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| Hiking | 4.51 Miles |
361 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.51 Miles | | | |
| 361 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Had to swing by work this morning and wanted to do soemthing in the vicinity that I hadn't done before. This looked easy and accessible and the name was awfully appealing, so Biscuit Flat was the winner. There wasn't much of a write up in the hike but I knew approximately where it was. I didn't download his track so I ended up doing something slightly different than what Jason did.
I actually parked on the backside of a Circle K on the east side of I-17 and then hopped on the Maricopa Trail (MT) to go under the freeway. To get to the Maricopa Trail I had to bushwack a little, mainly going down a dry wash before reaching the MT. Doing that gave me an early wake up call. I came across two snakes in a span of 100 yards  One was a rattlesnake that gave me a rattle...after I had passed by and the other was some sort of striped snake that looked as if it was sunning itself while it was digesting a meal (it had a notably large midsection). Since most of the hike was off trail, this had me on pins and needles for the duration. And, it caused to me to take the most unobstructed visible path that I could find. About .2 miles after the freeway the MT trail turns south (and I believe Jason followed that for a short time before turning west). Instead, I decided to follow a dirt road that headed in a westward direction and looked as if it would get me fairly close to the tallest hill in the region. I am typically not a big fan of ATV's and the scarring they make across the land, but today I used those paths for as long as I could to get me as close to the objective as I could. I still had to do about .4 miles of truly off trail (off ATV scarring) to reach the summit. There was a small cairn at the top and a good view of "bad boy village". Went down the west side of the hill and came across a burnt patch about 3/5 of the way down and this got me back to the dirt road without having to go through anymore scrub. It's amazing with Ben Avery a mile away how much shooting/destruction/trash occurs in this area. Saw the remains of a 52" flatscreen, bowling pin, a couple of fire extinguishers among other things strewn about and left as forgotten targets. Followed the road back to the MT and took that back to the lot.
Typically, I am not overly concerned about snakes. I respect them and keep an eye out for them but I go about my hikes business as usual. Today, with the back to back encounters, they really played with my psyche. I took a very uninteresting route and had my eyes on the ground for a majority of the time. This was a challenging hike in its own special way. Of course, I didn't see another snake for the rest of the hike. I did see quite a few lizards, rabbits, a couple of chipmunks, a roadrunner Annan owl which I disturbed at the summit. Encountered 1 bike rider at the freeway underpass. I'm pretty sure that I was in the same area as Jason, but that I did not do the same thing. My elevation had me 2155. On the way out I noticed a sign that said State Trust Land, so technically speaking....  |
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Route Editor
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