Highmountain
Hero Member
This place is one of the more interesting a person might spend some time, and largely overlooked by everyone. It's a Quaternary lava flow, as is the region to the south, which makes it hard on the tires getting near it. The land's all BLM, was once a BLM Wilderness Study Area, and though the time elapsed under the law for it to become actual designated wilderness, they continue to treat it access-wise as though it's sacred.... if you want to take a vehicle in there you've a job of work and study figuring out how to do it.
About 2/3rds of the mesa is bisected by E/W Cottonwood Canyon, full of interesting everything. On the discharge [west] end there are logging trucks, vehicles rolled up into the canyon walls and floors from a flood in the 1950s washing down a logging camp. The side-canyons and top are speckled with ancient ruins, and those choked with lava debris from an earthquake in the 1890s and the later flood still wash down some fine gold that can be found in the pockets and cavities of the lava boulders.
The east-end of the mesa's bisected N/S by Shaw Canyon which also has much the same things as nearby Cottonwood.
Camping on the top a person can see everything for 50 miles across the San Augustin Plains to the north and a person could probably spend a decade just turning over rocks and examining ruins.
Bat Cave on the North face was the location where the family of the ex-Texas Ranger [Cow Dust and Saddle Leather] name slips my mind just now, filled a coffee-can full of nuggets he was bringing up from 100 feet down. Hmm--Ben Kemp. That's the name.
I don't know what the BLM's doing these days insofar as time-ran-out Wilderness Study Areas, but despite having spent a lot of time in there during the 1990s, I never ran into another human being there.
Anyone who doesn't mind destroying a set of good tires might find the place worthwhile.
Afterthought edit: Pelona is also the site where a crashed UFO and the spent carcasses of several aliens are supposed to have been recovered a bit worse for the wear by coyotes and weather in 1952.
2nd Afterthought: Luera, next promontory to the east might be equally or even more interesting. It's all public land except the access routes, but those are closed off and have been so almost forever. A person with a lot of determination could legally hop a fence public-land-to-public land, and do a lot of walking, but there are too many canyons and too little human-life-span for me to have ever been motivated enough to do it. But I have a strong suspicion Luera has never been prospected.
About 2/3rds of the mesa is bisected by E/W Cottonwood Canyon, full of interesting everything. On the discharge [west] end there are logging trucks, vehicles rolled up into the canyon walls and floors from a flood in the 1950s washing down a logging camp. The side-canyons and top are speckled with ancient ruins, and those choked with lava debris from an earthquake in the 1890s and the later flood still wash down some fine gold that can be found in the pockets and cavities of the lava boulders.
The east-end of the mesa's bisected N/S by Shaw Canyon which also has much the same things as nearby Cottonwood.
Camping on the top a person can see everything for 50 miles across the San Augustin Plains to the north and a person could probably spend a decade just turning over rocks and examining ruins.
Bat Cave on the North face was the location where the family of the ex-Texas Ranger [Cow Dust and Saddle Leather] name slips my mind just now, filled a coffee-can full of nuggets he was bringing up from 100 feet down. Hmm--Ben Kemp. That's the name.
I don't know what the BLM's doing these days insofar as time-ran-out Wilderness Study Areas, but despite having spent a lot of time in there during the 1990s, I never ran into another human being there.
Anyone who doesn't mind destroying a set of good tires might find the place worthwhile.
Afterthought edit: Pelona is also the site where a crashed UFO and the spent carcasses of several aliens are supposed to have been recovered a bit worse for the wear by coyotes and weather in 1952.
2nd Afterthought: Luera, next promontory to the east might be equally or even more interesting. It's all public land except the access routes, but those are closed off and have been so almost forever. A person with a lot of determination could legally hop a fence public-land-to-public land, and do a lot of walking, but there are too many canyons and too little human-life-span for me to have ever been motivated enough to do it. But I have a strong suspicion Luera has never been prospected.
