Superstition Wilderness with Maxie and Richard
March 14-16, 2002
(Here are the verbatim notes from the trip, along with some original pictures, on a crude digital camera. At the end is a little more analytical statement about the passage.)
3/14
Arrived Rogers Trough at 10:40 a.m. (actually, began hiking). Day—bright and hazy, with 20 mph wind on the
ridges (cool, crisp – takes me back to windy ridges in NH White Mtns). Made Reavis Saddle in 2 hours for lunch
(50-60 degrees, 20 mph winds).
Songs: “Oh What a Beautiful
Morning” (Oklahoma!!?!)
as we’re getting ready to roll. “The
Road Goes Ever On,” J.R.R. Tolkien—while climbing to Reavis Saddle, with Maxie and me trying to remember verses. Flowers: not many, but yellow marigold-type, 2 purple,
1 many petaled, 1 4-petaled, 1 white daisy-type flower (bursage?), 1 light
purple daisy-type flower. Animals: 3
mule deer in wash (from car), 1 lizard, quail.
Plants: manzanita, agave, Alligator juniper on saddle.
3/15
7 a.m., 25 degrees, water frozen.
Last night – Sherry Camp at Pine Creek. Sherry and cigars. Seems to be plenty of water – Reavis, Pine
Creek (big pool) Walnut Spring (decent, smelly pool). Sunny, 50 degrees on Two Bar Ridge before Klondike. 11:30
a.m., called Chris from the ridge and got the answering machine. Animals:
quail, scorpion, lizard. Indian
ruin 200 yards from Walnut Spring.
Dropoff and climb after Klondike Spring area (didn’t find the spring
itself) is a killer. Temperature on the
ridge after Klondike probably 45-50 degrees,
with 25 mph winds. Gorgeous panoramas
while hiking on the ridge. Did not find
either the tank or North Pole Spring on the trail before a climb to the
wilderness boundary. Long, approx. 10
mi. day. About a mile and a half from
the wilderness boundary, we picked up a hunting dog with a swollen right front
leg. Found the group of stock tanks
marked on the map outside the wilderness boundary. Only one had significant water in it. Hiked approx. 1 mile down a 4x4 road to get
to the tank, and camped next to it at about 6:30 p.m. So tired that we ate gorp for dinner, and
weren’t able to filter any water.
3/16
In the morning, Bill Mercer, a puma hunter from Globe, came
out looking for his dogs (3), of which one was found. Another came in after he had left in the
morning. The mud in the water buckets
had not settled out in the morning; Richard’s filter was clogged after just a
little while of pumping it. My filter
pumped about 2 liters before becoming very hard to use. However, my filter did not get the dissolved
clay completely out. It started out like
chocolate milk and came out of my filter a light grey-brown. It was a lesson in the limitations of
filters, and in what one might be willing to drink. We made coffee and oatmeal from the filtered
water, and cached ½ liter as emergency backup in my pack. Two and a half miles later, we found
Cottonwood Spring, which had clean water.
The thing that makes this hike hard occurs after Klondike
Spring (which we didn’t find because we didn’t look for it). To that point, water had been plentiful and
easy to find, even in a drought year.
But in the unnamed creek canyon, things get dry. The last water on the trail that we saw was
Walnut Spring until a tank at the wilderness boundary at FR 83. Also, this canyon is steep both ways, down
and up. Though the elevation loss and
gain is about the same as from Rogers Trough to Reavis Saddle, it’s a lot
steeper, especially on the North (climbing) side. With fewer switchbacks, this climb really
takes it out of you. Just a slog.
We ascended to Two Bar Ridge. Do breathtaking views and suddenly colder
temperatures make up for that slog?
Maybe, if you planned it right.
We may not have. Richard wanted
to make it to the edge of the wilderness area by nightfall. We soldiered on, but a lot of oomph was taken
out by the long descent and climb (we’d passed a horse/donkey skeleton halfway
up the climb).
We didn’t have time to look for the tank marked on the FS
wilderness map in Tule
Canyon. It wasn’t really apparent from the
trail. We got to the edge of the
wilderness area at 6 p.m. (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.), saw a tank in the valley to the
right and camped there.
Tank Camp—a learning experience.
1. There are some kinds of dirt that pumps can’t
handle.
I’ll have to ask Phil F. whether
mud can be in solution (it can).
Darkness caught us making camp, so we saved the water purification for
the following morning, after Richard had clogged his pump doing less than a
half pint of purification.
Gorp, jerky,
water, wine, and bed.
2.
The tanks at this end were pretty dry. There’s actually a metal tank on top of the
ridge above the trail. We were too late
and too tired to investigate, but it’s possible that the tanks in this valley
are filled from there.
2. Tank water doesn’t settle out, and can’t be strained
through a handkerchief to get the brown out.
The best I could do with my First Need filter was to move from dark
brown to light brown. We used it anyway
for coffee and oatmeal.
According to the Beartooth Wilderness map of the Supers it’s
17.7 mi. point to point from Rogers Trough to the Roosevelt
side wilderness boundary. Richard pegged
it at 20 mi, as did the women who wrote On the Arizona Trail. (Of course, they also said that it was 9.5
miles between water points, which is almost certainly false. But it’s not clear whether or not they’re
counting Cottonwood Spring, outside the wilderness boundary, as the next
water.)
Next morning, it wasn’t quite 2 miles to Cottonwood Spring,
according to the map, but it felt longer.
Good water at Cottonwood and plenty of it, all the way to where we left
the trail, near the marina and visitors center on Roosevelt Lake. There are many spurs out on this trail; we
took the Frazier Trailhead spur, and so had a hard time hooking up with
Chris. I’d been under the weather for
more than a day by that time; I didn’t know until I took my temperature at home
that I’d been hiking with a 101 degree fever.
Turns out that Chris’s sickness was the flu.
Summary: A
great trip, but too hard the way we did it.
Aside from not getting sick, the best way to do it would be to camp at
Reavis on night 1, Klondike Spring (if it can be found) on night 2, and a full
day to FR 83 on day 3.
Certainly the women who wrote
On the Arizona Trail
are wrong when they call the trail difficult to follow and overgrown. I’ve experienced
much worse in the
Mazatzals. But water is critical, and it
turns out that we didn’t check the one most critical aspect of a comfortable
hike: Klondike Spring.
Addendum, 11/26/2022
I'm just back from my first try at giving back to the Arizona Trail. We hiked in on November 18, 2022 from the Campaign (used to be Upper Horral?) Trailhead, up the Reavis Gap Trail for about 3.5 miles, then another mile south on the Arizona Trail, to Pine Creek. We set up camp to do trail work on the approximately 2 miles south of our campsite. The work crew consisted of 10 people besides me, including the two horse packers who supplied the crew with fresh water and packed in some camp supplies.
Great weather, not as cold as I had feared. It had been about 6 years since my last overnight backpack (though there had been plenty of base camp/dayhikes on the trail in the years since). So, I was hindered initially by my lack of packing fitness and the fact that I'd packed too much (hefting packs at the end of the trip, I found that mine was heavier by 5-10 pounds, without the tools we'd carried in). One thing I hadn't expected was the problem of hiking in multifocal glasses instead of contacts. That made me noticeably less secure in my footing. Beyond that, I was the only one with an external frame pack, which I'd mispacked at the beginning.
However, I found my fitness in the two days of trail maintenance (lopping overhanging branches from the trail and grubbing out live oaks, catclaw acacia, and yucca that had encroached on the trail. Hard but satisfying work, though even with long sleeves and gloves I had plenty of "rabid chipmunk" scars (scratches from thorns on arms and hands). The weather was perfect, and the company was great. I'd do it again easily.
White Rock Springs is below a steep climb down, in the
spruce. Though it doesn’t look like it,
there’s a great campsite east off the trail about 100 yards down or so from the
spring. Water flow at the spring was
small, but there were two small full tanks.
We didn’t filter, just boiled, but the water had a lot of dissolved
lime. Cloud cover dissipated overnight,
taking the temp down to 25 degrees or so.
It warmed up quickly after sunup.
We got underway at about 9:30 a.m.
Great hiking!
The day was perfectly clear, and warmed up to about 65 degrees. Most of the day was level, along a ridge that
took us to within 2 miles of LF ranch.
There’s significant grazing for a couple of miles along that ridge with
well(!)-used stock tanks built. They
would work for emergency water, but aren’t appetizing. The trail drops just past Fuzzy’s Point (with
a small marker). From the point, you get
a panoramic view of the Mazatzals and the cut-butte valley of the East
Verde. It is easy to see why LF Ranch is
still inhabited – the setting is ideal.
But you’re really cut off from amenities.
