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| Hiking | 20.20 Miles |
2,727 AEG |
| | Hiking | 20.20 Miles | 8 Hrs 55 Mns | | 2.27 mph |
| 2,727 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Four Loko take on segment 21. Thanks to the generosity (bribes?) to get Denny's brother-in-law to drop us off at Pigeon TH, we had a big time savings (thanks Les!). Coming into the trailhead from the east, we had no trouble. The road (and others in this area) had recently been scraped, and on this road snow and ice was minimal (not true of all of them). Bruce did snow angels, Joe slid down a hill covered in snow/ice on his butt, Denny did a belly slide (you have to see the picture to believe it). We actually saw big patches of snow/ice all the way down to 4600 feet today.
The first 60% of this hike was on roads, and after that we had catclaw to fight.  Early on we did have some good views ... of Phoenix skyscrapers, of the Supes (including the Needle), and the Rim and of course Four Peaks, all in the same area.
Once leaving the roads, there were a few areas where the trail is very weak and even disappears. Oftentimes in these areas there are cairns, AZT makers or yellow ribbons in trees, but in a few spots the markers were so far apart that it was virtually impossible to follow without a GPS track. This includes an area that appears to have been rerouted. The trail and AZT markers directed us down a trail away from our (old) track and along Boulder Creek. The original track followed 4WD FRs 1451, 1461 & 1452 before skirting off toward the NW and Sycamore Creek, which is where we finally joined up with the track again. We lost a good 30-45 minutes backtracking and searching for a trail in this area, but ended up finding a water tank (which means Denny got another picture  ) ...
There were signs of javelina and coyote in many places, but the only actual wildlife we found were birds, including plenty of coveys of quail. |
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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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