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| Backpack | 13.00 Miles |
2,334 AEG |
| | Backpack | 13.00 Miles | 1 Day 3 Hrs 31 Mns | | |
| 2,334 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | We headed out to the Cave Creek trailhead in Seven Springs early on Friday morning for a 1-night backpack. Four of us backpacked the Cave Creek / Skunk Tank Loop in the clockwise direction, with an added 1 mile spur (2 mi. RT) to find a good campsite along Cave Creek.
The road to Seven Springs was fine even though we had 1/2 inch of rain the night before. Just a few sections of light muddiness. We hiked in from the Cave Creek trailhead, skirted the Seven Springs Campground, and soon got to the signed junction with the Cottonwood Trail. The signed junction is a few hundred yards after you cross the cattle fence on one of those ladder thingys. There is another false trail before the signed junction, so be sure not to take that.
Heading up Cottonwood Trail, you cross the creek and, if you're not careful, you can quickly lose the trail. Note that, after crossing the creek, the trail (counterintuitively) turns to the left and proceeds upstream for a bit before turning uphill. There are some cairns there for you to follow if you look for them. Once you start heading uphill, it turns into an old 2-track jeep road, so it's fairly easy to follow the trail all the way to Skunk Tank. After a short distance, you encounter another trail junction where Cottonwood Trail cuts off to the left and Skunk Tank Trail continues straight (which is the way you should go).
Skunk Tank Trail does some climbing over the next 3 miles or so with 3 distinct trail peaks and 1 mini-peak. You'll definitely feel it, especially if you're carrying a 30 lb pack but, on this cool winter day it didn't seem so bad. The trail's definitely rocky but the footing was decent throughout the whole loop. While the climb is steep at times, you are rewarded with some fantastic views of the surrounding mountains along the ridges (along with some of the healthiest looking saguaros I've seen anywhere). Once you've topped out at the 3rd peak (4100'), you'll see the signed junction for the Quien Sabe trail. Stay on Skunk Tank Trail and start your decent down to the Skunk Tank itself.
Upon arriving at Skunk Tank, the 2-track road comes to an end and you have to pick up a single track trail. This is tricky, so if you have GPS, use it. In a nutshell, right before you get to the tank, there is a faint trail to the right and a cattle fence with a sign that says "close gate after you." Cut through the cattle fence at that gate and follow the faint trail. The first 100 yards are the trickiest. A previous triplog said "stay to the left of the cut" which made no sense to me at the time, but when you see "the cut" (or gorge, or mini-canyon) you will know it. After that point, there's some mild uphill to get to a point where you can cross "Blue Rock Canyon" (at least that's what we called it). The trail is pretty easy to follow from that point all the way down to Cave Creek. At one point, we encountered a huge bull and 3 calves which alarmed us a bit, but they weren't happy to see us either so they started heading down the mountain in front of us. Turns out they were pretty surefooted so they went all the way down to Cave Creek (about 800' vertical down) in front of us. This was just a taste of things to come.
As you head down the last mile to Cave Creek, the views of "Blue Rock Canyon" and the surrounding terrain are absolutely gorgeous. And there's a spectacular array of saguaros that, as I said above, are the healthiest I've seen anywhere. I can't believe more people don't hike this trail. The scenery is fantastic. And we didn't see a single other person all day.
Now, here's what's not so fantastic. Once you get to the Cave Creek Trail, we headed left to find a campsite along the water. The cattle have overtaken this gorgeous, riparian area. We stopped about every 200 yards at potential campsites along the creek and there was so much cow poop there literally wasn't a spot to pitch a tent. Plus, the cattle have trampled everything in sight along the creek. It's a real shame. We backpacked this route in Feb 2020 (a shuttle hike from Seven Springs to Spur Cross) and I don't remember a single visible sign of cattle grazing. Now, it's a mess and, c'mon man, something needs to be done to save this wilderness.
Back to the hike... After heading ~1 mile south of the Skunk Tank trail junction, we found a suitable campsite along the creek that had a fire ring and less cow poop (not zero, mind you... just less). With some creative poop relocation, we were able to create a pretty nice campsite. That night, the low was 29 degrees, so it was a bit cool in the morning.
Our hike out on Cave Creek Trail #4 the next day was lovely but uneventful. Following the trail along the creek gave us completely different scenery vs. the day before. It took us about 3 hours to cover the 5 miles (with full packs and with occasional breaks).
Overall, this was an absolutely beautiful loop hike and I highly recommended it. There's very few people on the trail and we didn't see any other people camping on a Friday night. Even though I vented about the cattle grazing, don't let that stop you from going. We really need some more people to hike this loop to keep the trails from fading away.
Overall: 4.5 stars with the only deduction being due to the cattle situation. |
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Quien Sabe Spring |
Dry |
Dry |
| | | No flow near the trail. I did not explore up to the spring itself |
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Skunk Tank Canyon |
Pools to trickle |
Pools to trickle |
| | | I could see pools down in the canyon but Cave Creek is so close (and flowing), so it's much easier to access. | | _____________________
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So off I went....
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