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| Hiking | 6.20 Miles |
1,796 AEG |
| | Hiking | 6.20 Miles | | | |
| 1,796 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Arrived late morning and didn't want to be rushed for the main attractions, so decided to check out Oak Creek from FR236 - I had forgotten there were HAZ triplogs for it due to the proper TH/4WD road being off FR71 so just went by sight/topo which worked well. Two comments from my route 1) I'd just start on the jeep trail we exited on (the southern exit vs northern entrance) 2) The northern parts of the arm off of bear mountain we went up as well as upper oak creek were pretty overgrown, dropping down the 2012 death gully might make for a nicer loop.
Eyeballed the pass from our parking spot / basecamp and got there easily enough - I'd take the jeep road until it crosses the wash and then just XC up from there instead of doing so from the start to avoid some catclaw we had circle around/through but oh well. Easy open grass for the most part, and the grassy ramp on the south side was an obvious invite. Traversing high seemed like it'd be annoying, and looking at how it mellowed out up north we figured we'd drop down low, so high we went. Easy enough up, poles and something with lugs were welcome and some great views up top. Oh yeah, we saw the slickrock area further south, and figured we could cut up to the little pass just east of it, so our trip grew longer yet again lol.
It quickly got a bit bushy up top, so nixed plans on hitting the little prominence off the arm and just went for following various cow trails to drop into Oak Creek. Worked well for the most part, some scraping by trees at times but nothing horrible. Came across some cut logs on a cow route which was a bit odd.
Dropping into the oak creek drainage... yeah that's a bit bushbashy for my tastes. There was a solid cowpath skiiers/downstream left / east that I wish we had gone up to earlier. Nicely forested, occasionally annoying but not too terrible once it consolidates a bit. Feels pretty untouched, but we saw a game camera on a tree, some twisted wire that looked like it was part of a fence, and then some barbed wire further downstream... so people used to go there at least heh. Staying to the left for the most part going down seemed to be the way to do it until it opened up.
A bit above 5100 it opens up quite a bit - the drainage coming in from the west near some nice pillars is the majority of the flow of the creek. The water had a cloudy appearance, even when dipping underground and then popping back out again, so something to do with the sand there. This part was pretty interesting - some really colorful boulders, nice cliff views, and a pretty steady flow of water that was nonetheless easy to avoid.
After a while the boulders go away and it enters into an open forest which was pleasant to move through, then transitions into slickrock. While not as spectacular as some of the nearby canyons there were some quite nice spillovers - the "main" fall I could see from the ridge earlier and was unsure about ended up being quite accomodating once we were actually to it. I named it the benevolent gap. 
Once the slickrock petered out we did some easy XC up to the pass over cowpaths through grass, then dropped through more of the same and took the jeep road back.
All in all a nice blend of open easy wandering, nice views, colorful boulders on a creek, and a charming little slickrock gorge. And yeah, some bushbashing on the northern end of it. GPS only really useful on that northern part of the ridge to ensure we were on track for a good drop point, all the rest you can navigate by features / are following a creek!
Road conditions @ [ Error T Topic ] |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
A few purple flowers higher up on the ridge. |
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Upper Oak Creek - Sierra Ancha |
Medium flow |
Medium flow |
| | Flowing well, would occasionally go underground. Less cattle where it was bouldery, but clearer water below on the slickrock section.
Very little flow above ~5150ft | | | |
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