and again and go straight up. This was something that I particularly enjoyed about this part of the high-desert southwest, and it was something that I very much enjoyed doing at several other parks in the region, including that of one of my personal favorites, Joshua Tree National Park. I had scrambled across rocks on desert ridgelines times before, so I wasn’t worried much about experience. I just had a problem with getting cocky.

We started off on the trail, gaining elevation slightly as the distance went on. Breathing was easy and the loads were light. I had a half rope (for e-rappels), a harness, and an anchor rack system in my backpack, along with the necessary wilderness gear, water, and food for a day. AJ had the same minus the rope and anchor system. We traveled relatively light and took in the wide, bright, and alien views that the surrounding cliffs had to offer. From each nook and cranny on the ridges seemed to spawn some kind of cactus or bush, many with protective thorns and pines that I would soon start to become very familiar with. We navigated our way down the trail to a spot where it crossed with a dry riverbed, and continued up the dry stream until we reached approachable spots to start scrambling. The rock was loose and breakable, but with the easy incline that we were on at the moment, neither one of us thought much of it. In a profession as this with things such as “controlled risks,” I admit, I probably should have taken better note of that.

We made our way higher and higher through the meandering line that we were blazing across the bushy ridgeline, each step careful not to take us into the inviting pines of a cactus or thornbush. As it seems, to survive in a place as the desert, one has to have something sharp to keep everyone else away. We continued on across massive fields of long-ago rockfall covered over in loose sand and grasses, leading up to impressively large slabs of mixed granite and unrecognizable sedimentary rock. The sun across the ridges to our front with the mixed bush and colors of the rock gave a painting to which even a picture would not do justice. For more than a few moments in there, I put down my camera, didn’t even try to take a picture, and just soaked it all in. By this point, our spirits were high, we were carefree, and pretty damn close to the top. Probably should have paid better attention to where we were going and where we came from though. A fact that we’d soon learn as we crested the rocks at the peak.

I looked to the onward ranges and desert before us. No wonder there was something intrinsic about the human desire to always reach “the top” of something. It’s almost as though God had seemed to hardwire us to want to be at the top, to see from the summit. Times as this secured my hypothesis in the back of my mind. I took in the world before me. I would return to this moment when I asked myself towards the end why we had come out here in the first place. I turned to make my way back to the path that we had come up to go back down, and lo behold, there didn’t seem to be a way that made any sort of sense.

I had read about situations like this before. Adventurers, explorers, mountain endurance athletes, all the like, they seemed to get themselves into situations like this pretty often. Whilst being so excited by the thought of making it “to the top,” they forget to make sure that they can get back down without too much difficulty. Hiding my emotions from AJ, who I had talked into coming up here with me, I silently kicked myself in the back of my brain, remembering the first rule that a mentor had taught me long ago about mountain travel: always make sure that you can climb back down when you’re on the way to climbing up. Being in the excited state that I was in, of course I hadn’t kept that “ever-present” reminder in my mind. “How do you propose getting down from here?” AJ asked innocently. I scanned the opposing ridgelines for a moment and caught the slightest bit of the trail that we had been on in the distance. I broke the silence, “head towards the trail and take that back down, “ I looked over at him through the mid-day sun, “that okay?” It was fine by him.

There is never anything more important to me when traveling in teams through the backcountry than communication. I believe that AJ and I did a more than adequate job of that with the groans of disappointment we let out after finding out that the only way down to the riverbed that would take us to the trail was through a super-sketchy series of downclimbs mixed with the thickest cactus fields you’d see on this side of the mississippi. Each small cliff I would tenderly place my hand and slowly put weight on the first hold. The rock would either break, and we would start the whole process over, or I would continue on, moving diligently, carefully, and rigidly down multiple cracks and lines in the outcropping cliffs to get to where we needed to be to get back. At this moment, I was thankful that I climbed regularly. I was thankful that I worked part-time in a small climbing gym, and I was VERY thankful that “pump” indeed does not occur within the fingers and forearms when one is chock-full of multiple blasts of fear-induced adrenaline compliments of my adrenal system. We weaved our way through thorn bushes and cacti, each leaving a souvenir or two when we got too close, or in my case, went through them. The desert was an enchanting place, a dangerous place, but nonetheless an enchanting place. Nowhere else would one be able to find mountains made even more beautiful with so many things that wanted you dead.

As we finished the last big move down the cliffs, AJ and I both looked to each other with a weird sense of relief. We absolutely loved what we just did, but all of it is something I never would have ever considered going down (let alone up) when I looked back up at it from the dry riverbed. This is something I’ll be proud of for a long while. I prayed for our safety, thanking God for getting us down in one piece, gave praise for the beauty, and gave thanks for our salvation. I believed we were allowed down from our navigation blunder, not entirely navigating our way out on our own.

We made our way back to the trail and hiked out under the receding sun. Through dips and rises, groves of cactus I recounted in the back of my head the enchantment of the mountains we had just very intimately experienced. There is always some sort of danger lurking behind tantalizingly clear beauty. The high desert mountains are one of those places. Bring an open mind, a sense of adventure, and most importantly a sense of care. If you ever find yourself in Saguaro National Park let me know and we’ll go cactus hunting, I seem to have a way of finding them.

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