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| Old Ranching Trail to New River Mesa, AZ | | -
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| | Old Ranching Trail to New River Mesa, AZ | | | |
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Old Ranching Trail to New River Mesa, AZ
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| Hiking | 4.30 Miles |
1,204 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.30 Miles | 6 Hrs 16 Mns | | 0.69 mph |
| 1,204 ft AEG | | 20 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | The plan for this day hike out of my car camp on FR41 was to check out an old ranching trail that switch backed up the steep side of New River Mesa on the east side of Robbers Roost Canyon. I had seen the trail on Google Earth while planning for this trip. The trail would provide a relatively short access to the top of that part of New River Mesa. The hike to the base of the mesa followed the same route I had taken the day before up RR Canyon. So I didn't spend any time revisiting the ruins and petroglyphs I had seen on that hike and made a straight line hike from FR41 to the start of the switch back trail. I started the hike about 2 hours later in the morning than the day before due to waiting for the sun light to hit my camp and warm things up. It had been much colder that night with a low temperature of 28 F inside my FJ just before sunrise.
The old trail made for a fairly easy hike to the top of the mesa. It appeared to have been out of use by cattle and horses for many years and was overgrown in a few places with catclaw. The next day when I encountered the rancher who had a new grazing lease for the top of the mesa, I asked him if he planned on using that trail to move cattle. He had heard of the trail but never seen it and had no plans to use it. Upon reaching the top of the mesa I took a short loop hike through an area that looked promising for evidence of ancient occupation but did not find anything except a small low rock wall enclosure. It looked like it was of more recent historic origin, perhaps built by the same guys who built the rock sheep fences in that area. |
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