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| Hiking | 12.71 Miles |
3,776 AEG |
| | Hiking | 12.71 Miles | 8 Hrs 51 Mns | | 1.97 mph |
| 3,776 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 23 Mns Break | 14 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | This was a really tough day even though the mileage was short! It was all off-trail once we left Peter's Canyon (which could be considered off-trail as well).
We started off at 7:15am from Tortilla Flat. Made our way along the trail that follows above Tortilla Creek and then eventually drops into the creek. After some rock hoping and light brush navigating, we made it through Tortilla and to the intersection with Peter's. Peter's Canyon starts off with some large, house-sized boulders but are easily climbed. Travel was slow through Peter's since it is all rock hoping or boulder climbing with a few short slick rock sections thrown in. We spent a lot time stopping and spying the various caves and alcoves found up above us. There is so much to see in this canyon, I could spend many days here! Fortunately we didn't have much problem bypassing any of the pools or waterfalls since there isn't much water at all in Peter's right now. I was happy to see that a large pool that had stopped me in February 2011 was completely dry today. I had planned on taking a small boat to cross this pool. Glad I didn't bring it.
Once we got to Pistol Canyon we could see that it was completely choked with vegetation. We decided to give it a try anyway but only made it up a few hundred yards. Its not really sharp stuff but just very thick. Figuring it would take more time to fight through the veg, we turned around and resumed with Peter's. We followed Peter's around a long bend and eventually left the canyon to take a slope up to Peter's Mesa. The slope was covered in cat's claw, cactus and other various sharp, mean, evil, plants. This was pretty much how the rest of the day would be.
From the mesa (its wasn't really Peter's Mesa, but close enough) we picked up Wally's track that leads up to Malapais Mountain. Looking at the proposed route, we were skeptical at first but this turned out to be a pretty good way up to the peak. We crossed over the heads of Squaw and Deering Canyon, passing by an old camp. I originally wanted to take a detour down Deering Canyon to the choke stone but decided to save that for another day. The views from Malapais were excellent even though it was a bit hazy today. I had never seen Battleship from above before, interesting to be able to look down on it! We could not find a peak register on top of Malapais, maybe there isn't one.
From Malapais, we followed Joe's track all the way back to Tortilla Flat, skipping Geronimo Head. The first mile or so, across the other two peaks north of Malapais, was the most brutal part of the day. Every foot step has to be carefully placed as every bit of vegetation it out to assault you! The trip down from Malapai was quite unpleasant, I don't see my self ever doing it again. I'm glad I did it though, just never again.
The long steep sloping section down to Tortilla Flat was made a bit more enjoyable as we had the sounds of a live band from the restaurant playing Elvis and rockabilly tunes to help motivate us. Pretty cool!
Thanks for joining me, John! |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
I ran across that old camp mentioned in Carlson's Book down near that unnamed wash with loads of white quartzite everywhere. I continued up and over a saddle into the western fork of Pistol Canyon which start out fairly open but then got brushy with some down climbs just before reaching Pistol Canyon. Pistol didn't have much of any climbing but was quite the bushwhack to navigate thru. So much for making good time... 
When I got to Peters Canyon it was flowing fairly good like is to be assumed after the recent storms, so I change into water shoes & neoprene socks and filter a couple liters of water. Though after filtering the water I totally forgot to clip my dry shoes to my pack and did nearly a mile of rock hopping down the creek before I realized my mistake. ](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
I was on pace to finish near sunset, but I wasted 1.5 hours going back to the Pistol-Peters confluence to retrieve my $100 shoes... The upper narrows were pretty sweet and I got up to my waist in water but I wasn't in the mood to swim in that cold water and did some class 3/4 climbing to bypass the many pools/falls. It was about Peters Cave that I had to start hiking with the headlamp but thankfully its a mini spotlight so night hiking down the flowing creek wasn't too crazy. 
The creek is flowing pretty good thru the narrows, so in total there's about a dozen large pools and/or waterfalls to bypass, swim with a wetsuit, or wait until it warms up. Thanks to the GPS, I was able to make my own bypass route out of Tortilla Canyon back to Tortilla Flat and I eventually stumbled upon the actual trail in the dark and got back to my car about 2 hours after dark... 
