Little Creek to Cliff Marathon

Follow blazes

Little Creek to Cliff Marathon

Lesson in independence

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

             I have good memories of Little Creek Cabin.

            With just one room and a matching single room barn, its allure was its existence alone. It was at the head of the creek and there wasn’t any competing pursuit. Unlike White Creek Cabin or the Trotter Place where we would grab a fishing pole as soon as we unsaddled, there wasn’t enough water at that point in the creek to support fish. We’d unsaddle and go over to the cabin and lounge around until it was time to cook supper. We’d cook something good because we had time to concentrate on the task.

            Coming in there or leaving we’d always see game. The biggest elk of my life still looms in my mind coming into the horse trap there one afternoon. We had come off the mountain in a high trot to get away from lightning.

            All of us … horses, mules, Hugh and I …sat there in clouds of steam from the heated bodies watching him with fascination. What a beautiful thing he was, standing over there looking back at us.

            The starting line

            August 8, 1967 was the last day that summer I could spend in the Gila. I was 16 years old. Football camp started within a few days and I had to ride out to be there.

            We had ridden to Little Creek Cabin for the purposes of shortening my ride as much as possible. Hugh was going to ride on to Gila Center later that day and continue his Wilderness Patrol rotation before he headed off to school himself. This time it was going to be New Mexico State University. Big changes were coming in his life.

            There had been a dread brewing for several days for both of us and that morning was an indicator. We didn’t say much as we went through our routine. Hugh was going to ride with me to where the trail dropped off into the head of Turkey Creek. I would head to Cliff and my grandparents over 30 hard trail miles south. He was going on to the lookout on Granite Peak and check in with the fire-watch, Jimmy Neeley and his new bride.

            I was anxious and it wasn’t just excitement of the ride. I had never been down Turkey Creek from its head. We shook hands at the trail head and he watched me descend until we were out of line of sight. I was on my own.

            I had my map and I had studied it diligently. I had pumped Hugh for landmark features. He had worn a bit weary of my fretting.

            “Follow the blazes,” he had said repeatedly.

            The problem was I had followed blazes too many times with him and still got lost. We had gone through an infamous Little Turkey Park ride one time thinking we were in a drainage further south and we weren’t. We rode all day finally getting to the river and realizing we were miles upstream from where should have been. It was Hugh who sweated that ride, though, because he had to get out for a deadline.

            That morning I was riding Red, a Rice Ranch mule. His dedicated headstall was let out all the way to fit his yard long head. He was as tough as he was big. Well over 16 hands tall, the big sorrel horse mule didn’t need shoeing. His feet were like iron.

            We had played polo on him one night at Gila Center just to say, “Yea, you can even play polo on that mule”, but, the truth was, he reined like steering a dozer with a set of clutches missing. He turned pretty good … as long as it was left.

            First wind

            Morning in the mountains always fascinated me.

I loved to ride along alone and get as light and quiet on the horse as possible. He invariably became more responsive and was interested in surroundings as well. That morning on Red was no different.

Coming off the Granite Peak ridgeline was easy. The trail was good and the open ponderosa pine glades were appealing. I saw a bunch of elk and several bunches of deer before we dropped deeper into the drainage.

By the time we were in the creek bottom with running water, the trail had brushed up. It was then the magnitude of the day started to impact both mule and rider.

The first raw rush came with a bunch of turkey poults that flew across our bow. Red and I both about jumped out of our skin. With us fighting brush, they had come whistling by like feathered rockets making funny chirping sounds. Even laid back Red was sure he was about to be eaten alive by alligators. Round and round to the left we went before crashing southward through a hole in the brush.

From that point to where the trail hits Sycamore Canyon, we fought heavy brush. The trail had not been worked in years. Riding down that brushed up canyon bottom was a nightmare. Repeatedly, we had to backtrack just to find a blaze on a tree to find a way through the tangle.

By midmorning, the dew had burned off and we were into snakes. August, cooler canyon bottoms, water, and shedding rattlesnakes in the Gila have a bit of commonality. They certainly did that day. It was a snake infested son-of-a-gun.

The first encounters put us on high alert. I killed the first several but it got to the point both Red and I wanted just be make haste and get out of that brushed up snake pit. At one point, we stopped to drink. I was lying on my belly upstream from Red and heard the buzz. We both looked for the snake and saw it crawling out between his legs and away from us … we went back to drinking.

I didn’t touch a spur to Red as he tried to stay in a trot as much as he could. The entanglement didn’t always allow it, and we sweated and fought our way through that nasty upper canyon. By the time we got to the mouth of Sycamore and a better trail, there were nine rattlers in my memory, about one per mile of brushed up canyon bottom, but … that could have been a dozen off in any direction.

Second wind

Sycamore is like every other rocky drainage into Turkey Creek. It gets few visitors, but it is a goal post for horsemen. By the time you get there, major stretches of canyon bottom are behind you.

The next leg to the river was fairly brisk. We could stay in a trot for long stretches. There was Brushy, where the trail crawls out of the bottom onto talus slopes, and then on to Skeleton. It was there evidence of fisherman making their way up the creek from the river was seen. We encountered one where it empties into Turkey Creek. We came hustling off the point and plowed through the first crossing greeting the wide eyed fisherman without stopping.

By the time we hit the mouth of the creek at the Gila, numbers of people were present. That diversion lifted me from the monotony of the pace even if it didn’t impact Red. His ears maintained a steady mule rhythm to his stretching walk. He knew where he was and he wanted to finish.

We left civilization again as we made the sweeping curve southwestward toward the Hooker Dam site. It was there Red urged me to cut across and make the climb over the ridge jutting from east to west in the big turn. We did, but he was noticeably weary as we topped the ridge. I led him off the ridge to give him a break.

To the Finish

We finally hit the pavement beyond the mouth of Mogollon Creek and below Worty and Lois Shelley’s house. From there it was not rattlesnakes that pestered us, but dogs. Red would back his ears and I’d scream at them.

Both of us were tired by then, and Red suffered from the absence of water. I was pushing on him as we came down the road above the Rice headquarters, but we slid off the embankment, rode into the corral by the old cottonwood planked barn, and called it quits. We had made the ride. It was 4:00 PM on the dot.

Sam threw a full bale of hay to Red as I unsaddled him. He asked me how the ride had been.

“It wasn’t too bad,” or something like that I said.

I remember Red looking around at me, and, in his mulish way of too few words, he distinctly signaled telepathically … “Liar!”

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Every 16 year old in the world would benefit immensely from a solo Little Creek to Cliff marathon.”


THE WESTERNER ASKS:  Would teen agers benefit from this type of experience?  Do they even need it? Yup.  Look at this Wall Street Journal article:

The on-ramp to adulthood is delayed and harder to reach for young people today, a reality that is changing the country's society and economy, according to a new report. More demanding job requirements, coupled with the pressures of the recession, have delayed the transition to adulthood for young people in the past decade and earned them the title of "the new lost generation," according to the report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, published Monday.

 To save "the country's society and economy" we need to vastly increase the supply of red mules.