| brought me to the barren, stony summit of
Agassiz, 12,340 feet elevation, second highest of the San Francisco Peaks. The
bear family had beaten me to the top that morning, for rocks had been
overturned and the cinders dug into for whatever rarified mice or insects live
in that lofty spot. Here I ate my lunch as if perched in an observation
balloon. The panorama was utterly magnificent, sweeping in every direction over mountains, forests and deserts to the rim of the world 150 miles away. South was busy Flagstaff, like a toy village, 5,400 feet below, and beyond stretched the vast pine woods and prairies of the Coconino Plateau. The Santa Fe Railroad and Highway 66 were thin lines lightly stretched across the country. Far to the north the Grand Canyon showed as a great gash, and further east the round, blue hump of Navajo Mountain dominated the varicolored buttes, mesas, and plateaus of the Indian country. Eastward lay the entire expanse of the fiery-lined Painted Desert, |
backed by New Mexico's distant Chusco
Mountains. Roundabout swept the semicircle of the San Francisco Peaks, with
soaring Humphreys Peak 12,611 feet, Arizona's highest point, rising a mile
about a half to the north, and Fremont Peak, 11,940 feet, the third of the trio
below to the east. But the previous winter had been exceptionally dry and the
usual extensive July snowfields were completely lacking. Only a few tiny snow
patches lingered under shady, north-facing cliffs. The San Francisco Peaks form a climatic island in the sky differing greatly from the semiarid region below. Here are animals. birds, plants and flowers typical of northern Alaska or Greenland and from Agassiz summit I could look down over five of western North Americas seven life zones, compressed into the space of a few miles. The weather up top is truly arctic-alpine, with deep winter snows and freezing nights throughout the summer. |
PAGE FOURTEEN ARIZONA HIGHWAYS AUGUST 1954