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| Hiking | 16.10 Miles |
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| | Hiking | 16.10 Miles | 7 Hrs 42 Mns | | 2.26 mph |
| 35 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | After a beautiful and peaceful night of car-camping at the City Creek TH, I joined a fun group of folks from the TLC Hiking meetup group for a hike to the summit of Knob Mountain via the Mazatzal Divide Trail. I’d read up on the hike details several months prior but did not re-read it before doing this hike… let’s just say, the HAZ Description is very well written and right on! The “dominating” and rather intimidating [given the snow cover] views of North Peak / large neighboring peaks definitely had me fooled right up to the turn-off for unofficial trail that leads to the summit of Knob Mountain.
As for the summit views, I couldn’t agree more with the way they are described, “not impressive.” It’s definitely one of the few times I can remember where the summit views were not the best views of the hike; however, since the views en route to the summit were much better than expected, it was definitely worthwhile.
Speaking of the summit, this was also one of the few times were it seemed that either Route Scout was off [in terms of identifying the highpoint] OR the official point is different than the high point. The first point in question [which everyone agreed was the actual highpoint] is about a half mile from the official trail, as noted in the description. However, the icon on Route Scout showed the summit to be the other prominent point about a half mile after that. Our group continued to that point, [where we encountered a large pile of boulders located exactly where my track overlapped with the summit icon]; however, once there, everyone agreed that the prominent point closer to the trail was definitely the highpoint. A few of us took a good several minutes looking for registers in both places but we couldn’t find any.
On the way back, [as shown by my GPS tracks], I got bit by the bushwhacking bug. Originally I pulled my classic, ‘hypotenuse vs. two sides’ shortcut to catch up with the group after they pulled away while I was sidetracked looking for the register… but the five minutes [or less] of off-trail didn’t cut it. A few minutes later, I was off again, initially intending to take another shortcut… but having enough fun that I decided to take my time and enjoy things. About mid-way back during my long off-trail segment, I ended up in this sweet drainage with solid boulders and many small beautiful waterfalls that were flowing lightly. It would have been awesome to ride this drainage to the bottom, [which was my plan initially when I first located it and checked my tracks on the Route Scout topo]… however, I literally got brushed out towards the bottom and had to change course.
Trust me when I say, “NO DICE!” to riding out this drainage without the likes of a machete [or full out chainsaw]. I was preparing to test the waters and blast my body through a thicket of cat-claw like vegetation to see if the brush would let up further downstream. Fortunately, just prior to doing so, two of my fingers graze the thorns on this shrub, resulting in two small but relatively deep scratches. Full contact would’ve been a bloody nightmare to say the least, likely resulting in nothing less that full out gouges. In fact, later that night, I couldn’t figure out why one of my scratches was causing so much soreness when I’m normally not fazed by superficial stuff like that. After soaking in the Jacuzzi, what I thought had been dirt that was lodged in the deepest part of the scratch proved to be the head of a thorn. Talk about a real piece of work to remove…!
Boxed out by Mother Nature, I jumped out of the drainage and continued to contour ridges for what seemed like an eternity before I finally had enough and decided to work my way back over to the trail. Sans the million and one varieties of cacti I’m accustomed to in Southern AZ, I had a little too much fun barreling through vegetation instead of picking my way around it, most of which included Manzanita and some other thorny shrub that was not sharp enough to penetrate my trusty bushwhacking pants. Let’s just say, by the time I got back to Southern AZ later that night, my shins sort of looked like the outcome of a skateboarding stunt gone wrong! |
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| God save the Prom Queen, cuz [reality check!] AEG's King...! |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Route 
Plenty of filterbale pools from recent storms but no water from actual spring source itself. 
Well, we first decided on the safety side to take the known longer Mazatzal TR back hoping that we could reach the ending TH before dark and thumb a ride with someone/anyone back to our vehicle. We then started out, then within 300ft of heading up #23, we found the actual trail intersection of 23/24(which we had previously missed coming in to "The Park" area); So now another short discussion and since we can now actually see a real trail section of #24, we make a 90 degree right turn and start heading back on the North Pk TR#24 
. Then we closely follow what we see as this TR24 and less than another 300ft, we intersect the Mazatzal Divide TR23 again.. 
power"!!
) and then back track to Midnight trail and down to Upper Wet Bottom Creek crossing.
