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| Hiking | 6.60 Miles |
775 AEG |
| | Hiking | 6.60 Miles | 3 Hrs 25 Mns | | 2.44 mph |
| 775 ft AEG | 43 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | For our first hike of the new year, I decided to take the family over to the Needle Vista Parking lot off SR88 just north of First Water Road. I wanted to do some trails that I haven’t done before and the Green Trails map for the Superstitions shows some unofficial trails going from there and over towards the First Water horse lot and to Hackberry Spring. I figured it would be less crowded there during a holiday weekend and on a Saturday. I was correct.
From the end of the paved path, a faint trail is visible to the left (east) and heads southeast. After a little while, the trail fades away, at which point you can easily make it to the wash that it parallels. Before we headed into the wash, we could see a trail on the other side that continued to go towards the First Water horse lot. There are a lot of footprints in the wash, so this is obviously well traveled. The wash wasn’t bad to walk through, it was more like a mini slot canyon. Still, there were some tight spots where you had to maneuver around a prickly pear and/or some catclaw, so once I found a spot that wasn’t so steep, we headed up out of the wash and onto the trail we saw.
Once back on a very well established trail, we continued towards the First Water lot. According to the Green Trails map, there is a trail that goes to First Water, but there is also a kind of a cutoff trail that bypasses the First Water lot. We found the junction for this trail, but decided to stay on the main trail we were on because the cutoff trail actually looks like it’s longer due to its meandering. Later on we also found the other end of the trail as it junctions the trail from the horse lot to Hackberry Spring.
After the junction to the cutoff trail, not much farther was another junction that resembled more of a T. We decided to go left and quickly found the horse lot. Not sure how far the right trail goes or where it goes. Looks like that trail and the cutoff trail to Hackberry Spring are explorations for another day.
From the horse lot, we made our way over to Hackberry Spring. At one point, we missed where the trail makes a hard left and heads up over the hill before it descends to Hackberry Spring. Instead, we headed right and down into another slot canyon. Eventually we made our way to the trail that heads from the Second Water Trail to Hackberry Spring and got to the spring on that trail.
At the spring, we sat for a few minutes, rested, enjoyed the scenery, and had some snacks. As we arrived there, we could hear some shooting. After sitting there for a while, some hunters who looked like had done at least one overnighter walked past on their way to the spring for some water. The spring was running, but the flow was very tiny, almost a trickle. They were there gathering water as we left.
It took a little while to find the section of the trail we missed on our way in, but we did find it. That was mainly due to the fact that about 5 or 6 horse riders were making their way down that trail just as we approached it. Getting up over the hill was the steepest part of the hike, but it didn’t last too long. Up on the hill gave some good views of the spring and the surrounding area below.
From there, we made our way back to the car the way we came in, staying on the main trail going the other way towards the Needle Vista parking lot until it dropped into wash again. We again bushwhacked our way out of the wash at a spot where the walls weren’t steep. Total mileage for the day was 6.6, a record for the kids. Pretty soon I’ll be able to take Natasha out to the Rogers Canyon Cliff Dwellings. |
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