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| Hiking | 4.52 Miles |
446 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.52 Miles | 2 Hrs 42 Mns | | 1.70 mph |
| 446 ft AEG | 2 Mns Break | | | |
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[ show ]
| partners | | On the second half of Thanksgiving Day after Bonita Creek we headed to Dry Canyon. I saw this hike posted on HAZ and it looked intriguing, even though the post mentioned it wasn’t terribly interesting. Once again after a few wrong turns I found the spot. There is no trail but it is a creek bottom hike so I didn’t expect there to be one. This is a very rocky walk up a creek bed, more rocks than I’ve seen anywhere. The first quarter mile your thinking this is going to be a boring walk up a creek bed but then it changes and becomes one of the more interesting walks up a creek bed that I have been on. The canyon gets narrower with walls of conglomerate rock, volcanic ash cliffs and what looks like volcanic rock mud flows. It is still a very rocky walk and you can’t walk and gawk at the same time. At about 1 mile in the canyon splits, we took the one to the left, we will take the one to the right on the way back. The one to the right is a very cool slot canyon ending at a waterfall/cliff at about .3 miles in. Back along the main stream the canyon becomes very narrow with conglomerate on either side about 10 feet wide and 30 feet deep. Further up the canyon is another neat slot canyon. I only went in a short ways (.2 miles) and it didn’t seem to have an end, I went up this alone and told Ginny I would only be a minute, about five minutes later I decided to call it quits and head back. This canyon is about 3 feet across 30 feet deep through conglomerate rock. Some of the boulders in the conglomerate way high up the wall look like they might just fall out if you looked at them wrong. This canyon is like a trap, once you enter it just keeps enticing you to go on.
I thought this was a great hike but difficult because of the rocks. I would only do 2.5 miles in because the rest of the creek further up widens and doesn’t look that interesting. On our return trip we headed out of the canyon about half way down and took an old two track back to the main road to our start point. We stayed in Safford that night for a hike in the Galiuro Mountains at Ash Creek tomorrow. Being it was Thanksgiving we could not find a single restaurant open. The only thing open was Sonic Burger, Had the worst Thanksgiving dinner ever.
Dry Canyon Video [ youtube video ] |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Wildlife platform 
These pools have to be crossed to continue up and with no teva's or extra socks I was not prepared for this and had to change plans 
I pulled out my map and decided on a hike up Dry Canyon down by the Gila River boat pull-out. Made my way up this nice little canyon for a couple of miles and found a cool, short side slot canyon which I explored to it's end. This slot canyon saved this semi-failed trip and after making it back out, I spent the rest of the evening with a walk along the Gila river and ended the day at the south entrance to a really nice sunset 
