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| Trilby Wash - Terminus McMicken Dam, AZ | |
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| | Trilby Wash - Terminus McMicken Dam, AZ | | | |
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Trilby Wash - Terminus McMicken Dam, AZ
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| Hiking | 2.38 Miles |
292 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.38 Miles | 1 Hour 35 Mns | | 2.51 mph |
| 292 ft AEG | 38 Mns Break | | | |
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| no linked trail guides |
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| no partners | | Over the years I've hiked segments of this big wash numerous times but never seen its terminus. Pristine in many places upstream, the lower portion is now under the control of man. Namely the Maricopa County Flood Control District (FCD). Trilby's natural course no longer meets the Agua Fria River several miles to the east. It has been harnessed and rearranged since the Fifties, primarily to prevent Luke AFB from flooding. Trilby's flood waters are now directed north by McMicken Dam down a channel that flows into Trilby Wash Basin, located just south of the junction of the Wickenburg Highway and West Deer Valley Road, in Surprise.
I parked off Deer Valley Road near the APS McMicken Substation and began walking south on a berm in this flat, lonesome land where the only sounds of note are the garbage trucks moseying back and forth from the Northwest Regional Landfill about 3 1/2 mi W.
Within a quartermile, I left the berm and dropped down onto the low cement and rock spillway. From there, I was able to look across the large, dry reservoir. It was a strange landscape. Almost nothing but globemallow and bursage. I'd never seen globemallow like this. In places you would need a machete to get through it.
My walk across the rough spillway ended in about 4/10 of a mile. From there the large earthen dam rises to 30-40 feet, continuing southward where it protects Luke and encroaching subdivisions in Surprise. Since the dam was fenced off there by the FCD, I cut across the basin, going west a half-mile on a dirt road to the big levee on the west end. I walked along its lightly-eroding dirt top and eventually connected with the spillway again, completing the loop. There is a small greenbelt in the lowest north part of the Basin where the over-grown Maricopa Trail cuts through a sea of mostly flowering globemallow. Not far away, a man-made channel enters the reservoir from the north and contains the only water I saw all day. Some of the globemallow that surrounded the channel was almost head high.
If you like and respect desertlands, the Basin is a sorry place for a beautiful and important wash to come to an end. That's how I felt anyway. |
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Wildflowers Observation Moderate
Mostly globemallow in bunches, particularly along the levee's north end. |
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