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| | See Canyon Trail to Bear Canyon Lake, AZ | | | |
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See Canyon Trail to Bear Canyon Lake, AZ
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| Hiking | 15.00 Miles |
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| | Hiking | 15.00 Miles | 7 Hrs 45 Mns | | 2.22 mph |
| 1 Hour Break | | |
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| Partners |
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| no partners | | On Saturday 4/21, Milo and I took a 15 mile day hike up See Canyon Trail to Bear Canyon Lake. The forest road to the TH is a little rough for first 0.5 miles, but then it becomes much better. Easily accessible with passenger vehicle, just need to drive very slow.
There is still a fair amount of snow up on the rim, but it is patchy (depends on tree coverage and which way slopes are facing). Will probably be another two weeks before everything melts and roads are completely passable with cars. We had to cross about a dozen creeks (some of them wide) and the lake outlet. I had to pull Milo through the first two crossings, after that he was fine. Our feet were wet/dry all day.
We left TH at 7:20 am. First 3.5 miles is all uphill with about 1,600 ft elevation gain. There are no trail markers of any kind for the first two miles, but the trail is very easy to follow. There are tree markers after first two miles (probably since there is snow coverage from that point forward in the winter and it lingers well into April). The trail has very good tree coverage, which is nice in the summer to provide lots of shade for almost the entire uphill. However, the downside is that there is still some minor snow on the trail from about miles 3.0 to 3.25. Took us just under two hours to get to the rim, but we didn’t stop at all and didn’t even drink anything. We took a short 20 min break to have a snack and drink at the top and then headed towards the lake via FR300 and then FR89.
It was nice not having any vehicles on the road and the forest roads would be very easy to follow even in the winter. It was another 3.5 miles to the lake that took us about 1:30 including our 20 min break. Spent about 30 minutes eating our lunch at the lake at the bench (it is the only one, so I am glad we did) and left at around 11:30 am. Then we followed the trail around the west side of the lake for 1.5 miles (easy to follow with blue reflectors) to the southern end where a creek feeds the lake. It was another 0.5 miles to get to the farthest southern end with the small island outcropping. There is still snow covering trail on southern end, but easily navigable with the blue tree markings.
We were going to take Trail 208 from southern end of lake to FR208, but there was still lots of snow here. It would have been difficult to find the trail, so I just decided to go off trail and aim for FR208. After about 0.5 miles, we came upon FR208 as expected. We followed FR208 for 1 mile and then went off trail again for about 0.25 miles to cut off 0.75 miles and meet back up with FR300. I think next time, I will just stay on the forest roads because the shortcut was down/up/down/up through some fairly steep terrain (especially in winter with snowshoes, it would be much harder). Aimed for off target to the west side so that we could easily find See Canyon trail by turning left.
It was another 3.5 miles back down See Canyon to TH. We left the top around 1:40 and made it back down in about 1:40 at around 3:30 pm
The 15 miles took us 7:45 that included about 1 hour of breaks, a little route finding through the snow, a little backtracking to find optimal places to cross creeks, and stopping for pictures. Would definitely do this hike again (in the summer and winter), but I think I will go counterclockwise especially if I go in the winter so that it is easier to follow trail from FR208 to the lake and it would be shorter (3.5 + 2.7). 15 miles in winter with snowshoes would definitely take more than 8 hours, so it might be just a trip to southern end of lake and then back out the same way. I included picture of our actual route (red) and the trail route (blue) had we not went off trail. |
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