Bearwallow Lookout in Gila National Forest, NM

San Francisco River and Bearwallow Lookout - September 12-14, 2014

Here's the trip report from our September 12-14, 2014 trip to the San Francisco River and beyond. It's a tale of bodysnatchers, UFOs and hose clamps! Participants were Bob and Amy P in their Blazer, Jesse C and Ron P in his Toyota P/U and John H in his 2002 Avalanche, All vehicles were equipped with winches and lockers even though we didn't use them.

We arrived at the Circle K in Clifton,AZ at 1PM on Friday (after a quick run up to the Conoco station in Morenci to get jalapeno poppers). While the stream flow on the web said 45-50 cfs for the San Francisco River at Clifton, eyeball inspection seemed to indicate more water than that (with guesstimates ranging from 30% to 200% more). We decided not to run upstream on the San Francisco, but to move directly to day 2 of the planned trip. We headed up Mule Creek Pass and over to the Gila Mountains of New Mexico. As we crossed the pass, we could see that there were major thunderstorms hitting the Gila Mountains. Already, our decision was looking good, since all this water would be coming down the San Francisco River the following day. We stopped to look at the hot springs south of Glenwood,NM (the 3 pools that used to be there have been completely filled in by floods). Then we headed up to Bearwallow Lookout by way of Mogollon and Bursum Road in light rain. The drive through the town of Mogollon was amazing since there was incredible flood damage from the floods of September 2013. A good fraction of the houses survived, but the former road is now a stream bed most of the way up the canyon.

The results of the recent fires (2006 Bear fire and 2012 Whitewater-Baldy fire) in the Gila Forest made for some spectacular landscapes on the drive up into the mountains. There were loads of wildflowers everywhere due to the recent rains. The thunderstorms were mostly over by the time we got up to Bearwallow Lookout, but it was quite breezy so we dediced to camp in a grassy spot a mile down the road near the turnoff to Bearwallow Lookout and FR 119 W (a.k.a. BearWallow Road). It was spitting rain as we were setting up camp, but we soon had a nice view of dark starry skies followed by fog for the remainder of the night. For us folks who camp mostly in the desert, camping on grass in 100% humidity at 9000 ft was a fun diversion. It was about 50 degF overnight. The secret, of course, was having a roaring fire to sit around. At first our fire was quite wimpy and smoky since all the wood was soaking wet and there is less oxygen at 9000 ft. The secret to fire success was Ron's battery powered mattress inflator which quickly turbo-charged our wimpy fire into a roaring bonfire! Dinner was Thai curry chicken soup and spaghetti with red sauce and Italian sausage. Jesse saw a black bear near camp on Saturday morning.

In the morning, an elk hunter told us that the area had at least 2-inches of rain on Friday afternoon. Later, we saw that the stream flow at Clifton had jumped from 45 - 96 cfs at noon on Saturday. The hunter also told us that the lower end of FR 119 to the west was still blocked by huge washouts (only barely passable in a quad) and a lot of downed fire trees. The Las Cruces 4WD club (https://www.sharetrails.org/node/8270) had cut the big downed trees at the upper end, so the road was opened at least down to Bearwallow Meadow. We drove the 1+ miles down to the meadow and turned around -- our only use of 4WD on this trip. In the meadow we found several huge puffballs growing. The largest weighed about 10 pounds and was about the size of a volleyball. We immediately thought of the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The climb back up to the Bearwallow intersection was lots of fun as the trail was still slick with mud.

We headed out of the forest toward Reserve on FR 153/ 119 E/ 180. Ron and Jesse headed back to Tucson by way of Mule Creek Pass and Clifton, while Bob, Amy, and John headed over to Alpine,AZ for homemade pie (Bearwallow Cafe), elk burgers (Foxfire Cafe) and a warm shower (Mountain Hi motel) and some relaxing on the side of Luna Lake.

Before dawn on Sunday, there was a very bright object (mag -6) low in the northern sky in Alpine. Venus out of its orbit? A supernova? A UFO? A look in binoculars revealed that it was a large aluminized balloon. We had a breakfast of chicken-fried steak and eggs at the Bearwallow Cafe in Alpine. After breakfast, Bob blew his return power steering hose and dumped fluid all over the street (the crimped clamp had worn through from rubbing on the frame for a long time). A very nice man who works at the Bearwallow Cafe drove to his house to get a hoseclamp for us (a bit embarrasing that neither of us had a hoseclamp in the truck). We eventually bypassed the power steering cooling circuit (since the hoseclamp wouldn't fit in the available space) and were on our way in ~2 hours. This hoseclamp saved us a lot of money, since we had been previously planning to go home via the petrified wood shop in Holbrook,AZ. Instead, we went home via Big Lake, Show Low and Globe. The only disappointing part of this trip was at the Chevron station in Globe where there were two guys that had more mud on their truck than we had on our trucks. The most exciting part of the weekend was when a pickup truck towing a trailer decided to pass Bob coming south on Hwy 77 -- except he apparently forgot that he was towing a trailer and didn't allow space for that. Fortunately, the driver of the oncoming car was paying attention and pulled over enough that it didn't turn into a collision. We finished the day with mexican dinner at the Mi Pueblito restaurant in Mammoth.