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| Rawhide Canyon - Iron Flat Bailout, AZ | | -
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| | Rawhide Canyon - Iron Flat Bailout, AZ | | | |
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Rawhide Canyon - Iron Flat Bailout, AZ
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| Hiking | 3.40 Miles |
1,384 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.40 Miles | 3 Hrs 36 Mns | | 0.99 mph |
| 1,384 ft AEG | 10 Mns Break | 15 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | After our decidedly humid hike two days ago just on the other side of Top-of-the-World, with a bit cooler/drier forecast I decided to take a shot at reaching Iron Flat Tank from the west, possibly a one-way hike of 1.44 miles rather than the 4.5 miles from FR 320 as we did at the end of May. Only if I felt up to it once I reached Iron Flat Tank would I tack on a relatively easy 2.4 mile round-trip along an old mining road to Peak 5254.
So much for forecasts... the temp at the start was 10 degrees hotter than expected and it was HUMID!
Oh well, I'm here at the end a spur road just east of FR 2466, so let's just get on with it. After all, what's a 2.88 mile hike? Maybe a few hours?
Well, for one thing, 95% of the hike would be off-trail through rugged terrain of all kinds of hazards... first a very steep downhill to Rawhide Canyon following a meandering route to avoid thick-and-thorny brush interspersed among large boulders, adding in thickets of manzanita on the ascent out of Rawhide. Only to follow up with another steep descent/ascent of the next, thankfully smaller canyon.
But already the heat and humidity were taking their toll on me. I had spent 75 minutes to cover barely a mile of ground, and I had already used up more than half of my water. Definitely not good new! I knew the only prudent thing to do was cut the hike short. I could see a large tree a few hundred feet above which was throwing some nice shade so I decided to reach it and take a well-deserved break.
During the break I wrung out and hanging in the sun everything I could then took a short cat-nap. When I rung out my wicking t-shirt I probably could have filled one of my spare water bottles... and thinking back on it, that's what I should have done, at least for the electrolytes if not for the liquid.
Ok, time to head back. Having climbed the extra few hundred feet before the break I had a better view over the drainage and saw it was pretty open, which had not shown up on satellite view. So rather than do the reverse of my original route I decided to skip the steep ascent/descend in favor of following the drainage around the peak and back into Rawhide Canyon.
So I gave it a try, and for all of .15 mile it worked great... until it didn't. The brush closed in and I was forced to climb the slope back to my original route. Once back to the crossing of Rawhide I was so wiped out I wasn't sure I could ascend the same steep route of the first descent at the outset. Then I encountered a very well-beaten game trail which appeared it may take a less-steep route so I gave it a shot, only for it to reach a dead-end where there was no sign of where even a rabbit could have continued. And so I'm back to the steep ascent.
This last ascent of 400' would bring back memories of my El Recortado double summit hike back in late June of 2014. While it wasn't quite as bad as 2014 when I reached the stage of hallucinating from a lack of water, it was pretty close. The only way I reached the top was to pick out a roughly boulder 25' above me, climb to it, sit on it for a minute or so to catch my breath then pick out the next one. That last four hundred feet of climbing, taken 25 at a time seemed to take forever... and in fact, it took a full 30 minutes.
Thankfully after the climb the car was only a few hundred feet across relatively flat ground.
So... when I return again to the Iron Flat Tank area to hit up the mines on Peak 5254, I believe I'll take the long trip on old roads instead of less than half the distance completely off-trail. |
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