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| Hiking | 9.90 Miles |
1,120 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.90 Miles | 4 Hrs 45 Mns | | 2.34 mph |
| 1,120 ft AEG | 31 Mns Break | 10 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | | 37 degrees in Scottsdale, heading to Seven Springs at 8:00 am, where the frog ponds alongside the road were frozen over and it was 34 degrees to start. We like the clockwise direction as it spaces out the 1950 feet of AEG. Likewise we like the parking spots at FR24b(don’t block the road) as those cut off a round trip of about .75 miles. There are apparently several different ways to get to the Skunk Tank trail but we like walking down 24b to the stile across the fence, and then several hundred more feet where you can see a well-cairned trail head off across Cave Creek, and proceed up hill on the other side. This is the Skunk Tank. As we got to the Cottonwood junction with Skunk Tank(0.75 miles) we could feel our frozen fingers again and were surprised to see a new fire trail up to 12 feet wide we could stroll on, we thought, all the way to Trail #4, less than five miles away. We were, of course, wrong. These trails, in the Spur Cross/New River Mesa area offer many big sky views and this one also has the old Quien Sabe mine, that was once rumored to contain some copper. We saw no evidence of that, but then, we’re not mining engineers. One has to be somewhat in awe of these old sourdoughs that walked miles up hill with heavy tools to dig holes in hard ground, literally in the middle of nowhere. After 4.5 miles, the road slid by a gate which ushered us into a cliff-hanging single track providing some awesome views assuming you dared look up from your shoes, since the views started out straight down for 500 feet or more, but the trail did keep going downhill which was good and, at the 6.2 mile mark, we came to the Trail #4 junction, alongside Cave Creek which we followed back uphill 3.8 miles to our parking lot on FR24B. We saw a few cattle and plenty of evidence of horses but no other hikers, bikers or animals. Since this area is said to contain mountain lions, most of us made up some horror stories to encourage our slowest hikers(me) not to lag back too far. The GPS readings come from my trip computer which samples every 5 seconds vs. the triplog which samples about every 12 seconds and totaled 9.6 miles for this trip vs. the trip computer at 10.0 miles. The difference in distance comes mostly from the single track. The photos were all taken by Phil who has an actual camera vs. my toy camera. I didn't realize I even had that setting and why I have it remains a mystery or what buttons I pushed to activate it likewise. |
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Autumn Foliage Observation None
Pretty nice a week ago coming back down seven springs road, today not quite so brilliant. |
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Wildflowers Observation None
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Route Editor
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