Cactus Butte Trail #60 • Hike • Arizona • All Triplogs • HikeArizona.COM

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Jan 27 2018
		The_Eagle • Triplogs 2,760

Hiking	10.01 Miles	3,050 AEG

Hiking	10.01 Miles	7 Hrs 28 Mns	1.52 mph
	3,050 ft AEG	54 Mns Break

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joebartels

This was an option that Joe had thrown out the last 3 times he had to choose.
After reading reports from @grasshopper, @ssk44, @cannondalekid, @darthstiller, I was less than excited to get to this one. After he had it as a choice again this week, I told him we needed to make this one go away for good. Since this was a short one, he threw in a tag on hike in the area to get me hooked (one, that we never got to).

A new sign at the TH.... That's a good omen.... Right?

A couple hundred yards of old road end and you just head up until you start seeing cairns. Cairnes and a good GPS track are your friend on this hike.

Later, after you make the first climb and start traversing to the west side of Salome Mountain, long pants/shirt, gaiters, leather shoes/boots, pliers, tweezers, a sense of humor and more time than you think, are important.

When you get to the saddle with the old corral, to gain the top of Panther Mountain, look for a route with a break in the rocks from where you are at and go for it. It will be loose and steep and contain prickly crap. You can find ways around most of it.

I won't deny that the ever changing views are gorgeous on the way up, at the saddle and especially at the top of 5500'.

[ youtube video ]

A one and done for me, but gave us some more ideas in the area.

A good GPS route is highly recommended to stay on or close to this "Trail". As well as long pants/shirt, gaiters, leather shoes/boots, pliers, tweezers and more time than you think.

_____________________

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
Dave Barry

1 archive

Jan 27 2018

joebartels

Guides 264
Routes 2,797
Photos 14,494
Triplogs 5,894

55 male

Joined Nov 20 1996

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Jan 27 2018
		joebartels • Triplogs 5,894

Hiking	9.73 Miles	2,963 AEG

Hiking	9.73 Miles	7 Hrs 27 Mns		1.45 mph
	2,963 ft AEG	45 Mns Break	4 LBS Pack

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The_Eagle

Pitch
I suggested this hike to Bruce 2 or 3 times and got excuse after excuse. Almost passed out when he choose this over a Superstition loop in the mix.

Drive
An inspiring unsaturated painted desert, that didn't ring a bell. I must have been a Hawaii-Havasu-BestOf-LikeMe wide eyed ( blind ) hiker 18 years & 3 days ago visiting nearby Jug Trail Trail #61.

Giddy Up
Morning light on the first mile of this trail was a pleasant surprise. The lake, dazzling topography and crisp ripples in front of the Four Peaks are majestic. Minor gloating possibly surfaced, excuse-kokopelli will eat his words...

tweetle_d_eagle wrote:Let's get that hike out of your system.

Holy Smokes
At roughly 1.25 miles the tail turns contouring 4921. Prickly pear built this trail and route finding is the name of the game. Knowing this was an out-n-back had us doing tool-free trail-maintenance. With Methodist Mountain on the horizon I was preaching how I'd come back and fix this trail. It was cold, I was outta my mind and sunlight became the first destination.

Punch It
Prickly pear and juniper removal was fun for about an hour. Mile 2 ticked off. Calculations of our projected 9.5 miles woke up the we-need-to-get-moving endorphins. Terrain was more tedious than difficult until tackling Panther brute/bruce force. Bruce choose a steep scramble and it was over quick. Mild tedious terrain continued to the SW highpoint 5,500. Lower than 5,538 a half mile north but seems the choice if only hitting 1 of the 2 noted on topo.

Synopsis
The first mile in morning or sunset light and the absolute last step are 4 out of 5. The balance is tedious and not for most. 50-100 ft of tight chaparral is the baddest of the bad. Any avid off trail hiker has been through MUCH worse. I wore a short sleeve shirt and do not have a scratch. There isn't catclaw that I recall. There is a lot of low nonsense, shorts would be suicide. Prickly pear used to obstruct the trail in a half dozen areas, just a nuisance now.

This short hike wore me out mentally. In rare fashion I wasn't interested in the other hike I had planned. While I swore it off yesterday I might tango with the Panther again...

@ssk44's description for this hike is SPOT on, he's having a good week helping HAZ'rs

2018-01-24 FLYING_FLIVER wrote:SSK44 wrote a very good HAZ description for this mountain (Sevenmile Mountain)

Flora

Flora [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Prickly Pear

_____________________

- joe

Oct 27 2014

CannondaleKid

Guides 44
Routes 162
Photos 24,766
Triplogs 2,411

75 male

Joined May 04 2004
Mesa, AZ

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Oct 27 2014
		CannondaleKid • Triplogs 2,411

Hiking	10.00 Miles	3,711 AEG

Hiking	10.00 Miles	5 Hrs 33 Mns		1.89 mph
	3,711 ft AEG	15 Mns Break	20 LBS Pack

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[ checklist ] Armer Mountain Boyer Ridge Cactus Butte Chubb Mountain Dutchwoman Butte Four Peaks Greenback Peak Half Moon Ridge Methodist Creek Methodist Mountain Mount Ord Panther Mountain Salome Mountain Theodore Roosevelt Lake Victoria Peak

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trixiec

As rough as this hike was described in Erik and Hank's triplogs back on Jan 31, 2009, with very little or no use over that time along with lots of rain this year, simply put this hike was brutal!
](*,)

Some areas the brush was so thick it was completely impassable, causing a number of bypasses, every one of which involved more elevation gain.
:-({|=

But as difficult as it was physically, that was mere child's-play compared to the constant mental strain due to the never-ending hazards. Other than the first/last quarter-mile and the 15 minute break at the summit, every moment of the hike was a mental test to be fully cognizant of the hazards lurking at every foot-placement.
:sweat:

Here's where we can relate to Erik and Hank's hikes... At some point along the trail there was practically every kind of thorny vegetation known to Arizona, yet they paled by comparison to the two ever-present hazards...
1. Millions of prickly-pear cacti
2. Billions of loose, sharp, peach to cantaloupe-sized rocks

I'm not kidding! The rocks were a hazard EVERY step of the way, even on relatively flat ground. And no more than two steps could be taken before having to avoid a prickly-pear, some barely the size of your hand. With low grass the same color (due to the rain) it was an absolute miracle that neither of us got so much as one spine poke, not even in the boots. That's truly a record for me!
:y:

However, a hike this daunting has GOT to include at least something more than rolled ankles sometimes every hundred yards. And so it did... on the last VERY steep slope Tracey had a pile of rocks give way and her fall resulted in a 2" gash to her left shin.
:stretch:

A loud

was her only retort before moving on down the slope.

For all the physical and mental effort and pain of the hike, I've really got to give full credit to Tracey... she was a real trooper!
:worthy:

Sure I don't doubt there was plenty of grumbling under her breath, but she hardly voiced a complaint... another record of some consequence. She said even a rough day hiking is better than a work day.
:whistle:

I'd like to think she means that means a rough day of hiking with ME! :-$

But she does give me plenty of slack, especially after we followed the wrong cairns too long and ended up climbing all the way up and over Peak 4921 before taking a look at the GPS, only to find we were WAY off. Which happened twice... the result of which was a bunch more AEG.

But then if we didn't get off track, we would have missed the highlight of the hike... for me anyway!
:DANCE:

And it coincided with the one other time when I could drop my vigilance of the seen and unseen hazards... when we encountered an Black-Tail Rattlesnake. It was in a patch of low holly brush that I just happened to be walking through when it rattled once. Tracey jumped well back as I didn't hesitate to I drop my hiking poles to pull out my camera before it slithered deeper into the brush.

But it didn't! :y:

So now I'm picking up one the poles (right next to it) to try to lift it up so I could see how long it was... all the while waiting for Tracey to get her camera out to film it! But, oh no, she's having none of that!
:scared:

She eventually did take a photo but I'm not sure how it turned out yet. I, on the other hand picked up the snake with one pole while taking photos and a video with the camera in the other hand... so don't complain about the wobbly video!
[-X

Unfortunately, because I didn't have my snake hook I couldn't lift it up far enough for a good photo because it had coiled its tail around a branch and wouldn't let go. Eventually I had to let it drop down, but even then I had to coax it to move for the video.

But as I said, this part of the hike had the least amount of danger of the whole hike... NO mental strain at all. For me anyway... Tracey kept her distance.
:scared:

I'll post 50 of the 56 photos here on HAZ.

Black-tail Rattlesnake video is here
http://www.youtube.com/embed/x9eD5qGBB1I

Panther Mountain summit panorama video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/X2fR9yZZGiE

Flora

Flora [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Hedgehog Cactus

Fauna

Fauna [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Black-tailed Rattlesnake

Named place

Named place [ checklist ]

_____________________

CannondaleKid

2 archives

Jan 20 2013

DarthStiller

Guides 27
Routes 669
Photos 12,096
Triplogs 856

56 male

Joined Jul 05 2006
Mesa, AZ

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Jan 20 2013
		DarthStiller • Triplogs 856

Hiking	6.60 Miles	2,560 AEG

Hiking	6.60 Miles
	2,560 ft AEG

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Alex found this trail on the NatGeo map and has been wanting to explore this area fro almost two decades. He asked me last month if I wanted to try it, and since I haven't hiked it already, I was in.

The trail starts along a road and is marked with an old forest service trail marker. Grasshopper's route soon took off us off the road and up the ridge. At first the trail was pretty much non-existent. I decided to veer off from the track over to where my GPS mapping showed a grey line that would be the trail. It wasn't there so we decided to follow the combo of the track, cairns and a barbed wire fence line. The trail headed about halfway up the ridge and then cut to the left and around the mountain, following Methodist Creek. We took that trail to the corral, had lunch and headed back. We would have liked to have gone further, but the loose rock on the trail combined with the heavier brush as we moved further slowed us down to about 1 mph.

The conditions were pretty rough, but I'm glad we were able to check this area out. Maybe one day if I have time to do backpacks we can try to finish this area off.

along the trail we found some kind of odd object that looked maybe some remnant of a weather balloon (?).

_____________________

Jan 31 2009

Grasshopper

Guides 48
Routes 510
Photos 9,555
Triplogs 578

79 male

Joined Dec 28 2006
Scottsdale, AZ

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Jan 31 2009
		Grasshopper • Triplogs 578

Hiking	9.50 Miles	3,095 AEG

Hiking	9.50 Miles	9 Hrs 5 Mns	1.05 mph
	3,095 ft AEG

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[ checklist ] Armer Mountain Four Peaks Panther Mountain Theodore Roosevelt Lake Thompson Mesa

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ssk44

This old decommissioned pack trail just outside the boundary of the Salome Wilderness(Tonto NF) has been one day hike that I have had on my "to do" list for a long time. Eric(ssk44) and I had been discussing our various hiking interests and when this topic came up, it was a "must do" for us both and a good opportunity for me to personally meet another fellow HAZ hiker with shared interests. Eric was familiar with the TH driving route and had previously done a significant amount of research on the area, so we decided to schedule it for this day, another amAZing Saturday which it was!

I expected this old trail to be a total route finding adventure with a significant amount of overgrowth, but as Eric has detailed in his new HAZ hike description, only the last 1.6mls (up from the old corral area) to our ending point at a very scenic bluff overlook area on Panther Mountain proved to be so. For me, this hike was a tough 9.5mls R/T with a significant amount of AEG but the payoffs of a very compatible hiking companion, true remoteness, sweeping scenery of Roosevelt Lake, the Four Peaks Wilderness, distant views of the Mazatzal's, and other near and far peaks, mountains, canyons, and beautiful Thompson Mesa, made this hike most rewarding!

I will also confirm that this trail was named appropriately as "Cactus Butte TR" but might have been more appropriately named "Prickly Pear Butte TR". I can confirm Eric's triplog comments regarding the loose-sharp-rocky and incredible amount of hidden Prickly Pear cactus that is this trail. This was my first remote AZ hike where I needed to spend time the day after extracting cactus spines from my ankles & legs, but still worth it all!

Eric's detailed hike description with maps, our two posted pic sets, and my posted GPS Routes(both hiking and driving routes) will help aid your adventure on this remote and seldom used trail.

Flora

Flora [ checklist ]

[ checklist ] Bonker's Hedgehog Cactus

Named place

Named place [ checklist ]

_____________________

(Outside.. "there is No Place Like It!!")

Jan 31 2009

ssk44

Guides 20
Routes 12
Photos 2,343
Triplogs 298

51 male

Joined Mar 31 2008
Gilbert, AZ

Globe, AZ

Hiking		Jan 31 2009
		ssk44 • Triplogs 298

Hiking	10.40 Miles	3,140 AEG

Hiking	10.40 Miles	8 Hrs 30 Mns	1.22 mph
	3,140 ft AEG

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