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| Park Creek Falls Explore - Sierra Ancha, AZ | |
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| | Park Creek Falls Explore - Sierra Ancha, AZ | | | |
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Park Creek Falls Explore - Sierra Ancha, AZ
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| Hiking | 3.29 Miles |
294 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.29 Miles | 4 Hrs 44 Mns | | 0.82 mph |
| 294 ft AEG | 43 Mns Break | | | |
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| Partners |
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| partners | | This was our first hike after arriving in the Park Tank area the day before. The plan was to follow an old unmaintained road, FR2747, west from camp for about 0.8 miles to a viewpoint above Park Creek Falls. GH couldn't decide whether to stay in camp to rest after an exhausting day setting up his huge campsite with complete kitchen the day before, or to go on this hike. So I started without him, first exploring the area across the road from camp . I found a fairly new barbed wire fence between the road and upper Park Creek that would be a real pain in the rear to climb over. Fortunately following the fence a short distance revealed a gate.  It came in handy for our hike the next day. All our hikes over 7 days were out of our campsite - never moved our vehicles. We also never saw another person or heard any other vehicles the entire 8 days we were there.
I then went through the gate and crossed the wide, dry, creek bottom to check out what looked like ruin walls from a distance among a forest of tall pines. The "ruins" were just a product of my over-active imagination so back to the road. There wasn't much to see along the road except trees for the next 0.3 miles. But then the road started to traverse the hillside above the creek as the creek gradually descended into the canyon. At the location marked on the map for the falls the creek drops off the edge of a cliff into a deep, cliff-sided portion of the canyon as it makes a sharp turn to the south. Views of that area were obscured by trees and brush so it took some bushwhacking to finally find a good viewpoint of the falls from the edge of the cliff. Unfortunately the falls only had a few drops of water dribbling over the edge. It would have been quite spectacular with a good flow of water going over it. I sat down on the cliff edge, took some photos, and was about to have a snack when I heard GH calling my name. I finally spotted him about 140 yds away standing on top of a cliff. He had followed what looked like a use trail from the road that led to what he said was another falls - I never saw it and am waiting to see his photos.
GH and I met up back on the road and decided to explore along the canyon rim on its west side. There were some great views from the open areas along the top of the cliffs. After following the rim for about a half mile we looped back to the road and headed back to camp. It was a short hike but we saw views of Park Canyon that were entirely new to us and were able to scout out from a distance areas we planned to hike in the following days.
Back at camp in the late afternoon we again had visitors from the day before. The first evidence of their presence was the sound of mooing from close by in several directions. I don't recall seeing them the afternoon before, just hearing them, but now they poked their heads around nearby trees to have a look at us. It appeared to be a group of cows passing by on their way to Park Tank a half mile away. They would make a similar appearance another day. We never saw them on our hikes during the day but there was plenty of fresh sign almost everywhere we went. Their cow trails came in quite handy for finding a way over and around difficult terrain and vegetation. |
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