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| | | Cedar Pine Wilderness, AZ | | | |
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Cedar Pine Wilderness, AZ
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| Hiking | 4.87 Miles |
1,085 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.87 Miles | 4 Hrs | | 1.22 mph |
| 1,085 ft AEG | | | | |
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| Partners |
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[ show ]
| partners | | I love rain. And snow. But my plans for this weekend were to take me to the single worst place you would ever want to be if there is rain in the forecast. So on Thursday, it was time for a reset.
Luckily, the wilderness beards needed to get out and gather some ingredients for a future ale, and I wanted to take advantage of a rainy, cold, snowy, day in late April. The stars aligned, Liz wanted to come along, and we all set out for fun and adventure.
The wilderness beards now have a new truck that runs on homemade fuel from the duck fat they make their french fries in 
We headed for the Pine Mtn Wilderness, where the road had been graded in the last week. It's as nice as it could possibly be. The grader was still parked out there. The rain and snow made it a little muddy but not too bad. The issue out here is that the mud is like cement. It sticks to everything. I think chains would be useless since your tires just end up coated in 4-5" of mud, rendering traction useless. Oh well. We managed it ok after taking our sweet time.
After an afternoon stroll up Tank Canyon -- a beautiful slick-rock canyon with pools of water that would be stunning during spring or monsoon runoff -- we headed up the western hillside to capture the sunset. It's a surprisingly difficult climb, 700 feet above camp. The views were stunning. The snow-capped Bradshaws, dominated by Mingus, Union, and Towers, filled the horizon to the west. It was frigid and windy up top and we headed back down in the dark. Jon took a spill and hit his head. We had a bit of a scare since he was dizzy and disoriented, and bleeding pretty good. Head injuries are no joke, and I had the full first aid kit out back at camp. Once it was cleaned up and Jon remembered who he was and some other basic info, we relaxed a bit, and settled in by the fire.
In the morning, we hiked up toward Pine Mountain. Plenty of water in Sycamore Creek. We spotted a beautiful Golden Eagle that kept flying just a little bit farther than us. At one point I was trying to position myself for a photo, when it decided to drop a huge bomb in my direction before flying off. Luckily I avoided the incoming. Unfortunately, I didn't capture a photo.
Next we headed over to Pine's northerly neighbor--the red-headed step child of wilderness areas--Cedar Bench. I had set out to do a pic mimic of the most unique photo on the wilderness wall. It was the most entertaining part of the weekend for me, despite my total failure at capturing it even remotely close to the original. Oh well.
Liz was happy that we didn't continue driving the road that turned into a singletrack that even quads would have a tough time driving. Amazing it's so close to Camp Verde, and yet so rarely visited.
Overall a great weekend. Nice recovery from a plan that the weather washed away. Can't wait to see what I come up with next year! |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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Nelson Place Spring |
Gallon per minute |
Gallon per minute |
| | | Nice flow. Didn't see actual spring, but plenty of surface water and pools. Sycamore Creek has plenty of flowing water and pools both up and downstream of the spring. |
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Tank Canyon |
Pools to trickle |
Pools to trickle |
| | | Lots of nice pools. Some swimmable deep. No actual flow. | | _____________________
| I'm not sure what my spirit animal is, but I'm confident it has rabies. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
He said his is now called Piestewa Peak...
. So basically, all the info about this hike is approximation.
. (On the way I grabbed some large stone to assist in crossing 1 of the seeps). After passing the trail junction, it is less than .2 miles to reach the first stream crossing. The crossing was rather disappointing. For about the last . 5 miles before the crossing I could hear the stream below me. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it and it sounded decent in size. My stream crossing was a 4 inch rivulet. The trail picked up right on the other side of the stream and I could immediately tell that the traffic dropped with that daunting crossing. Trail was still very easy to follow, though the overgrowth occurred a little more frequently. The trail entered what I would call a broad canyon but I got "squeezed" (more enclosed) the further I went. I quickly noticed that there was a new stream to my left. I'm sure this stream joined with the one I had just crossed, which would account for why it sounded like so much more. The trail crossed this new stream twice, going from one side of the bank to the other. And with each crossing the trail got a little more difficult to follow. By the time I did the second crossing I felt as if I was in the forest. The sky was obscured by the trees above and the trail by the fallen leaves below. The trail was more of an impression that anything else. I followed the trail to the stream bed for a 3rd time (just prior to this I passed 2 ribboned trees, so I felt pretty good about still being on the trail) and decided this was Goat Spings. I actually have no idea if this was or not. There was no sign saying "here be Goat Springs". But I felt fairly certain that I had hiked in 2 miles from the TH and there was no clear trail heading away from that crossing. I added a rock to a cairn which I took to me mean the end of the trail and turned around and headed out.
It was full of drama -- laughs, tears, blood, beers.. what could go wrong? We even managed to get a little hiking in, here and there. Sat on top of a small peak, watched the sun set, hiked a wash, saw some rosebushes, almost fell off the face of the earth via the world's second worst road ever. Definitely the makings of a good weekend. 
