White Mountain Apache Tribal member here just chillin on the rez in Whiteriver AZ enjoying a vid on my local area, is good to see my home land on youtube, a lot of places in the images iv drove through or walked through just recently if not day before or after posting this comment, thank you for showing our great state of arizona and its natural beauty!
3:16 California botanist here. I traveled through the Madrean chaparral for the first time while collecting for my PhD, and I knew ahead of time that there was this "interior chaparral" out there, but boy howdy I wasn't really prepared for how chaparraly it actually is. I about lost it when I ran into a sugar bush, _Rhus ovata_ ... It is so weird to drive through hours and hours of desert and then run into a plant that is so emblematic of coastal California. Mind blown.
I'm from S CA and totally love the chaparral there. Been in Tucson for 40 years. Some fabulous chaparral in the Catalinas and Santa Ritas here, if you ever get the chance.
Thank you for your video. 74 year old Tucson native here and we love our Sky Islands. They make summers liveable. My great grandfather and great uncles worked the Lavender Pit in Bisbee, grandmother went to school in Bisbee in early 1920s. Have traveled world wide, and lived in many other beautiful locations around the world, but Arizona lives in your soul and we always come home.
One of the best sky islands in Southeast Arizona is Mt. Graham, literally you go from 2,000ft. to 11000 ft in 20 miles. There's a paved road that goes all the way to the top. At the top you feel like you're standing on a commercial airliner in flight. You can see all the mountains this guy describes from the top of Mt Graham.
I live near the santa catalinas which are a sky island. For those who dont know if you start at the bottom of the mountain and travel to the top,its like driving from mexico to canada with regards to climate and fauna.
Dude... I live in a cave on the Colorado River every winter just South of Erinsburg. What no one ever talks about is all the evidence of ancient flooding their. The debris piles are hundreds of feet tall, full of petrified wood, dinosaur bones and fossilized coral everywhere. Pretty Cool stuff, thanks for the video
I had the privilege of hiking across many parts of two hemispheres for my geology education...I'm now in Tucson and hike the sky islands every weekend. This is the finest hiking and birdwatching I've ever experienced
I love this, thank you for such an expansive exploration of the geography of AZ; I live here and am obsessed with the strangeness of the landscape and the weather it creates.
@@thenaturalexperience2140 I live in Prescott ,grew up here amazing place to be. I can’t wait to check out more of your videos. I am getting ready to do quartzite and tortilla flats. Kind of a little east west travel lol one place I haven’t done anything in my own backyard is granite mountain, I don’t know why, but have you got any videos on it?
sadly no, but I have hiked there! Beautiful place; the reservoir at the bottom contrasts well with the bold beige rocks that are littered all around the mountain. I highly recommend hiking to the trails end, sadly it doesn't take you all the way to the top but you see quite a bit! If you're going to quartzite; check out my King of Arizona video, it shows off a cool wilderness area nearby to there 👍🏻
Definitely check it out! Mount Lemmon, Mount Wrightson, Miller Peak, Bisbee, Chiricahua National Monument, Portal, and Cochise are all areas I recommend!
I’ve only been to mount lemmon but it was gorgeous and so interesting to see the change in biomes as you go up the mountain. Arizona is a beautiful place
Summerhaven up at the top of mount lemmon is such an enjoyable little community; but I highly recommend you check out some of the other mountains when you get the chance; they all have a little something different to offer 🙌🏻
I really enjoyed your video. Thank you for sharing your pictures and information. Am subscribing and sharing with my elderly father, he can't get out and around anymore but videos like this interest him and give a lot of visual, I think he will enjoy them.
The sky islands are the absolute gem of Arizona. The most bio diversity in all of North America. Treasure troves of ecology. Great job once again on this one, brother. You’re doing the Lord’s work. 🌵🏜️🌲🌎
I also found a huge native American agricultural site just off the Colorado River with thousands of morter and pestiles. Every overhang had ancient bee hives under them. A local farmer said his grandfather reused an old canal he found for his fields. What was interesting was after finding thousands of agricultural tools, I didn't find one arrow head. I assume they were nomadic farmers.
What an amazing find; i'd ask you to disclose the location but it's best kept a close secret! A good chunk of native cultures weren't hunters and largely relied on the land for their resources, the colorado river area along the arizona cali border had many Yumen speaking tribes who farmed along its banked since it stayed above freezing in the area essentially year round! Thanks again for sharing!
@@got2kittys interesting, I didn't know that but the hives were very old and I've never seen a bee in that area before, I wonder where they went? Seems like prime area for them
A top memory for me is my visit to the Chiricahuas. The first views of Cave Creek Canyon are as dramatic as any landscape anywhere. Then you loop around to the other side and get the National Monument hoodoos. Both things not able to be captured in pictures, but thanks for your great piece!
Lots of good information, a lot of which was new to me! Living in Tucson we spend so much time visiting that SE part of the state, the variety in landscape always amazes me. It's our happy place, we can't get enough of it!
Amazing! I'm born and raised here in Arizona and I've never explored much of southern Arizona. We really have such an immensely enormous state with so many beautiful places
I live in Tucson and I love to go to our so-called "Sky Island" (it says so on all the signs) Mt. Lemmon as often as possible. In the winter at the top (near a town called Summerhaven), they even have ski slopes equipped with ski lifts and everything! The difference as you go up really is stunning, you really feel like you're gradually being transported to a different ecosystem than the desert we're all used to living in. Evergreens, lush cabbage-like plats, lakes with fish, streams, and the most stunning views of the Sonoran desert gradually fading into this foreign landscape. And the sunsets... I don't think I will ever get used to how obscenely beautiful the sunsets are out here, especially with a view like that. The sounds at night on the mountain are so otherworldly, so clearly different than the desert life, but also so clearly still influenced by the low rainfall and generally harsher climate. It's a remarkable place that I will always hold dear in my heart.
Wow, this is shockingly similar to Madrid! The chaparral and oak grassland/woodland is what we have surrounding the city and as you go up into the mountains it’s very similar pine forest to the photos shown here. Awesome video, hope to visit Arizona someday.
I've been to a good few regions of the US, every morning I have the Sawtooths in all their majesty to look at, but there's something about my home in the desert that keeps me coming back. I climbed Mt lemmon base to peak during springtime and it is.still my favorite hike. The amount you see in about 20 Miles is actually insane.
My passion for many years was off-trail hiking in the Catalinas. I consider one of the best parts of my life. Getting a little too old now for the big hikes anymore.
Really enjoyed watching this video. Have always found this part of the US fascinating. Plan on doing some backroads exploring in the next year. Thanks for the heads-up on the Chiricahua National Mon. what a spectacular looking place. Thanks for sharing.
Your videos are very clear and understandable by lay-people like myself. I follow other geologists whose explanations, while very interesting, often fly right over my head.
...and I live up in the valley (North of Phoenix proper) but I love how the climate changes around Tucson. Since it is closer, we (wife, dogs and I) tend to gravitate toward the plateau for our climate changes and seasons. :)
Cool , i moved from Tucson to Rio Rico just the other side of the mountain from there, big house around 4000 feet love it, moved here when the virus broke out.👍💯
I never realized how beautiful the diversity of wildfire was in Tucson until I was older. Now I’ve come to appreciate the desert and AZ. Awesome video man!
My wife and I spent years discovering southern Arizona from Tucson to the border rockhounding our way to every site we could find, out in nature how can you beat that and with my boy who learned there is more to life than a screen. Maybe s segment on the Texas Canyon area another of nature at work and a place to explore and see the wonder of SAZ.
This is my 1st time exploring the Arizona Dessert Areas and I've been to Bisbee and Sierra Vista and surrounds/ Your video and narration here is excellent. I'll be back in the fall.
Wow ive been to so many different places in this state & thought i had seen it all. But you covered several in one video that ive never been to. Awesome job. I try to tell ppl about the sky islands whenever i hear someone talking disparagingly about a
Nice video. Well done! I live just a few miles from Saguaro NF East. I drive the loop often and hike as health permits. I also enjoy the Parker Canyon Lake area as well.
Being in the areas shown in this video, you get a sense that it is not about "you" and the human condition of self just goes away. Been around all of these locations, when my health was better I was able to enjoy them first hand.
This would have been a perfect video to show my father, he was sure that all of Arizona was low desert scrub and that there was no biodiversity here. When I was little, he taught me all the scientific names for all the trees in NW MT, where I was born & raised. He would have been surprised to hear that we have Doug Fir. I tried to tell him about the Sky Islands, but he never saw them before he passed. He'd spent 26 years working for the USFS, and wrote a lot of contracts for thinning and clearcutting sections of forest before environmental groups started suing every proposed contract. 😢 He knew and loved the forests more than he liked most people.
thanks so much for sharing, I relate a lot to this, so many folks think AZ is just scrubs and cactus and I am hoping videos like this will change peoples opinions on that
Crown King is a sky island. Obviously not part of the group discussed here but a sky island none the less. At the base is pretty dry desert and its almost shocking the first time you reach the top.
I've been up to Crown King! The little diner next to the general store up there has surprisingly good wings! Another great sky island in Arizona is Hualapai near Kingman; definitely worth the trip if you get the chance (:
11:06 Another good example of this is Navajo Mountain, in Navajo Nation. Not easy to get to, but the thing is just one giant hunk of mountain all by itself. Really makes it clear the effect that the topography has on the vegetation/ecology.
Hearing about the tribes that occupied these places and eventually removed from them is sad when you realize that nobody else really lives there today. Why tf did anyone ever need to bother them???
western expansion is a hard topic to cover; a lot of it doesn't make sense, in some cases they took the land just because they could... very sad indeed
There are places in the high desert where there is sand as fine as anywhere in the world. Sea shells all the way up near flagstaff. You can see the stages and watermarks way up in the mountains.
Thanks for the video. Is there a variety of oak called Madrean? at 3:15 you mention all the other oaks and Madrean Oak. Can't find that variety on a search, please help with this identification. Thanks !
I was using it as a general term to refer to the huge number of evergreen oak in the woodlands; some of these mountains contain around 1/4 of the entire worlds species of Oak trees!
Yeah... sadly that is just one of several tragic events that happened to native peoples in the region. History is always fun to learn about but some parts of it are just straight up sad ):
So important to witness and remember. I did not previously know about this one, but it reminded me of the Grattan massacre: stolen cow, peacefully camped Native Am's wave white flag, oh well.... Sand Creek was also predominantly women and children. We need to be aware that non-combatants are fair game if your brain is full of racist hate, or religious hate.
how do you only have 500 subs?! and 43k in views? i was just driving through a canyon from the 83 to green valley looking for gold mines lol, i loved this video!
it does widely vary, sometimes you will see entire juniper forests below 4,000; the scale I used was a general ecology scale for the region. Thanks for sharing
That massacre is godawful to hear about. Sounds almost as barbaric as the Sand Creek episode. The sky islands are indeed amazing--like so much of the Colorado Plateau and adjacent regions. America is so endowed--if we conserve it.
the actions against Native peoples in America's past and even in some regard today; is extremely frustrating and sad, i'm hoping to shed some light on that. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Fantastic channel and narration. Look up JonLevi he does videos about old world architecture and in depth analysis of it. You sound so calming like him it's great man keep it up.
Very helpful video… Do you know what regions in Arizona would be considered part of the mixed conifer area you mentioned? For example, are there any cities nearby any mixed conifer areas? I ask because I am looking for land and I thought it very interesting you described the mixed conifer areas as having the most rain water. Thank you
Yes! So the only city I know of that is super close to the mixed conifer zone in Arizona is Flagstaff! It's 7,000ft above sea level and gets nearly 100 inches of snow annually. If you're looking for a place in Southern AZ; try Summerhaven it's a small community located in the sky island mountains outside of Tucson. 👍🏻
Tucson less than an hour away from mixed conifer in the Catalina Mtns. Mt Wrightson to the south is close to Sonoita & Green Valley; north of Phoenix is Prescott. and its mountains. In fact, all over AZ there are dynamic cities and towns near forest, every area of the state, with skiing in at least three mountain ranges. Many of the images in this video are near Tucson.
Mount Lemmon above Tucson was my first introduction to this topic. The ecology from bottom to top in elevation was pretty cool. My brother lives there, I do not 😉.
I love the white mountains; pinetop is such a nice little down, and all the little reservoirs in the region (like big lake) are such peaceful places to be
I've gotten about 400 in the past 11 days! it's been wild and i'm absolutely grateful. I checked out your channel; some absolutely wicked hikes! I'm jealous of your summit of Baboquivari!
'Native Hope' is the source I used; if you watch the video I reference the apache right before I mention geronimo and state that he was "one of their warrior leaders"
my friend; the graph I showed was a simple generalized breakdown of ecology of the Sky Islands; im sure it differs; and I personally have seen the elevation numbers vary. But stats are stats, and from experience I can say the diagram is pretty close to truth 🙏🏻
White Mountain Apache Tribal member here just chillin on the rez in Whiteriver AZ enjoying a vid on my local area, is good to see my home land on youtube, a lot of places in the images iv drove through or walked through just recently if not day before or after posting this comment, thank you for showing our great state of arizona and its natural beauty!
3:16 California botanist here. I traveled through the Madrean chaparral for the first time while collecting for my PhD, and I knew ahead of time that there was this "interior chaparral" out there, but boy howdy I wasn't really prepared for how chaparraly it actually is. I about lost it when I ran into a sugar bush, _Rhus ovata_ ... It is so weird to drive through hours and hours of desert and then run into a plant that is so emblematic of coastal California. Mind blown.
Topography and geography can do crazy things! Thanks for sharing
I'm from S CA and totally love the chaparral there. Been in Tucson for 40 years. Some fabulous chaparral in the Catalinas and Santa Ritas here, if you ever get the chance.
Thank you for your video. 74 year old Tucson native here and we love our Sky Islands. They make summers liveable. My great grandfather and great uncles worked the Lavender Pit in Bisbee, grandmother went to school in Bisbee in early 1920s. Have traveled world wide, and lived in many other beautiful locations around the world, but Arizona lives in your soul and we always come home.
that's extraordinary! I spent some time in Bisbee, love the area. Mount Lemmon is truly a life saver on those scorching days!
I'm a 40 native to Gilbert. I have lived other places too such as Snoqualmie Pass in Washington. I always make it back here.
One of the best sky islands in Southeast Arizona is Mt. Graham, literally you go from 2,000ft. to 11000 ft in 20 miles. There's a paved road that goes all the way to the top. At the top you feel like you're standing on a commercial airliner in flight. You can see all the mountains this guy describes from the top of Mt Graham.
i've been to the top of Mount Graham after visiting the hot springs in Safford; lovely mountain! Even has its own endemic species of squirrel!
it's even possible to see Mount Baldy from Mt Graham on a good day.
I live near the santa catalinas which are a sky island. For those who dont know if you start at the bottom of the mountain and travel to the top,its like driving from mexico to canada with regards to climate and fauna.
Yeah I love that drive up to Summerhaven; a shame about the bighorn fire shutting down alot of the hikes ):
Great comparison!
Mexico is highly mountainous and has desert, jungle, snow/forest.....fyi
It's a wonderful drive up to Summerhaven.
@@carenfarmer4794was one of the best things about living in Tucson
These "islands" were the favorite dwelling place of the Apache. They moved from island to island raiding the basins and the people who lived there.
The topography provides a great opportunity for stealth and retreat; I can see why that might've been there tactic!
@@thenaturalexperience2140😅
That can’t be true Native Peoples were a peaceful nation of basket weavers!
@@todaav lmfao yeah definitely
Raiding? 🤣 Try again… wrong people
Dude... I live in a cave on the Colorado River every winter just South of Erinsburg. What no one ever talks about is all the evidence of ancient flooding their. The debris piles are hundreds of feet tall, full of petrified wood, dinosaur bones and fossilized coral everywhere.
Pretty Cool stuff, thanks for the video
He said DINOSAURS 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Imagine dinosaurs being real. Plus only famous archaeologists and museums find bones😅😅 and not in America..@@his_tory_debunk5338
You should post a video of that, I know I’d love to see it!
@@alecro2112 Yes, post a video. I'd love to see how your cave internet service provider patched the twisted pair or coax cable through your wall.
Do you mean Ehrenberg? Where is Erinsburg?
I had the privilege of hiking across many parts of two hemispheres for my geology education...I'm now in Tucson and hike the sky islands every weekend. This is the finest hiking and birdwatching I've ever experienced
the amount of landscapes and ecosystems backed into these mountains is enchanting
@@thenaturalexperience2140the most condensed hike for micro biomes is Ventura canyon.
Lived on many Arizona islands camping, since 1970's The many Natve Res, Thankyou for the Memories
interesting! thanks for sharing!
I love this, thank you for such an expansive exploration of the geography of AZ; I live here and am obsessed with the strangeness of the landscape and the weather it creates.
I’m from Arizona and I’m learning something just from this video so I subscribed thank you
I used to live there! Miss it everyday! Thanks for the sub!
@@thenaturalexperience2140 I live in Prescott ,grew up here amazing place to be. I can’t wait to check out more of your videos. I am getting ready to do quartzite and tortilla flats. Kind of a little east west travel lol one place I haven’t done anything in my own backyard is granite mountain, I don’t know why, but have you got any videos on it?
sadly no, but I have hiked there! Beautiful place; the reservoir at the bottom contrasts well with the bold beige rocks that are littered all around the mountain. I highly recommend hiking to the trails end, sadly it doesn't take you all the way to the top but you see quite a bit! If you're going to quartzite; check out my King of Arizona video, it shows off a cool wilderness area nearby to there 👍🏻
@@thenaturalexperience2140 yes granite basin is one of my fav spots around here! I will for sure thank you and take care God bless 🐝💛
The sky Islands area is on my list of places to visit. This was an excellent introduction. Thank you.
Definitely check it out! Mount Lemmon, Mount Wrightson, Miller Peak, Bisbee, Chiricahua National Monument, Portal, and Cochise are all areas I recommend!
One of the best travelogues I've seen so far. Well done Zonie.
thank you so much for this comment! I'm gonna keep making content similar to this so stay tuned!
Such an awe-inspiring mountain range to explore. Great photography and video. Thanks for bringing us along.
thanks for your comment! i'll try to keep it up!
I’ve only been to mount lemmon but it was gorgeous and so interesting to see the change in biomes as you go up the mountain. Arizona is a beautiful place
Summerhaven up at the top of mount lemmon is such an enjoyable little community; but I highly recommend you check out some of the other mountains when you get the chance; they all have a little something different to offer 🙌🏻
I really enjoyed your video. Thank you for sharing your pictures and information. Am subscribing and sharing with my elderly father, he can't get out and around anymore but videos like this interest him and give a lot of visual, I think he will enjoy them.
Thanks for this synopsis of the sky islands -- a wonderful region, which we've been enjoying for about 40 years.
The sky islands are the absolute gem of Arizona. The most bio diversity in all of North America. Treasure troves of ecology. Great job once again on this one, brother. You’re doing the Lord’s work. 🌵🏜️🌲🌎
I also found a huge native American agricultural site just off the Colorado River with thousands of morter and pestiles. Every overhang had ancient bee hives under them. A local farmer said his grandfather reused an old canal he found for his fields.
What was interesting was after finding thousands of agricultural tools, I didn't find one arrow head. I assume they were nomadic farmers.
What an amazing find; i'd ask you to disclose the location but it's best kept a close secret! A good chunk of native cultures weren't hunters and largely relied on the land for their resources, the colorado river area along the arizona cali border had many Yumen speaking tribes who farmed along its banked since it stayed above freezing in the area essentially year round! Thanks again for sharing!
Honeybees are from Europe. Non native. In the West those will seldom be more than 200 years old. The Spanish might have brought them.
@@got2kittys interesting, I didn't know that but the hives were very old and I've never seen a bee in that area before, I wonder where they went?
Seems like prime area for them
@got2kittys honey bees introduced to south America 16th century and north america 17th century
I love Arizona and I’m glad I live here.❤❤❤
I miss it every single day!
A top memory for me is my visit to the Chiricahuas. The first views of Cave Creek Canyon are as dramatic as any landscape anywhere. Then you loop around to the other side and get the National Monument hoodoos. Both things not able to be captured in pictures, but thanks for your great piece!
Portal is such a cool area! I'm so sad that I only drove through it; i'm actually planning on getting out there to hike at the end of April!
Lots of good information, a lot of which was new to me! Living in Tucson we spend so much time visiting that SE part of the state, the variety in landscape always amazes me. It's our happy place, we can't get enough of it!
it's a beautiful place to live! I'm jealous
Amazing! I'm born and raised here in Arizona and I've never explored much of southern Arizona. We really have such an immensely enormous state with so many beautiful places
We really do!
I myself have always go to payson area for mountain hiking but I am INSPIRED to check out these southeast Sky Islands
I love driving up the arizona mountains. It's definitely my favorite part of arizona
it's always a magical journey
I live in Tucson and I love to go to our so-called "Sky Island" (it says so on all the signs) Mt. Lemmon as often as possible. In the winter at the top (near a town called Summerhaven), they even have ski slopes equipped with ski lifts and everything! The difference as you go up really is stunning, you really feel like you're gradually being transported to a different ecosystem than the desert we're all used to living in. Evergreens, lush cabbage-like plats, lakes with fish, streams, and the most stunning views of the Sonoran desert gradually fading into this foreign landscape. And the sunsets... I don't think I will ever get used to how obscenely beautiful the sunsets are out here, especially with a view like that. The sounds at night on the mountain are so otherworldly, so clearly different than the desert life, but also so clearly still influenced by the low rainfall and generally harsher climate. It's a remarkable place that I will always hold dear in my heart.
Retired from USGS, your video is nice, very informative
Wow, this is shockingly similar to Madrid! The chaparral and oak grassland/woodland is what we have surrounding the city and as you go up into the mountains it’s very similar pine forest to the photos shown here. Awesome video, hope to visit Arizona someday.
I lived in Spain for 3 months one summer, I totally get where you're coming from, it is quite similar
I've been to a good few regions of the US, every morning I have the Sawtooths in all their majesty to look at, but there's something about my home in the desert that keeps me coming back. I climbed Mt lemmon base to peak during springtime and it is.still my favorite hike. The amount you see in about 20 Miles is actually insane.
that desert always beckons me back as well; such a magnificent biodiverse place
My passion for many years was off-trail hiking in the Catalinas. I consider one of the best parts of my life. Getting a little too old now for the big hikes anymore.
We have a lot of these in mexico too, basically all the Sierra madres are green temperate oasis surrounded by barren deserts.
Y'all got some spectacular hiking down in Mexico; I can't wait to explore some of it someday!
This is your vital moment bro. Ride the wave 🌊 🏄🏻
Im amazed at the desert. I need to get out hiking again.
yeah the desert is beautiful, I think i'll always live in one
Good advice to yourself. Nothing better than being in nature.
Thanks for Sharing this wonderful video. God bless. ❤❤
thank you so much for watching!
Thanks for taking me along for the adventure. "Maine" says "hello".
I love Maine! beautiful fall colors
I fell right in love with those Fall colors as soon as I crossed the Maine border in 1994.@@thenaturalexperience2140
Really enjoyed watching this video. Have always found this part of the US fascinating. Plan on doing some backroads exploring in the next year. Thanks for the heads-up on the Chiricahua National Mon. what a spectacular looking place. Thanks for sharing.
Your videos are very clear and understandable by lay-people like myself. I follow other geologists whose explanations, while very interesting, often fly right over my head.
...and I live up in the valley (North of Phoenix proper) but I love how the climate changes around Tucson. Since it is closer, we (wife, dogs and I) tend to gravitate toward the plateau for our climate changes and seasons. :)
Very interesting. I especially appreciate your presentation of the geologic forces which created these sky islands. 👍
geology is my specialty! thanks for watching
Patagonia is a beautiful area. We drive it often
during monsoon season I think it's the best place to be! so many flowers
Cool , i moved from Tucson to Rio Rico just the other side of the mountain from there, big house around 4000 feet love it, moved here when the virus broke out.👍💯
Interesting video, thank you.
This is fascinating . Great work and explanation!
Awesome, very well put together. I look forward to taking a trip out in that part of Arizona.
you definitely should! Thanks for the comment
Well done video. Appreciate the effort you put into researching and creating this video.
I appreciate you for saying that!
Wow you’re videos are amazing, keep going brotha
Very interesting content
It’s full of information
Thank you for sharing
New subscriber here
I never realized how beautiful the diversity of wildfire was in Tucson until I was older. Now I’ve come to appreciate the desert and AZ. Awesome video man!
thanks! Tucson is a great city with some fantastic hiking
Amazing video. Just stumbled upon your channel and I am hooked
Reminds me of growing up by Ramsey Canyon Preserve-Nature Conservancy, it’s a joy! You captured that joy on this video
Thanks so much for saying that; I got a lot of good memories near and around Sierra Vista myself, it's a wonderful place
makes me homesick
used to live in Flagstaff for several years; I think about Arizona everyday! I totally get where you are coming from
My wife and I spent years discovering southern Arizona from Tucson to the border rockhounding our way to every site we could find, out in nature how can you beat that and with my boy who learned there is more to life than a screen. Maybe s segment on the Texas Canyon area another of nature at work and a place to explore and see the wonder of SAZ.
Thanks for taking us along.
thanks for watching
This is my 1st time exploring the Arizona Dessert Areas and I've been to Bisbee and Sierra Vista and surrounds/ Your video and narration here is excellent. I'll be back in the fall.
Fall is a great time to be there; lots of good color change
Great job and presentation. It made me feel a little guilty for not getting out to see more of the state I live in. 😮
it's never too late (:
Lovely. Thank you.
Wow ive been to so many different places in this state & thought i had seen it all. But you covered several in one video that ive never been to. Awesome job. I try to tell ppl about the sky islands whenever i hear someone talking disparagingly about a
the sky islands are magnificent, and single handily make south arizona very livable
Nice video. Well done! I live just a few miles from Saguaro NF East. I drive the loop often and hike as health permits. I also enjoy the Parker Canyon Lake area as well.
It's a beautiful area to be at! I miss AZ everyday
My favorite animals of the madrean sky islands are coues deer. I love the adaptability and changes that whitetail have made to live in these areas.
they are adorable! but I must say coatimundis have my heart
Being in the areas shown in this video, you get a sense that it is not about "you" and the human condition of self just goes away. Been around all of these locations, when my health was better
I was able to enjoy them first hand.
That what natures all about, it heals the soul and brings you outside of yourself. Thank you for sharing!
This would have been a perfect video to show my father, he was sure that all of Arizona was low desert scrub and that there was no biodiversity here. When I was little, he taught me all the scientific names for all the trees in NW MT, where I was born & raised. He would have been surprised to hear that we have Doug Fir. I tried to tell him about the Sky Islands, but he never saw them before he passed.
He'd spent 26 years working for the USFS, and wrote a lot of contracts for thinning and clearcutting sections of forest before environmental groups started suing every proposed contract. 😢 He knew and loved the forests more than he liked most people.
thanks so much for sharing, I relate a lot to this, so many folks think AZ is just scrubs and cactus and I am hoping videos like this will change peoples opinions on that
I have no idea how you popped up in my recommended but hey! I live in Sierra Vista and most of these mountains are my back yard! Neat. Subbed.
That's amazing; i'm jealous! Love the whole Bisbee, Tombstone, Sierra Vista area; super neat
Amazing video! I’m from Tucson and most of them are my favorite places to visit 💛
that's amazing, I am jealous!!
Thank you for the great information.
I appreciate the comment (:
The view of Mount Graham, the highest prominence mountain in Arizona, from Saint Paisius monastery near Safford is incredible. Visit sometime.
mount Graham is such a stunning place; going up the road through all the life zones is incredible!
Great video brother 👍👍
The Chiricahua Mountains are my favorite spot in Arizona.
if you need hiking ideas I got a lot on my channel! seems you hike too! I gotta bag Miller/Carr Peaks at some point
Crown King is a sky island. Obviously not part of the group discussed here but a sky island none the less. At the base is pretty dry desert and its almost shocking the first time you reach the top.
I've been up to Crown King! The little diner next to the general store up there has surprisingly good wings! Another great sky island in Arizona is Hualapai near Kingman; definitely worth the trip if you get the chance (:
Great video ! very informative well done, Thank you!
thanks a ton, more coming soon!
Islands of Arizona...that's cool title for a video, but that's exactly what islands are...mountains in the ocean.
11:06 Another good example of this is Navajo Mountain, in Navajo Nation. Not easy to get to, but the thing is just one giant hunk of mountain all by itself. Really makes it clear the effect that the topography has on the vegetation/ecology.
I used to live in Flagstaff! I know the area well, the rainbow bridge at its base is an epic hike!
Hearing about the tribes that occupied these places and eventually removed from them is sad when you realize that nobody else really lives there today. Why tf did anyone ever need to bother them???
western expansion is a hard topic to cover; a lot of it doesn't make sense, in some cases they took the land just because they could... very sad indeed
Headed to AZ in a week, great information!
You gotta do some hiking!!! Check out my video on South AZ hikes; or if you'd like some additional info just lmk (:
Nice video presentation. Good job.
thank you very much
There are places in the high desert where there is sand as fine as anywhere in the world. Sea shells all the way up near flagstaff. You can see the stages and watermarks way up in the mountains.
Loved the video.
Thanks for the video. Is there a variety of oak called Madrean? at 3:15 you mention all the other oaks and Madrean Oak. Can't find that variety on a search, please help with this identification. Thanks !
I was using it as a general term to refer to the huge number of evergreen oak in the woodlands; some of these mountains contain around 1/4 of the entire worlds species of Oak trees!
@@thenaturalexperience2140 ok thanks!! and I loved the presentation video!
The massacre you spoke of was one my uncle told me at a young age, he believed they were killed and thrown into a sink hole in the area you described.
Yeah... sadly that is just one of several tragic events that happened to native peoples in the region. History is always fun to learn about but some parts of it are just straight up sad ):
So important to witness and remember. I did not previously know about this one, but it reminded me of the Grattan massacre: stolen cow, peacefully camped Native Am's wave white flag, oh well.... Sand Creek was also predominantly women and children. We need to be aware that non-combatants are fair game if your brain is full of racist hate, or religious hate.
how do you only have 500 subs?! and 43k in views? i was just driving through a canyon from the 83 to green valley looking for gold mines lol, i loved this video!
I recently started getting my little bit of notoriety! that's a beautiful drive! Best of luck to you on your searches.
where I live (near Tucson), grasslands are 4 to 5k above sea level, and oak juniper woodlands are at 5 to 7k
it does widely vary, sometimes you will see entire juniper forests below 4,000; the scale I used was a general ecology scale for the region. Thanks for sharing
awesome video.
That massacre is godawful to hear about. Sounds almost as barbaric as the Sand Creek episode.
The sky islands are indeed amazing--like so much of the Colorado Plateau and adjacent regions. America is so endowed--if we conserve it.
the actions against Native peoples in America's past and even in some regard today; is extremely frustrating and sad, i'm hoping to shed some light on that. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Fantastic channel and narration. Look up JonLevi he does videos about old world architecture and in depth analysis of it. You sound so calming like him it's great man keep it up.
thank you so much! it means a lot to hear that; i'll check that Jon fella out
Very helpful video…
Do you know what regions in Arizona would be considered part of the mixed conifer area you mentioned? For example, are there any cities nearby any mixed conifer areas? I ask because I am looking for land and I thought it very interesting you described the mixed conifer areas as having the most rain water.
Thank you
Yes! So the only city I know of that is super close to the mixed conifer zone in Arizona is Flagstaff! It's 7,000ft above sea level and gets nearly 100 inches of snow annually. If you're looking for a place in Southern AZ; try Summerhaven it's a small community located in the sky island mountains outside of Tucson. 👍🏻
Tucson less than an hour away from mixed conifer in the Catalina Mtns. Mt Wrightson to the south is close to Sonoita & Green Valley; north of Phoenix is Prescott. and its mountains. In fact, all over AZ there are dynamic cities and towns near forest, every area of the state, with skiing in at least three mountain ranges. Many of the images in this video are near Tucson.
thank you
@@thenaturalexperience2140
thank you@@emmahardesty4330
The foot hills of Sierra vista get pretty close too
Mount Lemmon above Tucson was my first introduction to this topic. The ecology from bottom to top in elevation was pretty cool. My brother lives there, I do not 😉.
Tucson is gorgeous, the desert in AZ in general has so many captivating facets!
Cool 👍
We need to plant more trees on the sky islands around the valley. I believe it would create a microclimate that could give us a break in the summer!
More trees has been proven to reduce immediate ground temperatures by as much as 10 degrees! I agree
Best "unknown" awesome spot in SE Arizona? Long Park in the Chiricahuas. Higher than Rustler or Barfoot, yet largely unknown.
I've seen coatimundi on a ranch in texas. I've only seem two there.
wow! what a cool spotting; i've never seen one );
@thenaturalexperience2140 my dad and I weren't even trying. We were just out on the ranch. There may have been only one. I never saw them together.
I'm in the White Mountains, Ponderosa Pine is dominant, even after the massive fires 🔥
I love the white mountains; pinetop is such a nice little down, and all the little reservoirs in the region (like big lake) are such peaceful places to be
damn dude how did you get so many views with so little subs!
I've gotten about 400 in the past 11 days! it's been wild and i'm absolutely grateful. I checked out your channel; some absolutely wicked hikes! I'm jealous of your summit of Baboquivari!
@@thenaturalexperience2140 you can do it too! It was fun. I'm trying to start bagging more obscure peaks within a couple hours of Phoenix
I sometimes can’t believe millions of people live here in a place that reaches 122 degrees.
It’s those islands that people had to live in before AC.
New sub yay! ❤
thank you very much
Is that north az
Beautiful video...but geronimo is a apache native.
'Native Hope' is the source I used; if you watch the video I reference the apache right before I mention geronimo and state that he was "one of their warrior leaders"
6:24
Excuse me but I live there for 7 years!! The Sonoran desert runs up to 5,000 ft which is where you start seeing trees, deciduous and Pine!! 😂🤣😂🤣🤣
my friend; the graph I showed was a simple generalized breakdown of ecology of the Sky Islands; im sure it differs; and I personally have seen the elevation numbers vary. But stats are stats, and from experience I can say the diagram is pretty close to truth 🙏🏻
@@thenaturalexperience2140 LOL !! I would love to check out that area!! Arizona rocks!!!🌵🌳🌲 😎👍
sky islands!!!
Love the way you click bait
Interesting; sub
Thanks for the sub!
😊
All mountain were islands during the flood. Good point.
amen to that!
Papago & T.O. are the same tribe.
Watch out for sasquatch, skinwalkers, and ufos
Love the graphics.
well I never mind a little company on the trail 😂! Thanks for watching!
And the Buggy Man.