Here are a few mountain landscape photos from the desert of Southern Arizona.
Here is Mount Wrightson in Santa Rita Mountains in the Coronado National forest.
Surrounding Mount Wrightson are a bunch of smaller stony outcrops and dried out grasslands.
These rocky outcroppings are quite tall and you can climb them, but it is quite hot and dry with no roads to get to those stones. You would need to hike all they way to them on foot with camp gear to enjoy rock climbing here. This area is also used for cattle grazing so actual cowboys sometimes have to go out here on their horses to round up the cattle. Its a rough job but the desolate landscape is nice.
In Southern Arizona there are many rounded out hills like this that would be considered mountains in the Midwest. These hilly mountains were used by early Native Americans as lookouts for Yaqui to make sure Apaches weren't going to raid their tribes. Later on in history these were used by the Spaniards to look for the same Apaches that would raid settlements and steal cattle.
Here is Dos Cabezas Peaks near Wilcox Arizona. Dos Cabezas translates to two heads in Spanish.
Here is a larger view of the Dos Cabezas Wilderness Range. This is definitely quite wild and isolated as only only treacherous dirt road leads to the East side of these mountains.
Not much goes on around here and you rarely see anyone else driving on the roads out here. Every now and then you can see a homesteader with a little camper trailer somehow managing to survive out here with very little water. It must be a quiet life living out here in the wilderness.
The Chiricahua Mountains are the main attraction down here and the Dos Cabezas is usually scorned because it is so treacherous to get there. The rock formations at the Chiricahuas is quite epic as well. Here is where you can start seeing more people compared to any of the areas on the way here.
Here is a fairly tall but medium mountain along an interstate highway near Benson Arizona. Finally there is some cell phone reception here. Imagine the workers who are stationed here in the boondocks to maintain communications, they must have quite peaceful work days.
Here is Sheep Canyon with the Mae West Peaks in the background. The Spanish colonial building below is a large Native American museum called the Amarind Foundation. It used to be an old Catholic church but was turned into the museum later when someone bought the ranch its located on. There you can find all sorts of Native American artifacts from different tribes and eras from around the southwest.
This is a shot of the Whetstone Mountains just past Benson Arizona. These mountains look a bit plain on the outside but are quite interesting on the inside because of their caliche composition which is nature's version of concrete. Caliche is usually a sign that there are underground caves somewhere. There is a huge living cave here called Kartchner Caverns that was discovered by the Kartchners who owned the ranch land next to the mountain. They later donated it to the government and it has been turned into a National Park. I'll have to try and find the photos I took of the interior as there are quite elaborate formations growing inside.
That's all for now, thanks for looking at the desert desolation :-)
