CHIRICAHUA NATIONAL MONUMENT, ARIZONA

Published in The Toronto Star Newspaper

In the quiet southeast corner of Arizona, mountains are shattered, not into pieces, but pillars.

Thousands of them, towering over tree tops, form a jagged skyline. Pinnacles, spires, columns and balanced rocks, they are weathered forms, each with a different story. Like an amassment of totem poles, the scene is surreal.

Two hours east of Tucson, Chiricahua National Monument is an extraordinary testament to erosion. Its mountains are an accumulation of layers upon layers of white-hot volcanic ash that fused into rock called rhyolite. When it cooled it cracked. Nearly 600 metres in height, the aggregate was uplifted during the shifting of fault lines. Then for 27 million years, its vertical fractures and horizontal rifts were widened and deepened by the forces of wind, water and ice.

The elements sliced and diced the stone with a dull blade. They carved columns, cavities and circlets, smoothing edges everywhere. Giant boulders are perched delicately on pedestals. Stone towers stand 100 metres in height. One 10-storey-tall spire has a diameter of just one metre at a point near its base.

Called the "Land of the Standing-Up Rocks" by the Apaches who inhabited the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, and later the "Wonderland of Rocks" by the pioneers who settled in the region in the 1880s, "chee-ree-KAH-wah" national monument fuels the imagination. The grey pillars, splotched with lime-green lichen, riddled with ridges, lines, indents and protrusions, present a gallery of sculptures.

Many can be likened to known objects including chess pieces, cow patties, organ pipes, church steeples, tombstones and mushrooms. Others are easy to personify. At the second of five pullouts along the park's single roadway, a sign points to the Sea Captain, a striking stone profile of a sea-faring skipper with a beer belly and hat. This sculpture and others--everywhere--bring new meaning to the phrase "rock face".

From the Visitor Centre, the 13-km-long road--Bonita Canyon Drive--can take an hour or more. The road winds, climbing gradually among the colossal columns, through oak-juniper and pine forests, then along a cliff edge. Successive pullouts become increasingly fascinating, and the narrow route, increasingly unnerving. As you pass precariously balanced boulders, you read signs that saying "beware of falling rock", and drive road littered with little rock chunks.

At the road's end, at the crest of the mountain, Massai Point offers a sweeping vista of the vast knobby maze and the flat, dry surrounding desert valley. It also serves as a trailhead for a variety of hikes.

Trails run deep among the pillars, zig-zagging down, in, out, under, over and around formations. They descend past tree tops, between the bellies of the giants, into canyons, to the very rock and trunk floor. From wind-blasted, sun-exposed terraces to cool, dark, damp, still bottoms, trails drop up to 420 metres in height.

The park sports a total of 32 km of footpaths. Painstakingly constructed over six years by the Civilian Conservation Corps beginning in 1933, the trails have artful staircases but are rough and rugged with exposed drop-offs and protruding upright slabs that divert running water and stop rolling rocks.

The 5 km Echo Canyon loop includes a long narrow passage between vertical walls, grottos, a ledge of volcanic hailstones, and groves of stately Arizona cypress and Douglas Fir. The 11 km Heart of Rocks loop offers a dense labyrinth plus a few particularly striking formations: Punch and Judy, Duck on a Rock and Big Balanced Rock. Both these trails also connect to the Rhyolite Canyon Trail which runs straight back to the Visitor Centre through oak and pine woodland. For a one-way trek, catch a ride on the park shuttle. Departing daily--just once--at 8:30 a.m. from the Visitor Centre, it provides drop-offs at the trailheads of Massai Point and Sugarloaf Mountain for $2 per person.

The trail at Sugarloaf runs up to the highest point in the monument, a bald top with an elevation of 2,228 metres. From it, you can see the eroded remnants of Turkey Creek caldera to the south, the volcano that created Chiricahua's mountain of rock layers. To see a fallen rock column--amazingly there aren't many--trek the 7.5 km out-and-back Natural Bridge Trail.

You can hike year-round--winter snow tends to melt quickly--but for amiable temperatures, spring and fall are best. The park is also a birding mecca; the cool, moist forest and canyons provide an oasis for more than 200 species.

For a piece of history, visit Faraway Ranch, the early-1900s farm and cattle ranch near the park's entrance. Built in a meadow of the canyon, it was the homestead of Swedish immigrants, Neil and Emma Erickson. In the 1920s their daughter Lillian, with her husband Ed Riggs, turned the homestead into a guest ranch with horseback tours. Moreover they lobbied to have the rock spectacle protected as a park. Chiricahua National Monument was established in 1924.