It had been quite the week. Brian and I had done some outrageous climbing – he had led us up a frightening technical climb in a remote part of the Arizona desert. It took 12 rappels to get off the thing, with an unplanned night spent halfway down the face. Scary stuff, never to be forgotten. It felt good to be down and off the face, where we could once again eat real food and drink cold beer. We drove another hundred miles over the next few days, dodging winter storms as best we could, to little avail. Who says it never rains in the desert?
After one particularly soggy night in the Pozo Redondo Mountains, we headed farther north and made our way up to the gas pipeline road. Driving this, all 86 miles of it, is an adventure in itself, especially the climb from Burro Gap east up through the Sauceda Mountains. Late one afternoon, we decided to call it quits and camp for the night. The sun was trying to shine, and at least it wasn’t pissing down rain for the moment. We pulled off the road at a fairly flat spot and, taking advantage of what little heat the late-day sun offered, spread out our wet gear to dry.
Our camp was just south of Peak 3124, and since the weather was cooperating and we needed the exercise, we simply left our stuff to dry and did a leisurely climb up the 800 vertical feet to the summit. It looked like the weather would actually clear, so we sat a while and enjoyed the view. There was, etched into a boulder on the summit, a single petroglyph. Somehow it seemed appropriate to find it there, standing witness over this quiet place, undisturbed for centuries. This was a special moment, allowing us to feel something of a bond with this ancient land.
After a quiet descent to camp, we enjoyed hot food and cold beer, then spent the evening listening to great music on the FM radio in the truck. Let it be known that KXCI is one of the best stations anywhere, and was just what we needed. The clouds all melted away and we were blessed with a starry night.
The next morning dawned fresh and bright, with nary a cloud in the sky. It was sooooo good to finally see blue sky. Not far from our campsite was the abandoned settlement of Stoa Pitk. This had once been a thriving community, boasting two tiny churches.
We stopped at the extensive cemetery and spent a while, contemplating the life that these people had spent. No indoor plumbing, no electricity, no television, no internet. The young folk had drifted away to a more exciting life elsewhere. The next picture shows the name of the cemetery in the O’odham language.
Continuing east, the next five miles were pretty flat, but then we had to drive up and through a rough pass, only to emerge in the Kaka Valley. Eight more miles took us across that, then through a few low hills, to arrive at the only settlement along the pipeline road – Kaka. A paved road makes its way north through the reservation to end at Kaka, so at least this place has an easy outlet to the rest of the world. We kept on driving, and 20 miles later came to a low pass at the northern end of the Vekol Mountains. There were a few twists and turns to get us through that, and then visibility opened up again.
We could see the road ahead for several hundred yards and, much to our surprise, some movement caught our eye. Normally, that’d be no big deal, right? But, to put it in perspective, it’d been the better part of a week since we had talked to anyone, way off the grid as we were. From that distance, it looked like some men were standing in the middle of the road. As we slowly approached them, we wondered aloud who they were. It didn’t seem like they were expecting us, that’s for sure. In fact, they seemed downright shocked.
A couple of them stepped out in front of us and signaled us to stop. No worries, we had slowed right down by then anyway. A strange scene greeted us. One of the first things we saw was a Border Patrol vehicle, plainly marked with the usual green and white colors and their logo. At least one more was parked off to the side. There were several uniformed agents present. We rolled down the truck windows so we could speak to them. They had automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, and did not look happy. Up until the time we met these guys, Brian and I had been merrily gabbing away as we always did. Our upbeat mood vanished in an instant when these guys came up to both sides of the truck. Something surely wasn’t right.
Quite gruffly, they asked us what we were doing there. What were they talking about – all we were doing was driving along the road, for Pete’s sake. I told them we had been out climbing for a week. Why were we on the reservation? Well, we had done some climbing there, and were now driving the pipeline road to simply get back to Tucson. I offered to show them the permit I carried, allowing me to climb on the res. Yes, they wanted to see that, all right. When I handed it to the agent, he read it carefully, seeming quite surprised to see such a thing. That seemed to satisfy him to some extent. They started nosing around the back of our truck, trying to look through the windows. Sir, could you please step outside and open up the back of your truck. Of course, officer. Very slowly and carefully, keeping my hands in plain sight, I got out and walked to the back of the truck. I used the key to unlock the back hatch on the camper shell, with a hint of a smile on my face. He had no idea what he was about to find, but I knew.
The effect was immediate. Imagine a big pile of gear, most of it still soggy from a week’s exposure to the rain, mixed in with bags of our garbage and dirty clothes (really dirty), all festering in the enclosed sun-baked camper shell. The stench was palpable. I told him he was welcome to look through it all he wanted, but he quickly declined. After eyeballing it for a few moments, he said I could close it back up. He almost seemed disappointed that we weren’t carrying a load of drugs or indocumentados.
By now, we had a clearer picture of what was going on. Off to the side, but no more than a hundred feet from the road, were a couple of large SUVs, like Suburbans. Something very odd was a large group of people standing by one of them – a mixed group of men, women and children. There must have been close to 20 of them. There they stood, not speaking, while a Border Patrol agent with an automatic rifle kept watch over them. I asked one of the agents what was going on, but he didn’t offer much. By now, though, we were figuring it out for ourselves. We had driven right into the middle of a big bust.
The 20-odd standing there were undocumented – they had snuck into the country and been caught – they had made it a hundred miles from Mexico, but their journey was now over. These agents were suspicious of us – why had we driven up just when all of this was going on? Did we have any connection to all of this? They finally realized we didn’t, so they encouraged us to move on. Suited us, we were just glad to be out of there.
I put the truck into gear and we moved ahead, but I don’t think we went 50 feet before something bizarre happened. Another man stepped in front of us and signaled a stop. He wore no uniform, and his vehicle, hard by the side of the road, bore no markings. Approaching the driver’s side of the truck, he demanded to know what we were doing there. Incredulous, I told him that we had just explained all of that to the Border Patrol agents right behind us. That means nothing to me, I don’t care what they did, he informed us. But aren’t you with the Border Patrol too, I asked. No, he replied. He demanded to see our identification, and I also offered the permit from the reservation. He pondered all of that for a bit, then asked to see inside the back of the truck. We complied, and his reaction was about the same as the Border Patrol agents of a few minutes earlier.
The whole situation was bizarre – it was déjà vu all over again. I came right out and asked him, if he wasn’t with the Border Patrol, then who was he? He announced in no uncertain terms that he was with the Tohono O’odham Police, their undercover narcotics division. That was interesting, we had no idea they even had such a group. He soon lost interest in us, and, stern as ever, told us to move on, as if he were doing us a big favor. This second interrogation had freaked us out a bit, and all we wanted now was to be far away.
Moments after we started driving again, out Brian’s side window we saw something big. Really big. It was moving along with us. It was a Blackhawk helicopter. You have to see one of these things to believe it. They are huge – 65 feet long. That’s half again as long as a Greyhound bus. It was flying slowly, moving along with us, and it had come out of nowhere. What were they going to throw at us next? We didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Seeing one of these will put the fear of God into you. Brian and I weren’t sure what to do next – was it after us, did it want us to stop, were we really in trouble, and with whom this time? Once again, we slowed down and stopped, then waited to see what it would do next. It hesitated a bit, then picked up speed and moved quickly away over the desert to our right. It was soon lost to sight. Once before, I had had a brief encounter with one of these machines. While standing on the top of a peak in the Alvarez Mountains, I had heard the tell-tale whoop-whoop-whoop of chopper blades. It took me a while, but then I saw it, coming in low and fast across the Tecolote Valley from the west. It was in a hurry, on its way to somewhere, when it spotted my truck parked out on the desert floor. It slowed right down and hovered, not more than a hundred feet over it. I half expected guys to rappel out the door and down to my truck! I’ll bet it was there for two or three full minutes, probably running my license plate to see if the vehicle was stolen. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, it continued east on its way to who-knows-where. Here is what one of those things looks like.
We sat there, shaking our heads in wonderment. Before moving off again, we took a good look around to see if anyone were still after us. All was quiet, no vehicles approaching in the rear-view mirror. So, guardedly, we put it in gear and drove away, once and for all. You can bet we were talking about this incident for quite a while. One last piece to the puzzle was this: in the Tucson paper a couple of days later, we read a story about the incident. In addition to the arrest of the people we had seen, they had confiscated 2,000 pounds of marijuana from the group. Not that this was a rare occurrence, because it wasn’t – in that area, it happened way too often. It was just our bad luck to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ah, the desert – life here is never boring.
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