Falcon Guide: Hiking Arizona's Superstition & Mazatzal Country

[stevebo]

I have a copy of the Falcon Guide: [ Hiking Arizona's Superstition & Mazatzal Country ] published in the year 2000.

Even though the land hasn't disappeared, about how accurate / useful would you say this book is? Certainly there have been trail re-routes and wildfires, but I wonder if it has crossed over from being useful for planning into being mostly misleading.

The 2014 version is surely more up-to-date but even that it 9 years old. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Seve

[nonot]

The trails haven't moved, so the maps would still be accurate. Some trails suffer from overgrowth/burning and may be in poor-to-almost-non-existent condition. Others are probably identical to the original descriptions, though with less trees than depicted. The distances, elevation gain/loss, and water sources haven't really changed for any of these trails within the last 20 years that I can think of. You mention trail re-routes, but I cannot think of a single one that might be more than a few dozen yards around fallen trees or an unstable landslide. Just go in expecting poor trail conditions, plan for slow travel, and you should be alright if you are taking GPS and have good navigational skills. Most of the really poor condition trails are out of the range of a weekend trip. If you are planning an ambitious 3+ day route, check for recent trail logs to see what the most recent HAZ traveler had to say about a particular trail and whether it should be avoided.

Edit: After writing this I remembered that people have said Frog Tanks trail may have been re-routed post-fire. I haven't done this yet since the fire so I can't say for certain.

[xsproutx]

Frog Tanks trail may have been re-routed

I was never on it pre-fire but there's basically no trail in much of it now so you could say it's be re-routed to the creek bed

[big_load]

A few Eastern Supes trails were abandoned between 2000 and the fire and probably haven't improved much. Some trails in the Mazatzals were heavily impacted by the [ 2004 Willow Fire ] . Navigation was tricky there the following year, but I haven't roamed extensively there since then, so I can't say whether the trails are basically the same.