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| Hiking | 14.00 Miles |
1,715 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.00 Miles | 6 Hrs 30 Mns | | 2.15 mph |
| 1,715 ft AEG | | | | |
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[ show ]
| partners | | Three guys from PA go hiking in the AZ forest while there's a fire burning nearby. No, this isn't a joke I heard recently, this was how I spent my Sunday hiking the See-Drew Loop with Wally and Alex. I hadn't got the chance to get out for a bigger hike in almost a month, so it was nice to get amongst the ponderosa pines and away from the 105 degrees forecast for Phoenix.
Finding the trailhead turned out to be a little tricky. After the turnoff from 260 for Christopher Creek, you need to make a another left turn off the paved road onto FR284. We missed that and ended up back at the junction for 260, which was momentarily baffling and somewhat comical.
Our start of the hike got off to a similar false start as we began to hike along the Highline Trail, which would make the loop counterclockwise, not our intention. Soon enough we found the See Canyon Trail and started up.
There was a lot of water, stream crossings and green foliage along the See Canyon Trail. We took the spur trail up to See Spring and found two spots where water was coming out. The upper spring was coming out of a dead tree stump.
The upper reaches of the See Canyon Trail were a little overgrown and had some minor tree fall to maneuver over in spots. It also got rocky and steep in some spots, making it the hardest part of the hike. By the time we got to the top, I was almost spent and ready for some lunch.
After lunch we started walking along FR300 but noticed on our GPS mapping that it goes way farther north than we needed or wanted to go to get to the Drew Trail. I had kanode's See-Drew track downloaded into my GPS but where it went off the road seemed like too much of a bushwhack. We started down FR208L but noticed soon enough that this trail seemed to descend into a canyon. After backtracking, we stayed on FR300 until it started to go too far north for us. At that point we found another forest road junction that was gated and started to take that and bushwhack until we got back on the GPS track. The bushwhacking in that area wasn't too bad and after a little while we ended up on FR9350, which eventually took us to the Drew Trail. The views along the edge of the Mogollon Rim were spectacular as usual.
The Drew Trail was nice and looked like it was probably easier to go up than the See Canyon Trail. At the junction with the Highline we made a right and back to the trailhead. The weather got warm again and the lower elevations added to that, but it was still much cooler than back in Mesa.
At the end there's a signed junction on the Highline Trail for the See Canyon Trail that seems to not really to to the trailhead. We started along this trail and then backtracked and took what we knew as the quicker way back to the trailhead from our false start earlier in the day. |
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