Curiouser and curiouser: Organ Pipe National Monument

I spent part of Thanksgiving weekend last year hiking and camping in Organ Pipe National Monument. I highly recommend a visit, although its proximity to the border lends some dystopian undertones. The monument is, of course, named for the organ pipe cactus that inhabit it. Although relatively common in the Mexican part of the Sonoran desert, organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) is rare in the United States because it is highly sensitive to frost.

Organ pipe cactus therefore tends to cling to the southern faces of hills and ridges, at least in this northern part of its range, where the extra sunlight can be crucial.

They are remarkably large and really quite impressive plants.

Here are a few close-ups.

I tried to capture just how towering these cacti are, something the typical shots tend to miss.

I particularly like the curly arms of this one. It almost looks like it's reaching for something.

This photo shows some of the similarities between the organ pipe and the saguaro.

The ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) was also particularly spectacular. I hadn't realized that they turn colors, just like deciduous trees! We saw the whole spectrum from fresh green leaves, through yellow and orange, to dark red.

While this flower look an awfully lot like notch-leaf scorpion-weed (Phacelia crenulata), the bloom is totally out of season, which is apparently in the spring not the fall.

Desert globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)

Here's a close-up of a totally different type of cactus. I think this is a teddy bear cholla (Cylindropuntia bigelovii), so called because the density of the spines makes it almost look soft.

The first day we hiked up Alamo Canyon. In addition to many beautiful organ pipe cacti, features of this hike included the ruins of a ranch, with a brick house and wooden corral, as well as a small creek with tadpoles.

This one already had its back legs!

We camped in the back-country amidst the saguaros.

Then, in the morning, we hiked up Mount Ajo. Here's a view from near our campsite looking up into the mountains.

And here's the view partway through the hike, looking northwest, back towards our campsite.

Spotted in the middle of the trail...

I don't think we quite made it to the very summit of Ajo, which would have required heading north along the ridge for another couple of miles, but we did crest the ridge itself, from which we could see the Tohono O'odham reservation stretching out in the distance. I particularly enjoyed the striping pattern, presumably formed by the channeling of water and the increased vegetation that accompanies it.