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| Hiking | 21.60 Miles |
4,398 AEG |
| | Hiking | 21.60 Miles | 8 Hrs 55 Mns | | 2.42 mph |
| 4,398 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Didn't get started until 8:35am, we spent an hour down there trying to figure out where the northern TH was. This is one instance where the AZ Trail book is just --NOT-- helpful at all! Follow Grasshopper's track to drive from US177 to this TH, and ignore the book. It made Denny so mad he wanted to pitch the book out the window. 
This was an interesting hike in a lot of ways. It started at the Kelvin bridge, then soon followed the Gila River and the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks a good ways. Went a little off trail past the turn off the RR tracks, we went all the way to the bridge ahead, really interesting old bridge. The wood beams going over it had big gaps, dropping down dozens of feet to the river below, so you didn't want to make a misstep! (although they weren't so wide a whole body would go through)
Not much wildlife today, hoped to see some javelina out there as it has some large concentrations of them out there, but no luck. Did see lots of quail and lots of deer tracks, especially around the Gila. Really nice views of the Gila basin!
Pretty well cut trail throughout. It was a little challenging figuring out how to turn off the RR tracks, there is no marker for a trail leaving the tracks and it is very overgrown, had to go probably 100 yards of more until the trail actually started looking decent, recommend a GPS to find this turnoff, although if you go to the bridge you have gone too far. It has now become customary that we sing terribly off key every time we think of a song with the words in it we're talking about ("here comes the sun" ... "here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory" ... "what goes up must come down" ... trust me, the songs are endless). Today on the tracks Denny kicked it off with some Johnny Cash, singing "Folsom Prison Blues", and before long we were all singing it. That led to "Rock Island Line", "Hey Porter" ... it just went downhill quick. Then I found it on my iPhone, and cranked it up. ("Dave listens to Johnny Cash?!" don't ask...)  
Farther up, there was a stretch going through a creek in Walnut Canyon that was really nice. Lots of boulder hopping and water dodging. We were totally surprised to find two ATVs come through the creekbed, jumping boulders some 6-8 feet off the ground. After we passed them and followed their tracks up, there were several spots we looked and just scratched our heads trying to figure out how they pulled it off. The suspension on those things had to be incredible!
After leaving the White Canyon Wilderness boundary, trying to figure out where the endpoint of this segment was pretty much impossible. There is no marker denoting the end of the segment, nor is there a marker as described in the AZ Trail book. We did turn around when we saw an unmarked wooden post. The Arizona Trail website says the endpoint is the Tonto National Forest boundary, which butts right up against the White Canyon Wilderness boundary, so my guess is when you come to the two White Canyon Wilderness boundary signs you are at your endpoint.
The only bad part of today was that I lost my orange cap (in my avatar) somewhere on the trail today, probably in the first half. I took it off a couple of miles in and velcroed it onto my pack, then just over halfway I looked for it and it was gone. Anybody out there who sees it, please get it for me and I'll pick it up from you and will be glad to give you a $20 for your trouble!  I have worn it on every segment of the AZT we have done (15 segments), so I'm totally bummed to lose it.
Denny wasn't able to get the Focus all the way down Grasshopper's track to the dropoff spot. A high clearance vehicle could have made it tho. Where we stopped, just outside a gate about a mile or so past the corral, we ended up backtracking from our turnaround point back to the car about 4 1/4 miles. |
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| "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." — Henry David Thoreau |
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