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The Hawk & The Hare: Spotting Desert Trails-A Lesson in Scoutcraft by Mark Hatmaker

 


In our most recent research trip to the southwest desert and canyonland country, one of the primary intents was to put to test Old School tips and tactics to wayfind to both hard to find water sources and Sinagua Indian ruins.

[We posted a short video to social media on one aspect of this trail finding material.]

Approximate Destinations

Using old desert explorer/scout/settler/cavalry accounts I ballparked vague approximations of former cliff dwellings, cave ledge villages, pocket canyon fortifications et cetera.

I then used a comparison topo map from the time compared to current topo maps.

[I use CalTopo as opposed to All Trails, Google Earth and other like commercial hiking tools. CalTopo is a backwoods tool used by Smoke Jumpers, Hot Shots, Search & Rescue and other like Hosses of the outdoors. It’s more about unmarked backcountry than the other tools.]

Why this choice?

The chosen ruins/villages to locate are not tourist destinations. They lack designated trails. In other words, these destinations are out there but one can’t simply…

·        “Take Sutter’s Trrail and there ya are.”

Or…

·        Drop a pin on your GPS and hike in with high confidence.

There are many realms of this world that require an app spelled Y-O-U.

Rather one must…

·        Locates the reference in the old source.

·        Cross-reference to see if it is mentioned by other sources to see if additional clues pop up to help hone in. Saddlebacks, conspicuous ridgelines, etc.

·        Study Cavalry maps of the time to look for some of the referred landmarks.

·        Compare that to CalTopo to see if a similar landmark or contour assist pops up as a possible correlation. [I find tracing configurations and counting contours in my head ala the Yavapai Apache Method remarkably useful—sends you into the world app-free. A remarkable feeling when you succeed sans tech.]

·        Then, grab the pack…

·        Lock in your Warrior Walking stride [backcountry variant] and go!

·        [For info on Warrior Walking. I kid you not, this is THE way to travel in this environment.]

The Hawk & The Hare

So, how do you find “trails” to possible human habitation where there are no trails?

We could easily go into exceptionally fine detail here, and we will in the upcoming volume Rough ‘n’ Ready: Old School Scoutcraft for New School Adventurers but here, let’s allow an excerpt from a 1908 book of essays by Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Little Rain, to point the way.

By the end of the dry season the water trails of the Ceriso are worn to a white ribbon in the leaning grass, spread out faint and fanwise toward the homes of gopher and ground rat and squirrel. But however faint to mansight, they are sufficiently plain to the furred and feathered folk who travel them. Getting down to the eye level of rat and squirrel kind, one perceives what might easily be wide and winding roads to us if they occurred in thick plantations of trees three times the height of a man. It needs but a slender thread of barrenness to make a mouse trail in the forest of the sod. To the little people the water trails are as country roads, with scents as signboards.

It seems that manheight is the least fortunate of all heights from which to study trails. It is better to go up the front of some tall hill, say the spur of Black Mountain, looking back and down across the hollow of the Ceriso. Strange how long the soil keeps the impression of any continuous treading, even after grass has overgrown it. Twenty years since, a brief heyday of mining at Black Mountain made a stage road across the Ceriso, yet the parallel lines that are the wheel traces show from the height dark and well defined. Afoot in the Ceriso one looks in vain for any sign of it. So all the paths that wild creatures use going down to the Lone Tree Spring are mapped out whitely from this level, which is also the level of the hawks.

I have yet to find the land not scarred by the thin, far roadways of rabbits and what not of furry folks that run in them. Venture to look for some seldom touched waterhole, and so long as the trails run with your general direction make sure you are right, but if they begin to cross yours at never so slight an angle, to converge toward a point left or right of your objective, no matter what the maps say, or your memory, trust them; they know.



In Application

·        Get down on your belly often.

·        Look for the game trails wending through the manzanita and other vegetation.

·        Use these to start navigating to potential water sources.

·        If the hare needs water in a hard country, so did prior human inhabitants.

·        No sense in building too far from springs, pools, washes, and snow melt traceries in elevation.

When one can’t find the small game trail…

·        Trudge through the brush.

·        Get high.

·        Backview. Often the Hawk’s view opens up traceries you never saw.

·        I’ve backviewed from an ascent of 100 meters or so after thinking, “Well, today is a bust” only to Hawk’s eye practically bold traces in landscape that I never saw from “ground level.”

·        In one case, upon looking back, I had been standing a mere yard away from the old trace and yet had never spotted.

·        Once I descended, I stood in the old location and still could not see it, but thanks to the Hawk’s view I knew where to step, where to go.

The Result

·        In 6-Days of Canyon Exploration Located All 8 Initial Targets. That is, the 8 I planned in Knoxville before flying out.

·        Damned satisfying. Elation don’t begin to describe it.

·        Found 5 more using the “drying pools,” and snow-marks method mentioned in the social media video.

·        All finds were greatly assisted by The Hawk & The Hare Method of changing perspective to find game trails [in this case mule deer, desert hares, and bobcat traces were my totem guides. Bobcat tracks are exceptionally helpful on high cliff ledges. They know snow-marks in weird areas. Find their prints, trail it to a snow run-off, then look up or down for a clue to a possible ruin location. Doesn’t work every time but, often enough to make you feel like a Hoss Explorer.

·        Back-viewing at elevation, The Hawk, allowed me to find additional “ups” to make cliff ascents were none were apparent from a downhill or at level perspective.

The Moral [for Me, at least.]

·        It is more satisfying to explore, discover, test, suffer many a “Hmm? What am I missing here?” than walk up on any curated “destination” no matter how lauded.

·        The discovery, the burgeoning of skill, the awe of…well, as Duke Ellington replied when asked “What is jazz?”

·        His response: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

I wager if you read this far, you’re one of the people who already know why we do such things and why we all want to do even more and know ever more.

To read of the fruits of one of these discoveries see The Tomahawk Cave.

[For hundreds of scoutcraft, rivercraft, woodcraft tips and tactics see our upcoming book Rough ‘n’ Ready: Old School Scoutcraft for New School Adventurers. And trust me Crew, its as authentic as I can make it, and I don’t put it in the book if I haven’t tested it.]

The Black Box Training Warehouse for 100s of Resources.

The Rough n Tumble Raconteur Podcast for like material.



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