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| Hiking | 14.38 Miles |
2,951 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.38 Miles | 7 Hrs 58 Mns | | 1.84 mph |
| 2,951 ft AEG | 8 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | I expected this adventure to take me five or six hours so I could get home early enough to go to a movie with my wife. With eight hours on the trail, that didn't work out. 
I parked my truck a bit past the cattle pen near the start of the Rondo Spring Trail track and followed a cow trail down to the road/trail. I've been on this trail before but I didn't remember it being as rocky as it is. There's very little smooth ground throughout. I missed one turn out of a wash to Rondo Spring but caught myself fairly quick.
The two times I've been to Rondo Spring, the trough has been full and water has flowed from the pump. Today it was empty and I wasn't able to get any water out of the pump. I don't know if the pump is broken or if the spring has dried up. That was really disappointing as I thought it was a dependable water source.
From there I continued the trail to the junction with the trail into Spur Cross. I took the Black Mesa trail as it followed the fence line for awhile. Once the trail moved away from the fence, I lost it. There really was little noticeable tread and I had to depend on spotting cairns, a lot of them in disrepair. I would catch the trail and then lose it again several times. Eventually I headed straight up the side of the hill to find the Black Mesa survey mark but was unable to locate it.
From the survey mark, I headed north to the end of Black Mesa and picked up the trail again as it dropped into the saddle between Black Mesa and New River Mesa. I continued following the trail up onto New River Mesa and headed towards the old road where I went WNW until I reached geocache 4RAF which was placed mid October and I was its first finder.
It took me over four hours to reach the cache and was 1:15, so I turned around and headed back. At that point I was worried about running out of light if I got delayed for some reason.
Once back on Black Mesa, I tried to follow the trail but had difficulty. I did notice a yellow painted tire hanging on a juniper near the mesa's edge and figured it may be marking where the trail drops off the side so I headed over there. It did, so I had some trail to follow down the steep grade.
I had more success following the trail on the way back, mostly because I knew roughly where it would be from earlier.
This was a tough hike, I was beat from dodging rocks and prickly pear all day. The views were big and the weather was perfect, but I'm not really sure I enjoyed the hike. |
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Rondo Spring |
Dry |
Dry |
| | | Trough was dry and pump didn't seem to work, though I only pumped it for maybe 20 strokes. | | _____________________
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