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| Hiking | 13.90 Miles |
2,458 AEG |
| | Hiking | 13.90 Miles | 9 Hrs | | 1.54 mph |
| 2,458 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | | This is another cool area of Arizona that I haven't explored yet. The drive was pretty easy. The dirt road is well maintained so almost any vehicle can get to the TH. Our goal was to make it the ruins. The group (without me) had tried this hike before and couldn't find the ruins. I came along this time with the GPS coordinates. We started off with the descent into the Sycamore creek. At the creek we saw a pool of tadpoles. There must have been about a 100 of them. They were big. I also saw a huge frog in the same pool. Now we looked for a good spot to cross the creek. It seemed liked it was five creek crossings by the time we made it to the other side. Now we had a two mile climb to the Packard Mesa. It was a warm morning and we had a 100% sun exposure. The Packard Mesa was pretty flat and almost rock free. The views were great. At times it looked like a miniature Grand Canyon and other times it looks like Sedona. We hit the Sycamore tank and we saw a bunch of Bulls resting in the shade. The tank was dry. Now I turned the find feature on my GPS and it showed the ruins were almost straight through the tank. We crossed a dirt road (the last time the group followed the road thinking it lead to the ruins) and followed another trail. The trail ended at a Sycamore Wilderness sign. Then we got a buzz kill, we saw a truck at the TH. Now we were only about a 1/3 of a mile from the ruins. We turned right and followed this road to the end (about 1/4 mile). Then we saw a foot trail climb up a butte. We followed this trail up to a plateau, then it crossed over a ridge and descends about 20 feet. Now the trail very slippery with scree. After about 10 feet the ruins came into view. We did have to scramble up about 10 feet of loose rocks and dirt. It looked like some of the second levels had fallen down over time and we were scrambling over them. The view from the ruins were great. The Native Americans picked a great location for a home. On the way back, we found another foot path that lead to what appeared to be a fake ruin. One note of interest, this is one trail that gets more well defined the further out you go on it. Usually gets get harder the further out you go. We're going to come back to this area for more exploration. |
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"Everywhere is walking distance...If you have the time"
-Stephen Wright |
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