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| Canyoneering | 13.00 Miles |
3,500 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 13.00 Miles | | | |
| 3,500 ft AEG | | 18 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | Tim and I headed to West Boulder the hard way from Carney Springs via Lost Goldmine trail. Noticed there haven’t been any triplogs since 2013. Curious what the fire did to the upper Canyon. We planned a loop of some kind, depending… Carlson said there’s no trail, Fritzski said there’s no trail, and there’s no trail, but what fun would that be? Have gone up to here from First Water, but never passed all the way through upper West Boulder Canyon from the south. Didn’t start super early, but since I’m retired I don’t always awake at the crack of dawn. We took a small side trip into Carney Canyon before heading up to West Boulder Saddle. There are still a few places I want to get to on Dacite Mesa, but that will have to wait for another day. Historically it is unlikely that anyone ever came from the QCU, up Carney and went through here on horseback. Probably some prospectors braved it on foot, I've seen it on old maps, but I believe that the upper West Boulder Canyon trail is a myth.
I wanted to ignore the recommend route shortcut and actually start from West Boulder origin, so that was that. Wildflowers are in bloom so spent a bit of time trying to capture some of them. I’m still working out the kinks in my new camera phone so they are generally blurry - live and learn. I took a few more pics than usual, so hopefully they are helpful. The weather was great and even seemed “warm” here and there, but not complaining. It was a beautiful clear day in the 70s. The upper channel was choked with a few large boulder traps, and non-technical scrambling. It was typical of any narrow overgrown canyon in the Superstitions without a trail. The fire appears to have fried both sides of the canyon but generally not at the center drainage. Cannot say it was better or worse than any other bouldering adventure. Earlier we had been skirting the channel above to the east and actually found a few random cairns. Not enough cairns to be trackable or coinciding with any trace of a trail, but they were the signs of people. After a while we decided to drop down into funsville and fight through the bush. About midway we found HUGE tracks in the center drainage. To be honest, I’ve never seen big cat prints this far west.
Tim and I have hiked many years together so time always passes too quickly. Kind of different to see all the scrub oak here. Reminded Tim of parts of California. catclaw of course was alive and well. There are some easy areas especially where the bedrock pools clear out the brush. The water was stagnant in many places and we carried water. It definitely could be filtered especially where the lower pools were slightly flowing and clearer. The entire time I kept expecting to see some type of petroglyphs in the canyon walls. The patina is reminiscent of other nearby places but found nothing. We were making a zippy one mile an hour pace through the thickets and got to the corral in the afternoon. Tom Kollenborn says that this corral was built in the 1880s before the Barkleys ranched the area. It was apparently built before AZ statehood by Mexican laborers according to Gus. He also said that Barkley never used it for cattle due to the difficulty getting in and out of there. Spent a little time inside the rock corral poking around. Found a roll of barbed wire I haven’t seen before. Everybody agrees that it’s modern and not Ruth era, but that would really have been a find! The mystery is who would pack in barbed wire, certainly not the forest service. Either the age/date estimates area wrong, or this was put here for unknown reason after it was legal to do so. It’s heavy and would have been packed in from First Water. In his final letter to his family (6-14-31) Adolph Ruth said he built a wire shelf out of sticks for his supplies, but he didn’t say “barbed wire” and that would not have made sense for a supply shelf.
The stone corral area was not burned by fire, but there was evidence of burn all around it. We snacked on lunch and chatted about Adolph Ruth as we sat near the Spring. The cliffs are high so a nice cool resting place. Due to lateness in the day, we decided to cut the larger loop short and take the ridge over to Peralta 102. Mainly, we just stayed in the channel up to the pass and then over and bushwhacked down. It wasn’t awful. In fact I’d say the quickest southern route would be from Peralta TH, over Fremont Saddle and then over the ridge to the spring. Of course then you would miss all the fun in upper West Boulder. We arrived at the saddle as the sun was setting, and cruised back to LGM another successful adventure in the books. |
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Wildflowers Observation Substantial
It is wildflower season so many flowering plants and identified in the photo section. |
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