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| Backpack | 100.00 Miles |
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| | Backpack | 100.00 Miles | 7 Days | | |
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| no partners | | I've wanted to do this hike for over a year now and when the temperatures spiked in late March I took the opportunity to make my first foray into the Mazatzals. I had briefly discussed the route last year with @JacobEmerick but conveniently forgot that he advised to avoid Willow Spring Trail. Before this trip I thought I was a fairly good backpacker - I am, quite literally, a professional - but the Mazzies turned my 6-day 60-mile plan into a 7-day 100-mile monstrosity that had me questioning much more than just my backpacking skills.
AZT
Starting from Mormon Grove Trailhead I'm going to skip over the Arizona Trail portions of the route until things get fun later on. Everyone knows what the AZT is about. ~40 miles from Mormon Grove TH to where the AZT splits off from Red Hills Trail.
Red Hills
Both maps I had (Nat Geo & USGS Quads) show the intersection where the AZT breaks off from Red Hills nearly a mile off of where it actually is. Red Hills was my favorite trail of the trip. A diverse hike that goes through a pine canyon before breaking out into open red rock hills. Simple enough to follow with obvious tread and big cairns. There are 2 horse camps along Red Hills and I was surprised at how built up they were (barbed wire corrals, wooden awning structures, tools stashed) considering the Wilderness designation.
Midnight
The brush began over the first half of Midnight but nothing bad. About halfway along Midnight around Wet Bottom Creek is another horse camp and after that it quickly gets much tougher. The trail fades out and rises steeply up the side of a brush-choked canyon. A good taste of what is to come. There was strong evidence someone had recently took stock up Midnight and down Willow Spring even along Midnight Mesa (or vice versa) which impressed me greatly.
Willow Spring
I spent 45+ minutes looking for the Midnight / Willow Spring intersection to no avail. Midnight peters out and Willow Spring doesn't peter in on a thick brushy ridge. That being said you will have to spend as much time as it takes to find Willow Spring coming around the side of Midnight Mesa because that 4-inch wide path is the only viable way to contour around the buttress. This part was the only area I could follow Willow Spring because a step in any other direction would be falling down the side of the Mesa.
Willow Spring then goes along a knife-edge ridge that afforded the best views of the entire trip. Really stunning terrain way back deep in the Mazatzals. I lost the trail quite a bit on the way down to the Deadman/Willow Spring/Dutchman Grave intersection - there are big cairns but they're so enveloped by shrubs that you can't see them until right on top negating the usefulness.
Deadman / Willow Spring
I had hoped to find water and camp in this area around the intersection and Mountain Spring but was mostly disappointed in both. I spent at least 30 minutes in the creek bed area that Mountain Spring showed to be in on my maps with nary a trickle or hint of water. There were water pools farther down the creek bed that saved me and since I was cowboy camping I just laid down underneath a tree but didn't see much in the way of tent camping options in the vicinity.
In addition to the 30 minutes I spent poking around Mountain Spring I spent another 45 or so looking for the beginning of the Deadman Trail. There is an obvious track from the newly-signed intersection leading down to those aforementioned pools but then nothing at all up or down or across. That scared me off Deadman potentially being a touch bushwhack the entire route and I decided to change plans and not pursue Deadman. Instead I would go back up Willow Spring, take another shot at finding that Willow Spring/Midnight intersection and then follow Willow Spring across to the AZT so I could still get back to Mormon Grove TH. The devil I knew over the devil I didn't - or so I thought.
Willow Spring / Off-trail to Midnight & back
The Willow Spring devil got a lot worse. There isn't even a hint of trail east of the non-existent intersection. It is thick, thick bushwhacking up and down ridges. I was able to go maybe a half mile an hour and was quickly exhausting my water due to the very physically demanding terrain and brush.
I stood on top of a mountain along the Willow Spring "trail" - physically and mentally broken after almost 2 days now of gnarly bushwhacking - and saw some water in the creek bed far below. Looking at the map I figured I had about 4 more miles of Willow Spring before reaching the AZT. Based on the conditions and my pace so far I estimated that would take 6 hours if I had good luck, 8 hours with mild luck. I didn't want to consider no luck or bad luck scenarios besides briefly contemplating how difficult it would be for SAR to get me out of there if injured.
If I could make it down the mountain to the creek below it looked like I could follow it off-trail to reconnect with Midnight around where the trail crosses Wet Bottom Creek. So I did just that, bailing, knowing I would have nearly 50 miles of hiking to get back to my truck and only 1.25 planned days left to do it in. For once the thick brush and steep terrain worked in my favor getting several hundred vertical feet down the mountain to the creek because I could slowly fall into each tight layer of Manzanita then pull myself through the woody branches before slowly falling into the next layer and repeating all the way down.
That off-trail creek, which was unnamed on both my maps and which I named Fortune Creek, ended up being my favorite part of the trip. It had water, it didn't have brush, it was beautiful hiking down a canyon that turned a little slotty once or twice and it represented a change in my fortune which had been very poor for quite some time. I was able to easily follow Fortune Creek down to its confluence with Wet Bottom Creek and subsequently with the Midnight Trail. I actually had a tougher time following the "better" half of Midnight on the way out than I did on the way in but was eventually back to Red Hills then the AZT. I had to extend my trip an extra day to get out the way I came but met a nice thru-hiker who let me text my mom and gave me some water tabs to tide me over.
All in all it was a really humbling experience to hike deep into the Mazzies. Due to the off-trail brushy conditions, challenging terrain & high miles I've never left a trip more physically beat up than this one. But definitely worth it to explore a lesser-seen side of this rugged & scenic Wilderness. |
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