BLM opens North Maricopa Mtns. new campsites.
Posted: Nov 10 2022 11:02 am
Deb and I headed to her favorite hiking area the N. Maricopas. We pulled off at the Estrella TH and Staging area and noticed the wire gate was gone and the two rut road was now a two lane wide graded road. A temp. sign said campsites and it looks like they started in Aug. We noticed starting two years ago that the area was beginning to open. New BLM road markers were showing up. Yesterday we hiked up into a canyon S. of Butterfield Pass. It was an awesome misty day with light sprinkles. When we got back to the FJ we decided to drive farther and see what the BLM did. There is another canyon we liked to hike that had an old two rut road, now it's graded single lane wide. It dead ends at what was once a popular camping spot but now gentrified. Spread out from each other are four camping areas with concrete picnic tables and steel fire rings. We've had mixed feelings about it slowly opening up because it has recovered nicely from over use. But our hiking distance has dropped in half the last two years so now we can get farther back into Deb's mountains. A GE photo from May of this year still shows it as a two rutter, but there is a truck parked where the new sites are. I've searched to no avail for info, maybe it's too new, but I'm sure Chumley will find a PDF on it...
Any desert development which is not a new landfill, is, at least, not as bad as a landfill.