March 18, 2008

Madera Pass & Madera Canyon



Our plan was to spend a single night at Madera Canyon to do some birding before moving on to Life on Wheels conference in Tucson. Kim insisted we could save some time by cutting across the mountains through the "pass road".

I guess I should have known better when we approached all the warning signs, about being narrow and dropoffs. We get on this 4wd trail and it starts sleeting & snowing....which is AMAZING! since we just left short-sleeve weather a few hours before in Tombstone!

The road is very narrow, winding around the mountains with 100 to 400 foot shear drops off to my left. After what felt like hours, we arrive at the Canyon, only to be greeted by more snow and ice.

It was pretty certain that no birding was to be had at the site, so after attempting (unsucessfully) to back our trailer up the steep, icey campsite we decided to just move on to Tucson....

1 comment:

LiveWorkDream said...

Oh you guys, I love your spirit of adventure!

Jim and I have found ourselves on some pretty gnarly roads as well, and those scary situations usually turn out to give us the fondest memories when it's all over, and we can look back and laugh!

The blue highways and backroads are the best!