Route Editor
Route Scout
| Seven Cataracts, AZ |
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| HAZ Member Vaporman's 229 Photosets 2010-07-05 2010-07-03 2010-06-27 2010-06-13 2010-06-12 2010-06-06 2010-05-30 2010-05-17 2010-05-15 2010-05-09 2010-05-02 2010-05-02 2010-05-01 2010-04-24 2010-04-17 2010-04-11 2010-04-03 2010-03-28 2010-03-28 2010-03-27
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For the lower shuttle vehicle drop we could have parked at the Seven Cataracts viewpoint, but I opted for the longer yet easier exit hike and parked my car up the highway a bit where it passes over Bear Canyon. For the second vehicle, we continued up another 4 miles a little past Windy Point and dropped into an upper fork of Willow Canyon. The hike down to the forested canyon wasn't too bad and downstream from there was fairly easy rock hopping with an occasional down tree to bypass. Eventually a couple forks join the canyon, the water flow picks up, the rock hopping gets slightly more difficult, you hit a sweet narrows section, then the canyon starts dropping and you start seeing many waterfalls to bypass or rappel. The first rappel is a 50ft falls into a chute followed by a huge chockstone with another sweet 40ft falls. The lower falls can be bypassed with some loose scrambling, but I opted to rap the sweet lower falls and was so glad I did. 
Some more rock hopping & small falls and we hit the 2nd rappel. We opted for the anchors away from the falls since they were flowing pretty good and our drop was about 90ft into a super sweet alcove followed by another optional slippery sloping 100-footer down to a ledge that can be downclimbed from or another short rappel. 
I believe those two drops and the 1st & 2nd cataracts but I could be wrong... Those are followed by a handful of medium falls and loads of large boulders to bypass and/or downclimb and before you know it you hit this awesome 130ft sloping falls down into a large pool. You could bypass the falls with a 90-100ft drop off to the left a bit, but these slippery falls were so SWEET looking with a bomber anchor that there was no way I was going to bypass them! 
That rappel is by FAR the best waterfall rap I've yet to do and it was SO slippery that I kneeslid about half of the way down. 
The others in my group only had 0.5mm suits on so they did their best to avoid the pool at the bottom while I was giving them a fireman's belay, but I had my 3mm suit on so I jumped in twice though I couldn't stay in the frigid water for too long. 
This pool gets frequented by hikers looking for swimming holes, so even though there's a few more falls before Willow hits the confluence with Bear there's also a good trail on the left that leads down to Bear Canyon that we took. From down there, the hike up to the Seven Cataracts overlook didn't look too bad and had me wishing we had parked there but we had to hike up Bear Canyon another mile to reach my car. Even though we'd only gone about 2 miles in 6 hours so far, that rock hop up Bear turned out to be quite a slog for most of us and I couldn't wait to get the 200ft rope off of my back and some warm food in my belly. 
