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| Aztec Peak and Workman Creek Falls, AZ | |
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| | Aztec Peak and Workman Creek Falls, AZ | | | |
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Aztec Peak and Workman Creek Falls, AZ
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| Hiking | 9.16 Miles |
2,136 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.16 Miles | 6 Hrs 54 Mns | | 1.74 mph |
| 2,136 ft AEG | 1 Hour 38 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | It was a beautiful sunny day. We parked right before the gate on 487, and walked up the forest road until we saw a wash, which we followed down to the creek, and rock-hopped along the creek to the bottom of the falls, where we hung out for a while, had some drinks, and created some Reels. The falls had light-moderate flow which created a nice mist. We didn't see a way to climb up to the road from the bottom of the falls, so we returned to the wash and ascended to the road.
We walked up the road to the top of the falls and looked down, immediately noticing that one of us had left a jacket on a rock at the bottom of the falls.  I descended back to the falls via a nearby chute, retrieved the item, and climbed back up.
We then followed the forest road to the Abbey's Way trailhead. It was a short, easy walk to the meadow, which was surrounded by a lot of dead trees and a few living ones. There was a small pleasant shelter at the north end of the meadow that had living trees and nice rocks to sit on, but most of the meadow was depressing because of the surrounding dead trees. It took about a minute to find the trail where it exited the meadow. The trail was very well-defined and easy to see, but there were numerous thorny branches that extended over the trail and were impossible to avoid. I took down about 90 of them with my machete and cleared some walking space, but was informed by the rest of my group that this was taking too long, so we pushed through the rest of the way with no further trail clearing. There were intermittent stretches with no thorns for 50-60 meters, alternating with areas that had avoidable thorny branches and areas where the branches were thick and unavoidable. The thorns weren't terrible, but they were irritating. The entire trail was surrounded by dead, burned trees and there were few birds. It was a relief to reach the peak and face no more thorns. The lookout tower was locked with nobody inside. The views from the peak were pretty nice. Roosevelt Lake was visible in the distance. We hung out for a while, then took the road back down.
Overall, the creek and falls were quite enjoyable, but Abbey's Way Trail was pretty bad. I've fought through far worse thorns numerous times, and explored a number of burned areas, but this trail had no redeeming features. All of the trees were dead, there were no flowers, few birds, numerous unavoidable thorns, and no pleasant views until we were about 100 meters from the peak. We made a fun adventure out of it, but probably won't do this one again. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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