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| no partners | | Finally a proper hike, we wrapped up the last remaining fork of a major drainage dropping down from the rim of the "Copper Points" - something that'd been on my mind for a while. 
The beginning was a similar route as before when we went up the other fork: FR 667 to the tank, cowpath to FR 236, then up the drainage after walking the road a short while.
Similar conditions up to the falls with a class 3 bypass below the major fork in the canyon, aside from there only being two muddy cow feces filled pools. The falls itself was dry, we were curious to see if we could just go up it directly, but at the actual pourover handholds were poor enough it didn't seem worth trying to friction up it so we did something similar to our bypass last time.
Above the falls there were occasional pools of water, varying in quality but far more than the two below.
The southern fork started off a little rougher than the northern one - we were expecting to have a nasty time of it but it was actually simpler than the northern fork! A handful of fun easy scrambles (or bypasses) around falls that were definitely easier with there not being any flowing water. It wasn't as brushy as the northern fork, a few times you had to push past branches of a tree growing in the middle, or some plants along the side, or up a bypass, but no sustained bush bashing/thrashing. I was expecting to have to bash out of it up to FR 694 when it leveled out, but the end was quite pleasant and often had a "red rock carpet" laid out.
Aesthetically and friendliness were both better than expected. If you don't mind a little light scrambling this is quite a nice loop, it was easier with no water though it's hard to judge aesthetics compared to the upper fork being so dry.
We decided to take a XC cut down from FR 2729 vs going down some of the terrible rocky sections of FR236a - this went pretty smoothly, around 2/3 of the way down we found a very solid cow path that dropped us just a little above the drainage we went up earlier. Interestingly before cutting down to drop out we found a DEEP somewhat wiggly hole drilled into rock near an old cairn. Mining sample? It'd be too deep to be bracing a pole. Radiacode wasn't alarming in the area, but it was a little spicier than most background radiation.
No radiacode alarms this trip, background radiation fluctuated between 1/2 and a bit over 2x of a house in the suburbs of Phoenix. |
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