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| Canyoneering | 2.50 Miles |
650 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 2.50 Miles | | | |
| 650 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Tonto gauge was a bit over 2 feet even with some rain before we got here, crossing was completely dry. The storm on the day we came in was a bit stronger than anticipated (thunderstorm with heavy rain and hail) - luckily the two days of sun after went as forecast and exiting was super simple on firm roads. 17 and 236A were in great shape, similar or a little better than usual. The new bridge spans the entire wash but is still being worked on.
Decided to try hiking northeast up the wash that ate out 236A just before grasshopper's old camp for kicks and then loop over to the gap proper.
The bottom part of the wash was simple, stable rocks, only one tight spot with a bypass. Around 4900ft it tightens up (as expected from Topo) and we came across lightly flowing water and some cowboy plumbing. We kept up it a little longer than reasonable due some blocky rock and trees, but cut out climbers left / west until it opened back up into a nice slick rock section! Some minor scrambling in here, with the crux being the upper part of this section ~5200ft. We poked around a little more and it didn't seem super interesting, so we took the long way around to malicious gap following the top of the eastern wall of the slick rock to a nice viewpoint on the arm ~5200 then cut NE and found a come and go cowtrail down. Pretty easy to drop down to greenback creek a few minutes below the falls. We came across a new piece of cowboy history - an old shot up mailbox secured to a tree as some kind of storage container.
Malicious gap was more or less as remembered aside from below the easterly arm with the cave before it turns hard west. A number of downed trees in this area - it's a bit rougher than it was. The rest was pretty much as normal, some more smaller rocks resting on slick rock etc but the character remained pretty much the same in the highlight sections! A little slower in some spots to navigate due to pools, but not bad at all. Figured any frost etc would be well gone by the time we got here after exploring the side canyon.
Did our normal exit up the cow chute (just below the new deadfall zone) and down 4920+ to meet up with the old trail/road a bit above the box spring mattresses. |
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