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| Hiking | 17.73 Miles |
500 AEG |
| | Hiking | 17.73 Miles | 11 Hrs 42 Mns | | 1.54 mph |
| 500 ft AEG | 11 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | Not really sure why it's called this, but that's what the sign reads. (The fact that there was a sign surprised me.) There's no gap that I know of, and we didn't see any rattlesnakes (though I'm sure there are plenty there and the sign warned there was a reason it was given that name).
This is an incredibly scenic area deep in the A-S national forest. I took a stupid amount of photos as I spent the day exploring. The miles piled up and by the end of the day I was pretty exhausted from navigating that kind of terrain.
From my start near the ranch, I headed downstream a couple of miles to the Blue. There's a ruin on the north side not far above the confluence. Here I encountered the first of two groups of people I would see this weekend, camping along the banks, enjoying a fire to take the morning chill out of the air during breakfast. From there I headed upstream, passing the fish barrier and enjoying the spectacular geology and just splashing along in the crystal clear water. I reached my turnaround point and headed back, continuing farther downstream below the confluence before retracing my steps and heading back to frisco. I managed to explore a couple of side canyons along the way, but will post those separately.
Jonathan joined me for an evening exploration upstream where there's a totally different character to the scenery. No easy banks to travel as there were down from here, so most steps were in water. A few deep spots required some navigation skills, but for the most part it was exactly what one would expect from this kind of hike.
It was nice to have some surprise cloudiness, but it made some photos a little bit grey and flat. No matter here, it was all overwhelmingly beautiful.
I saw several zone-tailed hawks, a plethora of little birds that some older people apparently care about, including one cardinal. I missed out on the sheep, though the camping group had seen them on the cliffs above their camp. For some of the day I opted for a little shade via my golite style umbrella (it's marginally sexier than a haz sunbrero hat, and that's important to me) so I may have missed something that moved above my restricted line of sight. I did spook a squadron of javelina, and a few enormous carp that were not happy with my splashing through their home. There was plenty of beaver activity, but as always, the sighting on an Arizona waterway has been elusive for me. |
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| I'm not sure what my spirit animal is, but I'm confident it has rabies. |
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Route Editor
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