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| Hiking | 10.22 Miles |
2,043 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.22 Miles | 5 Hrs 33 Mns | | 1.88 mph |
| 2,043 ft AEG | 6 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | I hadn't hiked the Elephant Mt. trail a good 20 years, and my memories were of it being extremely steep with very loose scree. This turned out to be much easier than I remember. Good idea to go back to trails after so many years (decades?) to refresh your memory.
I met Brian at the Spur Cross TH at about 6:30am. It was still very dark and just windy enough to want to wear gloves, which I took off after a half mile, as usual. We did a clockwise loop from Spur Cross on the Spur Cross Trail to Elephant Mt, then Limestone to Cave Creek and back to the TH. On the way out to the bottom of the Elephant Mt trail, we met several trail runners who were running the Aravaipa race that day, which was either a 50 or 35 MILE route from the CCRA. 
At the saddle of the Elephant Mt Trail we took the "closed area" spur to the lower peak and checked out the views and the ruins. The views there were the highlight of the day. From that peak there were good views to check the route to the Elephant Mt summit, which looked doable, although still challenging. the visible trail at the bottom was encouraging. 20 years ago I don't know that any of these trails or routes existed, but I may have easily missed them if they were there as I was a novice then.
Once we got down off Elephant Mt we headed out on the Limestone Trail which we almost immediately regretted since it's so rocky and slow going. the further we got along, the more I remembered from my previous hikes the last 4 years. My main takeaway was that I knew why I decided to do this route clockwise so that we weren't burnt out by the time we got to the base of Elephant Mt.
We only saw 2 hikers on Limestone, a couple with their dog who were from out of state visiting. On the Cave creek trail on the way back we ran into several people, many of whom asked for directions to the trails they wanted to get to. It was very strange that the temperature along the Cave Creek Trail seemed cooler than the higher elevations on the Limestone.
We finished up around noon and I had lunch at the picnic tables there before I headed out. Very nice weather for the day and very cool to check out an area I had never been to before. |
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