Moments in Dirt and Ink

Beauty Mountain Wilderness Area For the second day of peak bagging with the Hundred Peaks Section hikers, I head a little bit south and down a maze of paved and dirt roads to a spot a certain distance from the last corner that provides sufficient parking. Both sides of the road are a wilderness area preserved by the county. The only thing that is distinctive here is the gate and road traveling to the north, but we are not going that way. There is a second road to the north a little way up the road, but that is not our route either. Instead, we backtrack from our parking area a couple hundred feet and turn down a third road road heading southeast that is hard to even notice after many years of abandonment. I can sort of imagine where the road was, once, but the occasional fading pink ribbons in the bushes are much easier to follow. It does not last long anyway as we turn off in our own direction. Plunging into the chaparral along use trail. We head down into a canyo...