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| Hiking | 20.00 Miles |
1,500 AEG |
| | Hiking | 20.00 Miles | | | |
| 1,500 ft AEG | | 45 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | Triplog Jordon Hot Springs (4-17-2013): Gila Wilderness, NM, from the Gila Cliff Dwellings Visitor Center
Day 1:
As I was afforded some time off this spring, and I had been talking about this hike for about a year, and I had gotten Randy excited about a hike to a “nearby” (it is located 44 miles north of Silver City, NM), my home town (which is 320 miles east from Chandler), the game was on! This was definitely going to be a 4-5 day event.
We left Scottsdale early and got onto I-10 and headed east. Stay on I-10 to Lordsburg, NM and turn left, tke highway 90 to Silver City, NM, then take either NM 15 through Pinos Altos, or Highway 180 through Hanover/Fiero and up the mimbres valley. Note: Highway 15 is very, very scenic but the number also stands for the maximum speed, in addition to being a highway identifier…seriously, this is a very twisty and turning road and you won’t be going much more than 25 MPH for 44 miles. So we opted for the Mimbers route going in. To get to Silver City, you can also take Highway 60 through Globe/Duncan, and decide whether to take the mule creek back road into New Mexico, or go straight into Lordsburg from Duncan. Highway 191 is also very scenic through Mule Creek, but that route takes another couple hours. We arrived at the “Lower Scorpion Campground”, about a mile west of the Gila Cliff Dwellings Visitor center, right around 6:00p with just enough light to set up camp and cook a nice camp meal. Randy prepared steaks for us as I recall. Nothing like a good open fire cooked steak!
That evening as I was wandering around the area, I had the bejeezus scared out of me by an owl. For whatever reason it was on the ground in the dark and was startled by my flashlight and apparently got disoriented, as when it took off, it headed right for me, I thought I was in a Hitchcock remake for a second there…and that wasn’t all. As I continued my meanderings in the dark, some reflections in the distance (50-100 yds) caught my eye. I shined my flashlight in that direction and at about 50 yards away and about 10 feet off the right shoulder of the road, there appeared numerous sets of eyes. Numerous being over a dozen! Now…being that I had heard Coyotes about ½ hr. earlier this was a little unsettling, especially since I was probably ¼ mile from camp and my bang-bang was back at camp. So I turned around and headed back to camp at a brisk pace. I convinced Randy to come back out with me to investigate, but upon seeing numerous eye reflections in the distance, we decided our investigation was over, especially since there were 2 other camp sites in the campground and shooting within the campground is prohibited. We made sure we kept all food stuffs out and away from the tents that night. Lower Scorpion has room for about 10 campsites, so it was about 30% full including us. Just up the road was Upper Scorpion that has room for 15-20 campsites, and it was full. There was a group of late teen to early 20-somethings that appeared to be on some sort of “wayward teen/tough love” adventure, judging by some of the conversations we overheard.
Day 2:
Up early 6:00a ish, he its our vacation after all, further investigation, revealed that there was about a 4 foot drop off from the right shoulder of the road, and close inspection of the ground in that area revealed numerous deer hoof prints. Yep, we had been startled and un-nerved by a herd of deer, whose heads were just about road level, which is why I thought they had to be coyotes since they were very low to the ground.
So we packed up our back packs and headed to the TJ Corral parking lot and headed up the trail.
Now there are 2 ways to get to Jordon Hot Springs, one is about 6 miles and takes you up and down about 2,000 feet in elevation, and through the scenic narrows of “Little Bear Canyon”. The other route is to go to the Gila Visitor Center and follow the Middle Fork of the Gila River. The trailhead for this route is up behind the visitor center, ask at the center. If you haven’t been the TJ corral route before I highly recommend it for the “little bear canyon” portion is well worth it. As we were hiking up this trail, we ran across a hiking guide with pack mules…we asked him where he was heading and he said “Jordon Hot Springs” I have a group camp setup I’m hosting. Oh great, we both thought, we know who that is, thinking back to the 20-somethings in Upper Scorpion Campground from the night before, and we had planned this outing so carefully, so as to avoid the weekend and hopefully the crowds, so now would be treated to 20 or more rowdy teens… Since this guide was making much better time on horseback with the mules, than we were, our next thought was “well there goes the good camp site(s)”.
We continued on and came across 2 other hikers on the trail in, talk about lite packers. They were on a 50 mile, 3 day hike and near as I could tell, they only had a lite 10lb day pack with them. Geez, this old man needs everything and the kitchen sink when I go backpacking, I could never have gotten by with their minimalist existence. We didn’t see another soul until we hit the Middle Fork of the Gila river about a half hour later and turned left (to the west). On this stretch we came across 2 parties of 2. Yep, this is true wilderness! Note: As I recall there are 16 river crossings to get to Jordon Hot Springs, you can’t avoid them. This portion of the hike turned out to be a nice easy level hike through a canyon that is remarkably similar to Aravaipa Canyon East, although with narrower canyon walls and deeper water (12”-36”, mostly about 18”). Much like Aravaipa, bring your comfy river hiking sandals, boots, shoes…
Upon our arrival at the Jordon Hot Springs (no signs, you need to count river crossings or mileage), we noted the absence of any large group. So we had the pick of choice camp sites after all WooHoo! The next day we ran into our “Guide Friend” soaking in the Hot Springs with one other person. Turns out that was “his group”. A lone Texan out on a wilderness adventure! Hmmm .. maybe I’ll try that next time, a “catered wilderness adventure!” The Hot Springs are very nice, a little over 100 degrees we were told, not having a thermometer to verify we had to take their word for it. At any rate, very nice soaking temperature. The main pool is about 15 feet across east –west, and 10 feet across north – south, and about 2-3 feet deep depending on where you are. The Hot Springs themselves are not hard to find, just “follow the green” up the right hand side of the river (as you are hiking down stream). The springs are located about 100 yds from the Gila River about 1/3 of the way up the canyon wall. There is a small camping area on top of a ridge about 20 feet from the Hot Springs, which would give you great access to the springs, but Randy and I both figured there might be visitors off and on at all hours so we opted for a more secluded campsite and bore the burden of a ¼ mile hike to the hot springs each time we felt like a dip, which was numerous times during our stay. We were there essentially 2 days and only ran across 4 parties that stopped at the Hot Springs.
Day 3: hiking around camp, relaxing, exploring. I hiked about 5 miles down stream of the Middle Fork, spectacular scenery , very few other souls, again…scenery is very analogous to Aravaipa East!
Day 4:
Up early, time to head back…The weather man had predicted rain, and having grown up in the Southwest, I am very attuned to flash flooding. In fact, a friend of ours was forced to stay @ Jordon Hot Springs an extra 2 days, the previous year, due to rains and flooding. The rains had caused the Middle Fork of the Gila River to rise several feet and become impassable for over 2 days. Fortunately he had extra food and it wasn’t catastrophic. Darn, forced to stay another 2 days in paradise!
Upon reaching the intersection of “Little Bear Canyon” and “The Middle Fork of the Gila River, rather than going through Little Bear Canyon again, been there done that, and head up and over the dry dusty trail back down to TJ corral, the way we came in, we opted to follow the Middle Fork down to the Gila Cliff Dwelling visitor center. As noted earlier this adds about 2 miles, but this route had several things going for it: 1. Level hiking, 2. Staying cool by hiking in the river (another 15 or so river crossings in addition to the 16 we had already made getting to this point), 3. Viewing some additional Hot Springs (these come out at 135 degree, very hot!). 4) an added bonus of viewing some of nature’s more slithery creatures….a sighting of a beautiful but shy king snake….”Red touches yellow, a dangerous fellow: coral snake”, “Red touches black, a friend of jack: King snake”…In addition, coral snakes tend to be smaller 18”-24” than kings snakes.
We continued SouthEast, about 2 miles into the hike we ran across the King Snake. About a mile downstream from where we saw the king snake, my hiking partner Randy’s son, Drew, began what appeared to be an Indian hoop dance without the hoops. He was hooting and hollering at me to look to my left there was a rattlesnake!!!!! As he was in the lead, he had obviously stirred something up, I kept looking to my left, but saw nothing, then Randy bringing up the rear told me to look to my right and sure enough there was a good sized specimen of a Diamond Back Rattlesnake (5’ or so)…in Drew’s excitement he had gotten his left/my right mixed up. Well we survived that encounter as well and finished our hike with the only other concern being whether or not we could outpace the approaching menacing dark clouds behind us blowing in from the southwest. As it began to rain, we were still about 2 miles from the Visitor Center, we debated getting our backup 1 time use ponchos from wally world out, but I figured that would cost us 15 minutes and again, I felt this was a 20 minute brief shower, as is typical of this time of year. And since we did not know how heavily it had been raining behind us, I felt it best to keep going. I told the crew to watch the water very closely, if it got muddy or began to rise, head for the nearest side and scale the canyon walls to higher ground. Fortunately at this point in our hike the canyon was fairly wide and the walls were more gently sloping, and definitely scalable should a flash flood materialize. In addition, the trail stuck pretty much to one side of the canyon or the other. Well this time (as opposed to the drenching Randy and I got in Chevelon Canyon), the rain toned down in about 20 minutes and the river never rose and by the time we made it to the LightFeather Hot Springs, about 1 mile from the visitor center, the rain had stopped completely and the sky was clearing, which made for a much less anxious hike the remaining mile to the visitor center. We arrived safely back at the visitor center/trailhead; however, unfortunately for Randy (it was his car and he had the keys),the car was back at TJ corral an additional mile and a half hike for Randy…
For those that like southwestern Mexican food. The best is located in Silver City, NM at a fine restaurant called “Jalisco’s” it is located downtown at the south end of the main drag on the right. Try it! You’ll like it! No relation, and no commission for the aforementioned endorsement. |
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