The Gila National Forest has over three million acres of forest, mountains, and range land. It is best known for its wilderness areas, in particular the Gila Wilderness - the first wilderness in the United States. The Gila River originates in these mountains, emptying into the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona. The Gila is the state’s only free flowing river (no dams), but it was listed as the most endangered river in the U.S. in 2019.

Splash of Yellow

Blizzard, 2021 ❄ 🏔 🌨

A Little “Me” Time and A Hike - Gila National Forest, NM

After 2 days of driving, I finally got a day off from my “trail duties” and managed to fit in a little 8 mile hike today.  I am camped just down the road from the CDT, so I hiked up the road, found the trail and headed north.

Fortunately, this was a well-marked portion of the trail.  Pretty views from the trail:

This portion of the trail at least had some vegetation on it, south of here was desert and dust, according to the guys.  Today the winds were blowing, but not howling, so it was perfect hiking weather.

This guy ran across my path.

This cutie was sunbathing on his own personal rock!

Signs of spring in the New Mexico landscape.

I did meet a couple of thru-hikers on my hike today...one guy was pretty interesting.  We engaged in a conversation and I asked him his trail name (that is a big deal for thru-hikers), he told me it was “Fix It���.  He then proceeded to tell me several stories about how “unprepared” and “ignorant” most thru-hikers were and how he had “saved” all these poor souls.  We finished up our conversation, he headed north and I headed south....in my head I renamed him, giving him a new trail name “Know-It-All”.  Whew, he was a bit much!

I made it back to camp, my first solo hike of the summer successfully completed.  I have enjoyed my time in this area, love the camping spot I am in, really would love to stay here longer, but duty calls.  Tomorrow I am heading to Reserve, NM - relocating to an RV park for a couple of days to recharge, do laundry, and dump.  Oh yeah, also need to meet up with those guys, again.

fir no reason in particular, a certain "fan" wouldn't be able to hear a baseball game out in the middle of nowhere, would he? Lol

It's so funny you say that because I'm pretty sure there's a whole thing in Fire Season where Philip Connors passes time by listening to baseball games on the radio at his fire lookout. But this is something that is going to depend on individual location, so just because he could hear it at his lookout in Gila Natl Forest does not mean you could pick that up from Shoshone Natl Forest.

I think the answer to this honestly depends on a higher level of technical understanding of radios than I actually have. Lookout towers are often set up with some pretty fancy repeaters and antennas because they're so high up. Even defunct lookouts that are no longer in use for fire watching are often still maintained for radio purposes (as I saw with the not-so-abandoned lookout I climbed in Arkansas.) A good network of lookout towers didn't just help national forests with fires, but also making sure there was good radio coverage.

To really answer this you'd need to know more details about signal strength, frequencies, repeaters, etc. Grian can get the NWS report from the radio tower in Cody, WY at his tower. (He can also hear the dispatch at the office there, and likewise they'd need to be able to hear him for fire reports.) But his handheld radio doesn't have the signal strength to speak with Scar outside of a certain mile radius (as he loses signal on that particular frequency when he leaves the NF or when he was trying to find the Cloud Lake Connection.) Scar also has more fancy radio equipment set up in his tower than Grian does, because Scar's tower has easier access from the road. So maybe the question is if the radio tower in Cody would be transmitting this game? Maybe it's weak because it's coming such a long distance compared to the transmissions that originate in/around the National Forest.

But the actual, MOST reasonable answer is: it's fiction, you can decide whether or not it's realistic if he can hear a baseball game or not. We're operating with fake lookouts that exist in a vague area of the national forest where none of the landmarks I mention are in their true-to-life positions. I have no blueprint for the type of radio equipment Scar has, and I am not too well versed on the intricacies of how they work. So I think there's evidence for it either way—maybe he's too far and remote to pick it up, or maybe it's bouncing off the tower in Cody to reach him. The real answer will be whatever makes the most sense for what you need it for :D

Is there any fun fact about you or a thing you'd like to share that you've never been asked about or had the opportunity to tell?

Any interests you don't post much about? I'd love to know <3

HM-i don't have many secrets these days i guess, but i dont think ive ever talked about how i used to love to camp and hike/overnight hike a lot, i was super outdoorsy when i was a kid. imagine that!

things i have never really been able to tell or talk about involving this random interest o' mine, all of this is falling under interests and fun facts: i watched my dad get chased around the campsite by a juvenile brown bear in the Gila Mountains when i was 9. always keep your food packed tight, kids.

almost drove a car off the side of the turnpike in a freak snowstorm in Lincoln national forest.

lost all my camping gear off the top of the same car cuz it wasnt tied down properly going over a pass.

saw an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere that i cant seem to find on a map or any information about, had a whole ass conversation about it with my old man but thinking about it now he wasn't from around there either so how would he have known about it? (on a highway in between sierra blanca and Balmorhea st park in texas.

really interested in rocks. like...just rocks. thunder eggs and agate and rando stuff you could just go pick up. use to rockhound in the national parks around us when you were allowed to do so. back then there were a lot of weird little rock shops around too, mostly in the middle of nowhere. my fave was in tiny lil ghost town called Orogrande out on highway 54, a town famous for its forest (it was one tree.) somewhere i have a large rock collection. i love me a good rock-

anyway all of this chatter makes me want to pick that up again haha. thanks for the ask Anon!

Coyote Corridor I

Oil on 30 x 24" panel.

I left a game-cam in the Gila National Forest in a wildlife corridor that saw a lot of diverse animal traffic.

When I checked the footage, I was very entertained by the coyote family that I'd captured going about their business almost every night

Some people have feral cats. Some people have feral dogs. We have feral cows.

The "Mormon Lake Hotshots" fighting fires in Gila National Forest, New Mexico, 2012

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has rejected a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to reintroduce jaguars to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. The largest cat in the Americas was first protected by the Endangered Species Act more than 50 years ago, but due to federal inaction only eight individual jaguars have been documented in the United States in nearly three decades.

“This is a heartbreaking example of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s continued failure to take proactive steps to bring jaguars back to their native range,” said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Federal officials should be aiding jaguar recovery, not making excuses that justify their continued inaction. Jaguars belong in the United States, and we won’t stop fighting to protect and recover these magnificent cats.”

In a letter to the Center received this week, the Fish and Wildlife Service said “recovery of the species could be achieved without the presence of jaguars in the Gila National Forest.”

This rationale ignores numerous jaguar experts who authored a groundbreaking study declaring 20 million acres in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Gila National Forest, suitable habitat for a breeding population of jaguars.

Returning jaguars to the American Southwest would help save the largely isolated jaguars in northwestern Mexico, who have low genetic diversity. Climate change also adds urgency for jaguars to be able to expand their range to the north.

The Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is the only monument with Mogollon ruins. The site protects five cliff alcoves that shield the ruins of several interlinked caves. There are 40 rooms of various sizes in the caves, created with small, flat stones set in adobe mud mortar. Ancient people built the cliff dwellings between 1275-1300 AD. The caves are approximately ¼ mile above the canyon’s confluence with the west fork of the Gila River, about 200 feet up the northwest side of Cliff Dweller Canyon. The mud-and-stone architecture is sheltered within six caves, protected from the wind and water that reduced a nearby mesa-top site to rubble by the 1880s.

Location preserved the Gila Cliff Dwellings for centuries. The remote canyons of the Gila River forks are rugged, heavily forested, with steep canyons. After the Mogollon moved out, the Apache moved in. The Apache kept everyone else out until the late 1870s.

Yellow Top

Chuck Ripper (1929 - 2019) "Gila Trout" Signed lower right. Original Gouache/Watercolor painting on Masonite.

Originally published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the U.S. 20c Gila Trout stamp issued October 2, 1996.

The golden-yellow Gila Trout was once widespread throughout the Gila and San Francisco Rivers in New Mexico. Today, however, the trout is only found in a few creeks in the Gila National Forest. This fish developed in the high reaches of rivers and streams where water is clear and cool. Isolated from other trout species, the Gila Trout is a genetically distinct subspecies. Unfortunately, this fish was nearly destroyed by hatchery programs that breed and release non-native species into new areas. Rainbow trout are a popular hatchery and introductory fish because of its extremely hardy and adaptive nature. Although distinct subspecies of one another, the Gila Trout and the rainbow trout are similar enough to successfully mate. Following the introduction of the rainbow trout into the Gila Trout's waters, the two species hybridized and it became nearly impossible to distinguish between them. Fortunately, scientists recognized that the hybridized breeding was eliminating the Gila Trout. Efforts were taken to separate the fish and move the rainbow trout and the new hybridized species to other waters. Today, rivers and creeks where the Gila Trout thrive are protected from other fish and fishermen. Barricades placed in the rivers halt the natural upstream migration of rainbow trout and other fish from lower sections of the rivers.