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| Quail Spring - South Tonto NF, AZ | | -
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| | Quail Spring - South Tonto NF, AZ | | | |
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Quail Spring - South Tonto NF, AZ
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| no partners | | | I was getting bored sitting around the condo staying out of the heat so decided to scout an area in the south corner of the Tonto National Forest for future hiking opportunities. Looking at the NF map I saw FR53 leading up into the hills about 6 miles west of Cave Creek Canyon. I plugged the coordinates into my gps and let it lead me to the start of FR53 at the end of 12th st. FR53 turned out to be a very rough and rocky meandering jeep/ATV trail starting in a forest of Cholla that were so uniform in spacing and size I thought maybe it was being grown as a crop. I drove along the rough track for about 1.5 miles until it dropped down into a wash. At this point I was getting tired of getting beat up by the FJ bouncing over all the big rocks in the road and decided to walk up the wash to where Quail Spring was shown on my GPS. The spring was exactly where the Garmin gps map showed it but it wasn't much of a spring - just a small puddle of water in an otherwise dry wash. There was the remains of a low cement wall which at on time had formed a water trough encompassing the spring. At this point it was getting really hot out there in the sun so I decided to head back for the car before I got heat stroke. On the way back I saw what appeared to be a man made trail heading up a wash and followed it for a short distance but couldn't determine where it was headed. There were a couple of hills in the area sticking up like knobs that looked like possible locations for Hohokum hilltop fortresses. I know there is at least one and maybe two in this area but I wasn't about to climb the hills to check them out - maybe this winter after I've done more research and the weather is a little cooler. In fact, this whole area looked like it had potential for future exploration on the old jeep trails and off-trail. The jeep trails are so rough that it would be better to explore them on foot. I got back to my car and headed for home arriving only about 3.5 hours after leaving. |
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