Arizona Trail: Passage 20

From Forest Road 429, West of Roosevelt Dam, to the Frazier Trailhead.

December 8, 2002.  With Chris, Richard, and Sarah.  Weather:  55-70 degrees, clear.

Total hike from FR 429 trailhead to SR188:  6.72 mi.  Beginning from 3750 ft. to 2225 ft.  Desert scrub/grassland to Upper Sonoran.

Clear skies, great vistas of Fish Creek Hill/Apache Lake to the south, The Sierra Ancha and Roosevelt lake (what’s left of it in the drought) to the north.  Easy hiking on dirt roads and new trails.  Little elevation gain, but about 1000 feet of full loss.  Covered springs and seeps, but little evidence of grazing.  I think the [Pine Mountain] passage begins at the trailhead where we stopped, and goes about 7 miles to Lone Pine Saddle [actually, it goes all the way to SR-87].  There are supposedly Indian ruins up there.

Easy hike across ridges, for the most part, until lunch at 12:30.  We hung around on the ridge until about 1, then climbed down steeply to SR 188.  There’s a radio tower up there that’s not connected to any wires, so you can’t figure out what it does.  This tower overlooks Roosevelt dam, now off limits because of 9/11.  There’s a suspension bridge over the mouth of the Salt River in front of the Dam.  It looks like a metal rainbow with streams of rain (cables) coming down from the bow.

Richard and Jim:  3.56 miles to Frazier Trailhead.

We’d parked the car at the pullout before the bridge, but the AZT continued beyond the bridge.  Richard and I hiked over the bridge (very little vehicular traffic), then up a ravine to a low ridgeline.  This section skirts the town of Roosevelt, and winds through all the drainages.  Though this was listed on the AZT description as a 2-mile trail, going in and out of drainages actually made it 3.5 or more miles.  The landscape is badly cow-scarred, and some of the trail dirt is loose and fine.  It’s Sonoran landscape, more used than that across the bridge.  Interesting things we saw:  an old rusted U.S. Dept. of the Interior sign in the shape of a shield, probably dating from the 1930’s, designating the area a wildlife refuge.  We wanted to take it, but that would have been vandalism.  Also, I stepped off into the air on a narrow part of the trail, and really banged a knee.  Luckily the paloverde and jojoba broke my fall.  The trail ended at the Frazier Trailhead, where Richard, Maxie, and I had come out on the ill-fated trip last Spring Break, when I had a 102 degree fever.

Here's the passage map:  https://aztrail.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/20_FourPeaks.pdf