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| Hiking | 15.40 Miles |
2,400 AEG |
| | Hiking | 15.40 Miles | 8 Hrs | | 1.93 mph |
| 2,400 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Walked the counter-clockwise loop with a little more snow on the ground than expected. Enjoyable and a good workout though I agree with the other accounts that descending the rocky Y-Bar trail at the end of the day is a little annoying. Perhaps its better to go clockwise.
Interesting to compare the scenery to some of the other photosets posted here. While the 2004 fire did a huge amount of damage, things are coming back nicely. For my trip the trail was a little hard to follow, particularly due to the snow and the fact that no trail signs remain (just some burned posts). Additionally there is a fair amount of deadfall in some areas, and the "shrubs" that are coming back often grow in the middle of the trail making the natural trail contours hard to recognize!
Biggest route finding problem came in descending from Windsor Saddle. Luckily the small cairns and occasional orange ribbons were eventually found. The trail descended so aggressively toward the south though that I thought I'd missed a turn and was going into the wrong drainage. This would be a bad mistake though so I decided to bushwack/contour toward Cactus Saddle. Only the next day with my GPS trace superimposed on a good map it was clear that I bailed too soon...the trail turned a little further down and climbed to Cactus Saddle.
I noticed that there is some disagreement as to the length of this loop. Grubb's "Hiking Arizona's Superstition and Mazatzal Country" has it at 14.3m, Warren's "100 Classic Hikes in AZ" has it at 17m, Liu's new book "60 Hikes within 60 miles" implies its 18m, and Todd's Desert Hiking Guide website lists it at 16.7m. My trace said 15.4m...consistent with the bulk of the HikeAZ reports. |
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