Hiking to the Mouth of the Gila Box
We watched the Gila River flow at The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) Lichty Ecological Research Center, four miles south of where it emerges from the Mogollon Range (in the background), and the rugged Gila Wilderness. The TNC's Gila Riparian Preserve here protects more than 1,200 acres of fragile Southwest riparian habitat and verdant gallery woodland along the Gila River, the last of the Southwest's major free-flowing rivers. The Gila is a rare example of a river with a natural pattern of flows that are unimpeded by dams. They range from winter floods to snowmelt run-off and low flows in spring. A variety of native plants and animals have adapted to these seasonal pulses of flooding and drought, including a number of endangered species. Two-and-a-half miles upstream from the Lichty Center, we set out to hike to the mouth of the box canyon where the Gila River exits the mountainous Gila Wilderness: the world's first designated wilderness area and New Mexico's largest....