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| Hiking | 4.70 Miles |
750 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.70 Miles | | | |
| 750 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Grasshopper and I left his camp on FR139C on Thursday morning in his Jeep headed for this hike's starting point on FR300G. I'd had a comfortable night's sleep at his camp occasionally waking up to the sound of heavy monsoon rains beating on the roof of my sleeping quarters in the back of my FJ. Grasshopper didn't have it so good - the fly on his Northface three season tent had sprung some leaks during the night. Grasshopper had plotted a GPS track for the hike using Mapsource and Google Earth. Our course would drop down into East Bear Canyon a short distance from where we parked by a tank about 1 mile off of the Rim Road on FR300G. We parked the Jeep and secured the tarp over its roll bars to keep it dry - it looked to be a rainy day.
We walked a short distance down an unused spur road and reached the edge of the canyon. Grasshopper's choice of an off-trail canyon entry point was steep but easy to negotiate by following an elk trail. The bottom of the canyon was a little closed-in with trees and bushes so we had to walk down the middle of the creek which was mostly dry. There were occasional logs across our path but these were easy to either step over/under or just follow an elk trail around the end.
It was beginning to rain by the time we reached Grasshopper's chosen canyon exit point up a deep draw about 0.5 miles upstream from where the east and west forks of bear canyon meet. I was a little apprehensive about hiking up the bottom of a draw which can be filled with log jams, brush and waterfalls. Once we started up the draw I started looking for an escape route up the canyon side but we were walled in by cliffs. Grasshopper was insistent that going up the draw was the best route so we continued on past the anticipated log jams, brush and a waterfall. The going was a little rough requiring some scrambling on the steep sides of the draw to get around these barriers. We eventually reached the draw exit point on Grasshoppers GPS track and it turned out to be an easy hike up the hill side following elk trails to the end of an unused spur road which led us back to the parked Jeep. Although the rain had ended it was threatening to start again. Neither of us liked the idea of a wet ride back to camp in his open Jeep so we left the tarp on. The only problem was that it completely blocked all views out of the Jeep except for a narrow view through the front windshield. After a couple of blind turns at road intersections we made it back to camp without incident. |
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