grand canyon, iii: the mogollon rim, 2018: marla perkins

Grand Canyon, III: The Mogollon Rim, 2018: Marla Perkins, Ph.D.

The Mogollon Rim is the geographic feature that provides the physical boundary between the northern

third or so and the southern two-thirds or so of Arizona. It is the southern edge of the Kaibab Plateau,

which was uplifted when a plate moved under what is now the plateau. The Kaibab Plateau cracked, like

a plate of glass dropped on a small linear object, like a pencil—I’ve done this when working with stained

glass. The Mogollon Rim is not always obvious—it has crumbled over the years, and piles of talus in

some places make it look like a slope. But it’s the edge, and I decided to take a hike in a place where the

edge looks like an edge. This part of Arizona is what made the Grand Canyon possible; I consider it the

southernmost part of the Grand Canyon area.

The drive to the trailhead was something; the road follows a historic trail that was part of the pony

express in the area and then a route that Zane Grey followed when he traveled through the region.


Short-horned lizards (Phrynosoma douglassi) are my favorite lizards in Arizona, and the lizards are my

favorite group of animals in Arizona. These guys are celebrities in my version of the universe. They are

weird in the lizard world for being ovoviviparous—how many words are there with three v’s in them?

They hatch from their eggs inside the females and are born live. I like to see their varying colors. These

two were within about fifty feet of one another along the trail, and one is red, and one is gray. They

match their backgrounds, maybe because they burrow into the ground at night and to preserve body

fluids, and maybe because if they don’t match, they get eaten, which would eliminate the not-matching

lizards quickly. These are both young ones, but they are old enough to have survived the winter.


Where the Mogollon Rim looks like an edge, there is about a thousand-foot difference between the top

of the rim and the ground level below the rim. The trail to the top from the Rt. 261 trailhead (another

picturesquely named trailhead) was a gradual ascent mostly through a forested area.


It seems like this sign should be classified, but maybe the point is so obvious that there’s no reason not

to post it out in public.


A little over a third of the 12.5-mile (20.117 km) loop was on the top of the rim: easy, level walking in

the forest, with views of the rim and miles and miles into the distance to the south.


I had expected to be able to see far enough to see the desert, and maybe I could, but the distance

turned everything blue, and I couldn’t tell if or when the forests ended and the desert began.


A view of the road, Rt. 261, from the edge of the rim


Part of the trail wasn’t marked because there isn’t officially a loop trail, so I did a little bit of

bushwhacking to connect the end of the Highline Trail to the Drew Trail, the route back down from the

edge. In the online description of the trail, what the hiker/writer called the Mogollon Rim Vista Loop, the

unmarked section of non-trail, I found the following information: “As long as you don’t cross Rim Road

(or fall off the Rim), you’ll end up at the confluence of Rim Road 300 and FR 9350 near Drew trailhead.”

That advice worked. This was some of the easiest bushwhacking I’ve ever done; I tracked along the edge

and didn’t fall off, while having a good look at some aggressive forest management. I don’t know if the

forest was managed before or during the Tinder Fire, which was in progress while I was out for the hike.

The tricky part of the bushwhacking came about once I was no longer bushwhacking—neither of the

numbered roads were labeled. I followed the edge of the rim until I reached the Drew Trail and ignored

the information about the roads.


The forest changes quickly with elevation changes. The hike along the bottom of the rim was hot and

mostly sunny.


The lizards and birds were the majority of the wildlife that I saw while hiking, but there were a lot of elk

in the area, judging from the amount of scat and number of tracks. While in the bushwhacking section, I

followed elk trails when convenient and paid particular attention to an elk who must be one of the

largest elk I’ve ever not seen. I found the enormous tracks several times on the top of the rim and this

clear one on the trail once I was off the rim. It’s too bad I missed him—I assume he was an enormous

bull.


The ants were working hard, as usual, and these carpenter ants (there are over a thousand species of

carpenter ants, so I didn’t try to figure out which ones live in Arizona; it should be noted that the

information about ants that pops up first when searching for information about kinds of ants is from

every exterminator company in the state). The lupines are easier; they are probably Arizona lupines

(Lupinus arizonicus); it doesn’t appear that anyone is devoted to exterminating the lupines.


I wish that the alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) were fir because I would like to be able to talk

about alligator fir. The bark makes it clear why the juniper is named as it is in English.


This is the largest alligator juniper along the trail, and the largest I’ve encountered. Juniper are

important to indigenous people throughout the trees’ range in North America. The berries are used for

food, the leaves are used for medicines, and hunters have rubbed themselves down with juniper before

going out, disguising their scents from evil spirits and other potential predators. By the end of the hike,

I’m sure that any predator in Arizona knew what and where I was. I didn’t fall off, over, or down, and I

didn’t get eaten—another successful hike.

grand canyon, iii: the mogollon rim, 2018: marla perkins

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