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| Hiking | 22.40 Miles |
3,590 AEG |
| | Hiking | 22.40 Miles | 6 Hrs 42 Mns | | 3.34 mph |
| 3,590 ft AEG | | 15 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | Drove up from Tempe at 4am on 3 hours of sleep with plans for a big day. Wound up doing Boynton, Fay, and Long Canyons all in one day before driving back home. Combined triplog here.
Boynton - full trail plus Subway - 7.89mi, 1296ft AEG, 2:10 elapsed
Reached Boynton trailhead at 7am about 30 min before sunrise. There were around a dozen cars there already, the lot about half full.
The beginning of the trail by the resort is quite "urban"  In the interest of time I planned to jog as much of the day as possible where the trails allowed (first ultra is in 1 month!), and managed to overtake everyone else on the trail and reach the subway first so I had it to myself briefly. The turnoff to the subway is almost impossible to miss with how much traffic goes there, but I did encounter a few people later in the full trail who had missed it.
The subway ramp was steeper than I expected. I shimmied up the right-most side. Coming back down I took a far easier path that you would find to the left of the ramp, through a branched archway, that takes you right up to the ruins alcove. I would recommend using that unless you want the challenge of the ramp. Coming back to the main trail, it was easy to take a wrong turn a couple times.
I knew there were other ruins in Boyntonn but ran out of time trying to internet sleuth all my destinations before driving up, and hoped they would be a little more obvious in Boynton. Unfortunately I didn't manage to spot the others, so I plan to go back eventually.
The rest of the trail was pleasant forest trail but not particularly dramatic. The strong smell of pine was wonderful. Upon reaching the end, I once again hoped to spy some ruins from the vantage point but had no luck. Upon returning to the trailhead it was a total zoo. I would guess 200 cars up and down the street spilling out of the lot, people getting dropped at the trailhead, etc. I didn't know yet that you could park along the street, and didn't want to risk getting shut out of Fay parking and losing any spot at all, so I left my car at Boynton and after a pit stop jogged down to Fay with just my tripod in hand.
Fay Canyon - 5.42mi, 909ft AEG, 2:08 elapsed
Fay began with wide, gentle dirt paths. The turnoff to the arch is again quite obvious. I worked my way up beneath the arch for some photo ops. The arch is separated from the cliff, but the gap is narrow so it's difficult to see that from most angles. For that reason I found the pictures better from underneath the arch than on top of it. To get to the top you'll aim to ascend the slope to the right/south of the arch. I followed a well defined path going up and to the right, but it had quite a lot of prickly pear, and a spot or two that narrowed and required some attention to footing. Coming down I tried an alternate path down a rock fall. It had no exposure and no cacti, just lots of large rocks which made a little slower going, so I'd rate the paths about equal. When I reached the bottom a stranger asked if I drove a particular car. They had been at Boynton and saw me go to my car and were hoping to get my spot when they saw me jog off, so they gave up and went to Fay instead. They were good sports about it.
I returned to the main trail and headed up to the fork. I knew ruins would be on the right fork, but didn't know exactly where. I went up the wash and some areas that looked fairly well traveled, and saw plenty of footprints. I went a ways up and down the right fork twice and still found nothing, but the foliage was dense and made it hard to see much. Skipping between rocks in the wash, I managed to roll my ankle fairly hard, but fortunately it didn't catch up with me until the drive home stiffened me up. Gave up looking for the Fay ruins, but at the next canyon received a tip from a traveler about where to find them when I go back.
Long Canyon - 9.12mi, 1385ft AEG, 3:24 elapsed
The whole area was crawling with people by this point, so I parked at the Mescal trailhead and didn't bother going down to check Long Canyon trailhead. Mescal was full, but I was lucky to get a spot from someone leaving. I jogged to the large nexus intersection and briefly took a wrong turn left which I believe heads to the Birthing Cave which I didn't really have interest in.
I reached "butt rock" a couple miles in, and continued up Long trail for now according to plan. After another mile or two, I reached my first point of interest. At a rocky wash with a large pine, there was a small but fairly clear path leading off to the left and switchbacking uphill. Here the path became quite steep, but the section is short. After just a few moments you should see the ladder come into view. Reaching a fork, I headed left first, to a nice Hohokam dwelling. This one may be have been restored at some point, but it was cool nonetheless. I worked my way back to the fork and up the other direction toward the ladder and another small ruin next to it. I shimmied into a small cave behind the ladder for some photo ops.
I did not intend to go further up Long trail, so I headed back to "butt rock" and turned east this time, following a well traveled path. I was glad to encounter a couple other travelers for this stretch which involved a couple small rocky scrambles. The goal is the opening between the ice cream cone rock on the left, and the 3 sisters formation to the right. The ruins were neat, I found it difficult to get a photo angle that showed them off well, they look better in person  Heading back down solo, I did have to search a few minutes to find the right spot back down over the long ledge.
I changed into clothes that didn't smell bad for the drive home and enjoyed the most overpriced but delicious quarter pounder with cheese in as long as I can remember. |
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There is a small (not original) dwelling under the arch. We followed the wall up to a faint path that took us on top of the arch (not that impressive up there). It seemed like there could be more dwellings up another level, but the footing was too slippery to scramble safely up there. We headed back down and decided to see what the end of the trail looked like. This was underwhelming to say the least. We did have to direct two hikers that were scrambling up past the trail end, looking for the arch, in completely the wrong spot 
They ended up needing to follow us to the entrance of the side path because they were confused. That was our “good deed” for the day. Fay canyon isn’t my favorite canyon and wouldn’t be next on my list to return. Glad we saw the arch just once though! Next stop I didn’t record, but we headed over to oak creek for some creekside sauntering. I really do love snowdona!
