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| Hiking | 9.67 Miles |
2,095 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.67 Miles | 7 Hrs | | 1.38 mph |
| 2,095 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | This triplog involves a good portion of the Cottonwood trail and continues to the Cottonwood mountain summit.
Brian and I camped just North of Oak Butte Sunday night after hiking Pinnacle Ridge. The night time low was supposed to be around 50-52 which was reasonable. The worst part of it was the wind. It was extremely windy in this area on Sat & Sun nights and I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep BOTH NIGHTS in my old Coleman tent which was flapping in the wind for many hours. In the early hours of the morning, the wind died down a lot and I was awoken to bird sounds. I don't know how many hours of sleep I had but I suspect it was only a few. Anyway, I had enough energy to do another long hike.
We drove from our camp area to the Cottonwood mountain trailhead and parked at the turn-around near the end of FSR 677. From there we walked down the old 4x4 road North to the gate. Just past the gate there was an old trailhead sign for the Cottonwood mountain trail #66. We were on this trail and the surrounding cattle trails the previous day when we hiked to Pinnacle Ridge, so some of this hike had some overlap. We followed a fairly well-defined trail that was West of Cottonwood canyon. We ended up crossing the canyon a few times and then the trail eventually went West, out of the canyon, and climbed up. Luckily there were some cairns so it wasn't too difficult to find the trail. There was water in the stream and at a certain point, we heard a waterfall in the canyon. The waterfall was mostly blocked by trees and brush, but we were able to see it through the brush.
We continued going up and after hiking a total of 2.1, we stopped for a water break and snack near a big tree. After the break we continued following the trail up and after reaching a distance of 2.25 miles from the trailhead, we found a beehive in a tree and had to get away quickly. Right in this area we saw some nice penstemon and verbena flowers. We continued up the trail and knew we needed to look for some switchbacks heading up. We found those switchbacks after about 2.7 miles. There was no sign but we did see a cairn that appeared to be off the main trail. The trail we were on seemed to continue straight. We walked about 10 feet up to the cairn and this is where the trail turned to the left and continued heading up. We followed a few switchbacks and the trail wasn't too steep here but kept climbing for a long time.
After hiking a total of 3.75 miles we reached a nice saddle. There was a huge dead white tree, most likely a sycamore, near this saddle which made for a nice photo. We even climbed 6-8 up into the tree for a nice photo. It was already 12:30 pm by the time we got here, so we decided to have lunch here. After having lunch we took some photos over the cliffs to the Northwest and the surrounding area. We saw some deer tracks up here but didn't see any animals the entire day except for a few birds, lizards, etc. We also noticed that based on our current elevation, we only seemed to have another 100 feet of elevation. From the saddle, we didn't see a clear trail but it looked like the best way would have been to go up the middle of the ridgeline. We went up and as we got higher up, it started looking like a real trail and we saw more cairns. It's possible that a previous fire destroyed a section of trail between the saddle and the top of the ridge. When we got to the top of the ridge it was obvious where to go. We followed a pretty clear cairned trail, but there were a few confusing areas. When we looked carefully, we eventually found cairns and this trail eventually led us to the summit. This was probably the least well-maintained section of trail on the entire hike, and therefore it took us longer.
At the summit, we found a large cairn and very close to it, there was a rock pile with a registry inside. Looking to the West, we were able to see the Pinnacles on Pinnacle Ridge, the area we were at the previous day. After signing the registry, we hiked down going basically the same way. It was easier going down because we didn't have to do as much route finding. We basically knew where to go in general, but there were a few tricky areas. We finished the hike around 6 pm and had about 1.5 hours before darkness.
Flowers/plants seen: pink penstemon, verbena, clasping venus' looking-glass, antelope horns plant, Rose's claret-cup cactus, lupine, fleabane, wolly ragwort, giant red indian paintbrush, white tackstem, New Mexico plumeseed, desert dandelion, white mariposa lily
Stats:
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Distance (round trip) = 9.67 miles
AEG = 2,095 feet
Strava moving time = 5 hrs 33 mins
Strava elapsed time = 8 hrs 29 mins |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
pink penstemon, verbena, clasping venus' looking-glass, antelope horns plant, Rose's claret-cup cactus, lupine, fleabane, wolly ragwort, giant red indian paintbrush, white tackstem, New Mexico plumeseed, desert dandelion, white mariposa lily |
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Michael Williams
IT Professional
Rocky Point Vacation Rentals
Ocean Front Condo in Rocky Point, Sonora, Mexico
www.beachfrontmexico.us
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