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| Backpack | 32.00 Miles |
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| | Backpack | 32.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| | 25 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | This is my first post. HAZ triplogs have been very valuable resources for planning my trips so I decided to share mine. I'll try to do more of this in the future. I wonder if some of these trails can survive if people like me are hesitant to visit them due to uncertain conditions.
Much of my description is based on route-finding because that seemed to be the theme for this adventure. Being slow to accept technology (especially in the wilderness) I attempted this with a compass, a Mazatzal Wilderness Map, several black and white prints from my TOPO! software and what I could remember from HAZ triplogs.
My teenage sons and I set out on the Midnight Mesa loop unsure of trail conditions and a little unsure of my route finding abilities. I typically hike on more established trails. We left the house early hoping to get to Sheep Bridge early enough to put some distance on the first day. We got shortly past Seven Springs campground when an elderly woman parked in the road flagged us down. She did not speak very much English but she told me she had run out of gas. We ended up driving her to the Bartlett Ranger Station where they helped her call a tow truck. They also helped set her up with an escort back to town because we were afraid that she wasn't as sharp as she once was and didn't realize that she was driving deeper into the wilds. She must have been there all night because it was early when I found her. She spoke such little English that I had to determine that on my own.
So with that over, I tried to make up some time getting back to sheep bridge but the road is pretty rough. We finally got on the trail at about 11am. Not bad considering...
The actual hike:
We had no trouble at all following the trail for the first 5 or 6 miles. Then as the trail started to climb we had to rely on cairns more often but had little trouble finding our route to Mountain Spring for the evening.
The next day I got confused by the trail signs. There are three signs near Mountain Spring. The first one is the trail to Davenport Trail/ Deadman Creek before Mountain Spring. The second sign showed Dutchman Grave Trail going to the left, with Willow Springs trail to Sheep Bridge behind us, and Mountain Spring to the right. So where did Willow Springs Trail continue? I didn't want to go down Dutchman Grave Trail so I went back towards Mountain Spring to see if I missed something. We finally continued on towards Dutchman Grave and found a third sign for the Willow Springs/Dutchman Grave intersection. My point is the second sign should not have mentioned Dutchman Grave Trail until the third intersection because we were actually still on the Willow Springs Trail.
The trail climbed out of the valley and across some ridges to Midnight Mesa. This section of the trail was very easy to follow until we approached the Midnight Mesa traverse. Once we found the right line across the traverse we were able to follow the trail but there were no markers until the other end of the traverse. There was not much way we could lose it with steep slopes on either side of the trail. We found markers on the other side of the traverse and followed to the sign-post (no sign) at the Midnight Mesa Trail intersection. We lost the trail and a lot of time here. The trail drops into the first drainage past the Mesa but I continued too far down the right-hand ridge of the valley. We scoured the mountainside and decided to just go down the valley and see if we could find a marker. I came across the tracks of a large elk that had took me right to a marker at the left hand side of the drainage. This drainage had a nice flow of water and some rocky pools. We followed the elk, who obviously knew the trail, from one marker to another but they were sparsely placed and overgrown. We lost the trail again as the canyon narrowed and ended up walking down the wash all the way to Wet Bottom Creek where we found the crossing point where we lost the trail again. We spread out searching again and found a corral just downstream from the crossing. I headed towards the low saddle that the map indicated and finally found our first marker and there were the elk tracks that took us to the next marker and we were able to follow them all the way to the Fuller seep drainage. We spread out and finally found a creek crossing marker in the overgrown brush. Encouraged, we spread out again and searched for any sign of the trail in an area with a lot of deadfalls. We searched for the trail for another hour or more but it was coming to decision time because we had already lost so much time. The afternoon was getting late and if we continued to have this much trouble route-finding on the rest of the loop we wouldn't make it around in our allotted 4 days. And not being able to follow the trail made it hard to schedule camp sites and water availability. I decided we should abandon the loop and return from where we came. This was hard to accept and I will always wonder, was I using good judgement or wimping out? We backtracked to Wet Bottom Creek to camp.
Day 3 we back-tracked the Midnight Trail like champs. We found it easy to follow now that we know the trail. I placed a couple of cairns but I can think of a few other places I should have placed them. There were 3 deer in the basin near Mountain Spring. This is the first sighting of large animals but we saw a lot of deer and elk tracks. We took a break at Mtn. Spring around noon and decided to return to the truck that night. On the way back I almost stepped on a Gila Monster. I may or may not have made a girly noise. As I went around the beast it lunged and hissed at me giving me another little shot of adrenaline. We finally made Sheep Bridge as it got dark.
We did not any sign of humans at all, not even a boot track.
Perhaps now I should do the loop from the other direction. If I can find my way to Fuller Seep area I know I can complete the loop.
Or maybe I should embrace the GPS. |
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Wildflowers Observation Light
Wildflowers were abundant in the lower desert sections but it was nowhere near peak bloom. The plant life was very diverse in the lower section. |
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Mountain Spring - Mazatzal |
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| | | Spring pool was full but not over-flowing. Water in livestock troughs. Plenty of water as expected. | | _____________________
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