Weaver's Needle

Weaver's Needle or El Sombrero is a famous landmark in the Superstition Mountains east of the Salt River Valley. This picture was taken many years ago in about 1996 from the Fremont Saddle, at the top of the Fremont Trail, looking southwest toward the Needle and Boulder Canyon. The terrain is more rugged that even the picture can show. Cross country travel, without following one of the established trails can become virtually impossible. The topographical map of the area will give you some idea of the difficulty of the area, although the Needle is practically invisible. 

The summit elevation of Weaver's Needle is 4553 feet. I remember the view from the top. One interesting thing is that the Needle is not visible from almost anyplace in the Salt River Valley, the main ridge of the Superstition Mountains visible from most of the east valley blocks the view. So, from the top you can see very little of the almost surrounding city. The climb up is quite difficult. Click here for a pretty good description of the climb. You might want to read an interesting story about a fatal fall from the Needle back in the year I climbed it, 1963. Here's my story:
My Senior year, I got two friends, and we decided to climb Weavers Needle. Now, this was before the Grand Tetons Climbing School and real equipment. At the time I was driving a Triumph Herald, a little blue car, and we loaded up the car with some water and a lunch and an old nylon rope that the other boy had and drove out to the Superstition Mountains.

Weavers Needle is also known as the Sombrero. It is an eroded volcanic cone with shear cliffs all around. It is about 4300 feet high and the cliffs are over 1500 feet high. I had heard that some crazy woman had hired two miners to look for the Lost Dutchman Mine on top of the Needle and one of the miners had fallen to his death while trying to descend the cliffs. As I found out much later, the stories were true and even more bizarre than the rumors. While going down the mountain, the miner had lost his grip and slid down the rope until his gloves were burned off his hands and he fell. I had heard. Someone told me that there was a crack on the south side of the Needle that could be climbed.

We hiked to the base of the Needle. The hike in is quite rough and about 5 miles long but at that time it seemed like a cakewalk. We practically ran the whole way. When we got to the bottom of the Needle we could see that there was a huge crack going clear to the top on the south side. We climbed up the base of the mountain and found that the cliff near the bottom was not that steep and soon we were many hundreds of feet up the mountain. We finally reached the steep cliff and to our surprise there was a rope hanging down from the top. It was a huge 1 inch hemp rope, like the kind they use for rope climbing in schools. Using the rope we found the climb up to the top to be relatively simple. Right at the top there was a huge chock stone blocking the way but we were able to climb under the stone and make our way up onto the top of the peak.

It turned out that the top was almost flat and about the size of a basketball court. There were two parts. The one to the west was a little larger and by jumping to the chock stone and then to the other side you could move from side to side. Surprisingly, there were a few people up there. There was some evidence of digging on the east side of the peak. We walked around for a while and looked out across the desert. Weavers Needle is the highest peak around for a long way. The view was tremendous. However, to the south, there is the main Superstition Mountain and it blocks the view entirely into the Salt River Valley. Weavers Needle cannot be seen from the Valley. It can only be seen by driving to the north on either the east or west sides of the Superstition Mountains.

We decided that we had been up there long enough and started to climb down. Both my friends went quickly down the chock stone and on down the fixed rope. I was soon left to climb down alone. I had no trouble getting down the chock stone and I started down the fixed rope. My hands very quickly got tired. They were so tired I started to have difficulty holding onto the rope. I was still at least 100 feet up the cliff and if I fell I would surely die.

I struggled to keep my grip on the rope. My hands were getting so tired that I could no longer keep from slipping slowly down the rope even if I tried with all my strength to stop. I began to be very afraid and started praying for some kind of help. I finally started to slip and told my Heavenly Father that I had done all I could and that I would probably fall to my death.

Suddenly, a thought came into my head. I remembered seeing the circus and seeing the trapeze artists wrap the rope around one leg to “stand” on the rope. I quickly wrapped the rope around my leg, even though it was very heavy. I immediately stopped slipping could partially rest my hands. But I couldn’t move down the rope because it was too heavy. I was hanging in a deep crack in the cliff face with ridges on both sides of me. The rock was shear and I couldn’t see anything to hold onto. As I hung on the rope with my leg, I began to turn slowly to the left. As I swung around, right there in front of my eyes was a big metal spike, actually a piece of rebar, pounded into the rock. I lunged for the iron rod and quickly pulled myself onto the cliff. After resting for a few seconds, I discovered that the climb down on the other side of the ridge was not that difficult and I was quickly at the bottom without further incident. I have been forever thankful for the iron rod that saved my life.

In later years the symbolism of the iron rod saving my life has occurred to me many times. The true “iron rod” the “word of God” has saved my eternal life just as the iron rod on the cliff saved my life from falling.

We hiked back to my car and started to drive home. The road out from the Peralta Trailhead at that time was all dirt and quite rough. As we drove out, I am sure quite a bit faster than I should have been driving, we came up out of a wash with a turn at the top and there was an old pickup truck driving in the middle of the road. I swerved and skidded sideways just missing the truck by inches. The car then spun around and ended up off the road on a dirt bank pointed almost straight up into the air.

We climbed out of the car and tried to push it off the dirt bank. It was totally stuck. Another passing car stopped and offered to help pull us off the dirt bank. We tied the nylon rope, doubled a few times, between the two cars and the passing car tried to pull my Triumph off the dirt. Not only did the car not move, even with all of us pushing, but the rope broke. It was not going to go anywhere.

You would think after almost falling to my death on the cliff, I would have been a little more careful, at least for while, wouldn’t you? The passing car left and we were stranded, staring at the stuck Triumph.

I finally thought about the low gear that the car had. First gear in the Triumph was so low that it would only go about 3 miles an hour top speed. But it would spin the tires all day. I got into the car, put the car in First and drove forward. I went right over the dirt bank and then was able to backup onto the road. We drove home the rest of the way without incident.

The Mexican Border Campaign

With all the current news about illegal aliens and border crossings, it might be appropriate to remember that the United States fought a border war with Mexico in 1916 and 1917, just before the U.S. entered the First World War. This campaign is variously called the Mexican Expedition, the Punitive Expedition or even The Pancho Villa Expedition. The picture above is my grandfather, LeRoy Parkinson Tanner, at a camp near Douglas, Arizona during the campaign. The expedition was in retaliation for Villa's illegal incursion into the United States and attack on the village of Columbus, Luna County, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. The United States Army Center of Military Historyofficially refers to the campaign as "the Mexican Expedition". The official beginning and ending dates are March 14, 1916 and February 7, 1917. Wikipedia. 

Phoenix in the 1950s

This is an old photo of north Phoenix from the top of Squaw Peak (now Piestewa Peak) looking off to the west taken in the 1950s.

Here is a similar view, although a little more towards the south, taken in 2005. The top photo is very bad because of the low quality of the camera I had at the time. The main difference is how much the city has grown. In the 1950s we lived where I could ride my bike to the desert in about ten minutes. It was a good mile to mile and a half to get across the desert to the base of the mountain. There was no trail up the mountain to speak of compared to the later view showing the well developed trail.

I am not one of those who pine away for the " good old days." Although I enjoyed growing up in the smaller Phoenix, I do appreciate being able to go to Costco.

Building the Lyman Dam

My Grandmother used to tell me about a time when the Lyman Dam, holding back the Lyman Reservoir in eastern Arizona broke and sent a raging wall of water downstream to flood the small town of St. Johns on April 15, 1915. 

She always remembered seeing one of the unfortunate victims of the flood who drowned and Grandmother always commented on how much mud there was in her hair. 

The photo above shows the Lyman Dam under construction in 1918 and 1919, one of a series of dams built on the site. The Lake is now a State Park which first opened in July of 1961. Quoting from the State Park website:

Lyman Lake State Park is located in northeastern Arizona along the Little Colorado River in Apache County between St. Johns and Springerville just off of US 191. This 1500 maximum surface acre lake is an irrigation district reservoir that can experience a considerable annual draw down for irrigation purposes. The lake is a popular fishing spot and is stocked by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. When the surface acreage is large enough, water sports activities are very popular. The lake is located at an approximate elevation of 6,000 feet and is close to the White Mountains.

A Real Cowboy

There haven't been too many cowboy movies made for the last few years, at least not many I would go to see, but the Hollywood concept of the cowboy has forever colored the reality of living in the old west with the primary occupation of tending cows. If you needed to know what a real cowboy looked like, here is an almost hundred year old photo of one. You will notice the hat, but if you look closely, you can see the chaps. You may miss the closed toe stirrups. Which by the way, are coming back into style. The front enclosure is now called, by some manufacturers, the "safety cage."

Years ago when I was out with one of my friends riding horses out on the Colorado Plateau, a car load of tourists stopped and got out of their cars and took our picture. When they left we laughed so hard we almost fell off our horses, here were two boys from Phoenix, right in the middle of a large city, who the tourists thought looked like typical cowboys.

Being a cowboy was no great honor. It was dirty, hard work with little or no reward. There is nothing romantic about living outdoors with cows. The stylized version of the Old West, was a fiction. My grandparents grew up in the Old West, and they were nothing at all like any of the fictional accounts. They were tough characters physically, but my great-grandfather, who was a real cowboy, was described in his obituary in major newspapers as "a man of remarkable industry, temperate habits, generous disposition, and unswerving integrity." Does that remind you of any Hollywood cowboys?

Where I grew up in Arizona

When I was very young, my family traveled around the country because my father was in the Air Force (technically the Army Air Corps). For some years I lived in Massachusetts while my father went to law school. Some of my earliest memories were of places in and around Boston. My real life in Arizona started when I was about five years old and our family moved to a small town in eastern Arizona called St. Johns. 

I was five years old and remember a few things about the trip across the U.S. from Massachusetts to St. Johns. If I had been any older, I would have had a cultural shock, moving from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts to St. Johns, Arizona population at the time about 1600 or 1700 people. 

One thing I specifically remember is waking up in St. Johns the first day we arrived. The sun was shining and I could see out the window to the orchard, visible in the picture above. The windows of the house were rather large and low to the ground and I opened the screen with its little lock and climbed out the window to explore the backyard. As you can see, the trees were wonderful for climbing and the grass and weeds were high enough to form a make-believe jungle. It was an almost perfect place to live for a five year old. 

The big elm tree behind me in the picture is long gone and so is the orchard. Almost all the trees from that time have died. Even the road that runs next to the property, in the background of the picture is gone. Since I ran out into that orchard, a lot of miles and years have passed by. I don't know when I realized it, but at some point I stopped feeling sad about how things were and started realizing I liked things pretty much as they are. I like Phoenix, I like Mesa, I like the big city and I like living in my suburban neighborhood. I no longer wish I could return to St. Johns as it was. But I will always remember that magic day with the sun shining on the orchard. 

Famous Navajo Meteorite from 1922

I found this photo and the accompanying explanation in a box of old photographs. The Navajo Meteorite is presently in the Field Museum of Chicago, Illinois. There is an interesting online book about the meteorite as follows:

Roy, Sharat Kumar, and Robert Kriss Wyant. The Navajo Meteorite. 1949. 

There were two meteorites discovered very near to each other near Sanders, Arizona. Although the larger of the two, shown above, was known to the Navajo Indians since their arrival on the Colorado Plateau in about 1600, the meteorite was officially "discovered" on July 10, 1921. Apparently, the meteorite had been covered by rocks to keep the white men and other Indians from finding it. I guess hiding it didn't work. Quoting from the book:

They called it 'Pish le gin e gin' (black iron). They tell me that the marks were there when they first found it and they think the prehistoric pottery- makers cut them in." The marks referred to in the letter do not appear to be anything more unusual than marks made by someone in an effort to determine the nature of the mass. It should, however, be pointed out here that the chisels used to make the marks had wider blades than those generally used now, and that picture writings were found on rocks in nearby outcrops. Navajo II was discovered five years later. It lay about 160 feet northwest of Navajo I, buried in soil formed by outwash from the neighboring ridge. An upright rock was found standing beside it.

 Quoting further from the book:

A peculiar feature of Navajo I- is a deep fissure that extends half way around it, in some places reaching a depth of six inches. About three inches from this fissure and generally parallel to it, another extends for a distance of a little more than a foot. The edges and walls of the fissure are smooth and rounded, indicating that they were subjected to heat and erosion during the meteor's flight to the earth. They also indicate that the fissures were formed, not from the impact of the meteorite upon the earth, but from shock and air pressure after it reached the earth's atmosphere and prior to its fall. The finders of the meteorite stated that at the time of the find there were many loose fragments of the meteorite in the fissures. These fragments, with the exception of one, were dug out and carried away by souvenir hunters while negotiations for the purchase of the meteorite were in progress. The one fragment that was left had an irregular, finger-like shape and measured about two inches in length. Fragments such as these suggest that, unlike the fissures, the fractures were formed from the impact of the meteorite upon the rocky surface, and that considerable disintegration had taken place within them since the fall. Both the fissures and the fractures could have served as receptacles for the retention of water, which is an effective disintegrating and dissolving agent. Polished and etched slices of the meteorite reveal a number of veins of schreibersite of irregular width and varying course. In places these have decomposed to limonite, and, where the decomposition has advanced far enough, the slices are broken up into small pieces easily. It is not improbable that veins of schreibersite may have existed along the fissures, and such a process of decomposition may have been in action, resulting in the formation of the fragments referred to above.

You never know what you might find walking around in Arizona. I guess if I were a Navajo, I might be a bit put out at the negotiations that happened about the "sale" of the meteorites to the museum.

Really walking Arizona for a long time

This is a picture of me with my father, Wallace Tanner, taken when I was about 1 year old standing in front of a Navajo hogan in Northern Arizona. When I say I have been walking Arizona for a long time, I understand what I mean. Arizona is so complex and so vast an area, that there is still a lot of country to cover. I think I have all the highways covered, but there are still some secondary roads I have missed. 

Below is a picture taken a little more recently at the Grand Canyon. 

Tumblin' Tumbleweeds

Another icon of the old west is the tumbleweed. One the high Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona and southern Utah, high winds can start waves of tumbleweeds moving across the dry desert. But if you were suddenly transported back in time to the mid-1800s you would find that all the tumbleweeds had disappeared. In fact, the plant, really called by the common name, Russian Thistle and is native to the Ural Mountains of Russia. To quote Wikipedia, "Salsola is a genus of herbs, subshrubs, shrubs, and small trees in the family Chenopodiaceae, native to Africa, Asia, and Europe. Plants in this genus typically grow on flat, often dry and/or somewhat saline soils, with some species in salt marshes. A few species are tumbleweeds. Recent genetic studies have however shown that the genus as traditionally circumscribed is paraphyletic, and many species are likely to be transferred to other genera in the future."

A typical plant can have 250,000 seeds which are widely disbursed by the rolling action of the plant. It will grow at any temperature between 28 degrees to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Each seed is a coiled, embryonic plant wrapped in a thin membrane.

The plant was first reported in South Dakota in 1877 and by 1900 had spread to the West Coast of the U.S.

Since I wasn't around before 1877, I have always had tumbleweeds as part of my desert experience. It is frightening to have a large tumbleweed blow in front of your car as you are speeding down the highway, but it you hit it, it disintegrates. We used to gather them up for bonfires, they are usually so dry they take only a few seconds to burn, but the blaze in very entertaining to young boys.

Moss in the Desert

I meet no one,
I hear only the echo.
At an angle the sun’s rays
enter the depths of the wood,
And shine
upon the green moss. Wang Wei 752

There is possibly no more image associated with coolness and dampness than moss and yet here is moss in the Sonora desert where summer day-time temperatures can reach 120 degrees in the shade. Most of the year, this lovely green plant is brown and dry and hiking through the desert it is easy to ignore moss which is confined to cracks in the shade and other protected locations. But if conditions are right and the rains come, the lifeless looking plants suddenly turn green and verdant.

Gardening is FUNdamental - May

May is the month of heat and weeds. You may not be able to do anything about the heat, but you can certainly do something about the weeds. If you are a close observer of weeds, you can watch the seasonal changes in the types of weeds that grow. May is a transitional month. The winter weeds are now going to seed and summer weeds are starting to grow. Of course, among the most difficult of weeds is bermuda grass. bermuda propagates by rhizomes, stolons and seeds; one of the few plants to spread in all three ways. Rhizomes are the "runners" the grass sends out along the top of the ground. Stolons are the sharp pointed shoots from the roots. Many people chose to spray bermuda with poison. I don't. If you understand what makes bermuda grow and what doesn't it is not too difficult to control. bermuda cannot stand shade or disturbed soil. To get rid of bermuda either shade it out or cultivate the soil regularly and the grass will die out.

Regular cultivation may mean weeding as frequently as once or twice a week. If you have a bermuda grass lawn that you want to convert to a garden dig and rake out most of the grass then rototill the ground every week or so for about 2 or 3 months and the grass will be gone. However, bermuda is not forgiving. If you leave the grass alone for 3 or 4 weeks it will be back in force. bermuda can grow as much as 3 or 4 inches a day! May is the month for planting citrus. As a general rule, the smaller the plant the sooner it will become established and bear fruit. I have had the best results with 5 gallon citrus. The large trees cannot bear fruit any faster than the roots become established.

More plants are killed from over-watering than almost any other cause. Watering is something that must be done on a strict schedule, especially for trees. A walk through the neighborhood will show many citrus trees that either do not thrive or do not produce. Most of the problem is the watering schedule. Citrus needs to be watered on a strict schedule; every ten days during the summer, (even when it rains,) every two weeks during the spring and fall and once a month during the winter. The watering should be done in a basin around the base of the tree with water standing in the basin for from five to ten hours.

There are very few vegetables that can be planted during May. If you are interested you can plant okra, sweet potatoes and soy beans. In our area the trees we planted (or that previous owners planted) are now maturing. Remember that vegetables need full sun (with some few exceptions). If you feel like you need to do something for your garden in May go buy a good heavy hoe. The weak little traditional eastern hoe just doesn't make a dent in Mesa soil. I have found that a three prong cultivator is very effective and fast for airing the soil and getting rid of most of the weeds.

Not just flowers -- just spectacular

This cactus plant grows in our backyard. Every year it blooms just like this. The flowers only last for a day or two, but they are spectacular while they are blooming. They are not native to Arizona and I have been searching the cactus books to try and identify them. A friend was moving and brought us several cactus plants, which were mostly half dead. We repotted or planted them and they have thrived. It is a gift for the 5th of May.

Snow in the Canyon

The south rim of the Grand Canyon is a land of extremes. In the depths of the Canyon the temperatures can reach above 110 degrees Fahrenheit , while on the same day the temperature can be thirty to forty degrees lower on the rim. During one trip into the Canyon, we left the North Rim with a temperature of 18 degrees. When we reached Phantom Ranch along the Colorado River, the temperature was over 100 degrees. Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim is often the coldest weather reporting station in Arizona. Although most of Arizona is considered to be a desert, there is enough snow that the North Rim is closed from October 15 to May 15 every year. We have had blizzard conditions on the South Rim with high winds and blowing snow. To quote the National Weather Service:

Winter conditions on the South Rim can be extreme. Be prepared for snow, icy roads and trails, and possible road closures. Winter weather typically begins by November and becomes well entrenched by December and January, with frequent light to moderate snows and increasingly colder weather. Low temperatures are generally in the teens along the Rim; however afternoon high temperatures still average in the 40s (4-9°C), due to the amount of sunshine the area receives. Along the river, cold air typically becomes trapped in the canyon leading to high temperatures only in the 40s and 50s (4-15°C) and low temperatures in the 30s and 40s (-1C-+9°C). Even with all of the winter sunshine, significant snowfall can be expected during the winter with an average snowfall of 50 to over 100 inches (1.3-2.5m) per year on the Rim, and occasionally snow will make it even to the river. Between storms, when dry high pressure builds in, winds become light, and fresh snow cover is on the ground, minimum temperatures can plummet, especially on the Rim, with sub-zero temperatures likely. Snow continues to be possible at the higher elevations through April. During the winter and early spring months, fog occasionally forms due to radiational cooling from snow cover on the ground. However, this fog usually breaks up quickly by morning.

Gila Valley LDS Temple Open House

The Gila Valley lies in eastern Arizona along the upper Gila River. It is a huge open east-west valley with high mountains to the south and a lower range to the north. The valley has a very long history of habitation, being full of Indian ruins and the remnants of ancient canals. The earliest European inhabitants came from Mexico. There were Mexican settlements as early as 1871. Other settlers came from parts of Arizona and elsewhere because of the rich mines in the area to the north of the valley.

The first explorers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in the valley in 1878 and settlement began the following year. Many of the prominent families in Arizona are descendants of these early pioneers. Throughout the long history of the LDS Church in the Gila Valley, the members have had to travel great distances and great personal expense to attend a Temple for marriages and to perform the sacred work for the dead. In April of 2008 the Church announced its intention to build a Temple in the Gila Valley. The Temple is now complete and an Open House has been ongoing since April 23, 2010. The Temple will be dedicated on May 23, 2010. Click here for pictures taken during the construction.