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| | | Stoneridge 6542 - Bear Down - Sun Devil Loop, AZ | | | |
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Stoneridge 6542 - Bear Down - Sun Devil Loop, AZ
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| Hiking | 14.00 Miles |
4,191 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.00 Miles | 8 Hrs 43 Mns | | 1.92 mph |
| 4,191 ft AEG | 1 Hour 25 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | I hadn't hiked in Prescott in a while, and we started from Green Gulch TH for a counter-clockwise loop in the Bradshaws with a trifecta of off-trail @Peter_Medal peaks (he authored the guides for Stoneridge, Bear Down, and Sun Devil in 2016-17). It was in the upper 40s when we started on Charcoal Gulch Trail, then connected with Red Mountain #43 after about a mile. The stretch of trail approaching Stoneridge Peak had some nice shade and better-than-expected scenery along Green Gulch.
I took a quick detour up to Peak 6542, and the off-trail wasn't bad at all--the brush wasn't too dense and was usually easy to dodge, and there was some light scrambling on the way up the stony ridge. The peak is flat, rocky, and wide open, with great 360° views. There was a register up there with an odd assortment of items in the jar (a golf ball, a dinosaur, and a business card for Ralph the Qigong healer) along with a geocaching sign-in placed in 2012. The most recent entry was just over a week ago...didn't see any HAZ names, but Peter Medal's casino gold club card was in the jar.
I headed back down, and we continued to Prospector Trail, a stretch that overlapped with a hike we did in June last year. The majority of the trails in the area are a rollercoaster of short, steep up and downs on rocky OHV routes, and that was the case with the trails we hiked for the first time today as well. We connected with Salida Trail for the southern part of the loop, and I decided to go up to the top of Bear Down since it's so close to the trail. I approached from the south when I went up last year, but I went up from the west this time. The brush wasn't bad here, either, and the views were nice from the rocky peak. Didn't find a summit register on either of the high points up there.
Back on the trail, we continued SE on Salida and reconnected with Charcoal Gulch, which was very steep, rocky, and mostly downhill as we hiked north. I eventually left the trail for a third time to go up to Sun Devil Peak, going up the right fork of the trident-shaped mountain, the opposite direction from the official route. The first quarter mile ascending the ridge was very brushy, and I pulled out gloves and clippers and picked up a lot of scratches. It opened up a little beyond that, with more rock outcroppings to navigate around/over, then a lot of talus on top of the ridge closer to the peak. It was a steep climb from the trail to the top, gaining ~1,000' in ~9/10 mile.
Great views from the summit again, lots of ladybugs, and there was a register with a few HAZ entries - @Peter_Medal, @AZHiker456, and RowdyandMe/widowmaker (no longer on HAZ?). The peak doesn't seem to get much traffic, with the last entry more than three years ago [ youtube video ] . I was running short on time but wanted to check out the plane wreckage, so I started down the middle fork of the trident, dropping ~600' over a quarter mile to a spot where I found a wing and some other parts. I'm sure there was a lot more in the general vicinity that I didn't see, but I didn't have time to continue searching. I debated whether it would be faster to continue down the drainage and loop back to the trail vs. backtracking up to Sun Devil and returning the same way I'd come up. I decided to go with the known route and backtrack, but that meant regaining the 600' before starting back down.
Once I was through the brush and back on the trail, we finished off the loop and were done ~5PM. The trails around here aren't my favorites with the rocky OHV roads and sometimes limited views, but this ended up being more interesting than expected with the addition of the peaks and the crash site. We didn't see much unique wildlife today, just a small snake and a small tarantula, but the weather was great and we didn't see anyone else all day.
Driving back toward Phoenix, we got bogged down in the usual weekend gridlock on I-17. Leaving Prescott, the GPS routed us onto backroads to bypass some of the mess, and we ended up in a lengthy parade of vehicles returning to the valley on dirt roads paralleling the interstate, averaging ~25 mph for long stretches before joining the slow-moving line on I-17 around Bumble Bee, adding 40+ minutes to the drive. |
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It wasn’t too bad once I got into the mountain (out of the wind) and the sun had come up. Looks like I got lucky. As I was driving away you could see rain coming down on the ridgeline I had just vacated. Sadly, no wildlife. Encountered 3 hikers near the bottom of the Red Mountain Trail.
