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| Hiking | 22.00 Miles |
1,000 AEG |
| | Hiking | 22.00 Miles | 1 Day 2 Hrs 30 Mns | | |
| 1,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | | I just finished this hike this evening. This is probably one of the sweetest hikes I have been on in Arizona. Yes it is difficult, yes it is rugged and yes there are no trails. I did the hike with one of my friends. We parked a car at Gisela and then drove up to the Hellsgate trailhead in Little Green Valley east of Payson. We began our trek on Tuesday at 2:20pm and hiked rather slowly along the Hellsgate trail until it dumped us onto Tonto creek. There are a bunch of hills to climb through the first part of the hike and a lot of really neat views. You will see a large stagnant water hole on the left about 4 or so miles into the hike that lets you know you are almost to the creek. We dropped into the creek at 4:50pm, so it took us 2 hours and 30 minutes for the first section. We then took to the creek, hiking, rock hopping, wading and swimming for the next few hours. It was very cold and windy, but still a lot of fun. Darkness fell on us about 8:00pm and we continued on for another hour with the use of our headlamps. This had to be the coolest experience I have ever had. We swam easily a 100 yard stretch of the canyon with vertical granite walls on both sides of us in pitch black with nothin but our headlamps and stars overhead. The air temperature had to be in the fifties and the water temperature probably in the sixties. It was cold but the experience was out of this world. We found a campsite soon after on a sandy beach that was infested with spiders and some scorpions. We slept there after eating and woke up to the sunrise. We waited until the sun was upon us at 8:00am to begin our hike again. We had covered approximately 4 miles of the creek the night before so we knew we had to move quick to make it out of the canyon this day. We began to move quickly and reached a few more swims early on in the morning. As the day heated up the water was welcomed to relieve us from the heat. There were many swims at least 100 or more yards long and all very scenic. Many of the pools may be avoided to speed up your hiking time. We ended up making it out of the canyon by 5:00pm that evening. The entire trip took us roughly 26 hours and 30 minutes to cover the 17 miles of canyon and approximately 5 mile hike from Hellsgate trailhead. This left my knees very sore and hurting as well as tons of scraps on my legs from brush and branches. I will probably be doing this hike again due to its immense seclusion and beauty. We were able to travel so fast due to our lightweight packs which we wore on our backs the entire trip, even through the swims. We made sure to put all of our dry items into waterproof bags. |
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