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| Verde River Exploration, AZ | |
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| | Verde River Exploration, AZ | | | |
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Verde River Exploration, AZ
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| Hiking | 10.04 Miles |
1,335 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.04 Miles | 7 Hrs 16 Mns | | 1.81 mph |
| 1,335 ft AEG | 1 Hour 43 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | The plan today was to do some exploring along the Verde River near Chasm Creek. This area looked interesting when we hiked Chasm Creek Trail early this year, but there's a bald eagle closure along the river from 11/30 to 6/30, and many of the open months are extremely hot, so we wanted to get this in before the closure started again. We parked near Chasm Creek TH and hiked along FR 9709R toward the river. There was quite a bit of smoke over the Verde Valley on drive in on I-17, and it was still lingering in the valleys and the air smelled smoky as we got started.
Around 2.5 miles in, we reached the overlook at the end of the road and started to get nice views of the river. I was expecting a brushy descent getting down, but there was a short, rocky (unnamed?) trail labeled with a beat-up #16 sign leading down to the river. At the bottom was a mine shaft with a metal platform and a cable cart that could transport people/materials across the river, though the cable basically dead-ended at a vertical cliff wall on the other side, so it wasn't clear what purpose it served.
We started north between the cliffs and the river. I was expecting thick brush, but there was a decent use trail for a while, then our pace slowed as the vegetation increased. We tried staying up along the base of the cliffs but found the catclaw and the loose rock worse than the alternative down below, so we slowly hacked through the brush for a while. I'd hoped to get around the bend in the river closer to The Falls, but we started to encounter increasingly swampy ground, poison ivy, and endless brush, and after I took an accidental seat in the mud, we abandoned that plan and turned around.
We hiked back to the cable cart and explored south from there, past the dry creek bed where Chasm Creek would flow into the river, and I noticed the 40-foot wooden ladder up on the cliff. The gauging station was a little further south, and we there was a nice arch up in the cliff face beyond that. The brush started closing in again, and TboneKathy waited while I hiked as far south as I could go along the river until I was either going to have to wade/swim or climb to continue any farther.
We headed back to the cable cart, up trail #16 and back along FR 9709R. There was another unmarked road branching off to the northeast, and I took a quick detour of ~3/4 of a mile to a hill overlooking the river. I could see The Falls down below and get a better view of what was around the bend in the river we'd failed to reach earlier. There was a sign down on the far side of the river, but it was too far to read even in the most zoomed-in shots I could get. As we finished off the hike, it was in the mid-90s but not ridiculously hot.
Driving home, we got caught in the inevitable miles of slowdowns on I-17 that added at least an hour to the drive...a reminder why driving north to hike in the summer isn't as appealing as it first sounds. But it was a fun day of exploring...we saw a rattlesnake, a turtle, a great blue heron, a roadrunner, and no other people all day. Plus great scenery and a welcome change to get out of the city and explore a new place after a summer of incredibly repetitive hiking at South Mountain. I may try to get one more hike in around this area to explore a little more before the bald eagle closure starts again |
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Chasm Creek |
Dry |
Dry |
| | | Completely dry where the creek intersects the Verde River |
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The Falls |
Light flow |
Light flow |
| | | Viewed from a distance; falls were flowing but river level looked fairly low in general | | | |
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