Arizona Trail: Passage 23

Mazatzal Divide Passage

This is the first passage of the Arizona Trail that I hiked.  It's also my first multiday packing trip with Richard.  He has the HikeAZ handle Mazatzal, because his project during the end of the 1990s and beginning decade of the 2000's was to hike as much in the Mazatzal Wilderness as possible.  At the time, I was not aware of the Arizona Trail, but this was the beginning.

This is also the second extended backpacking trip that I had taken in Arizona, the first being a traverse of the Mazatzals with Maxie in 1998 (which overlapped this trip from Horse Camp Seep to the Park).  In that trip, we'd traversed the wilderness west to east from Sheep Bridge Trailhead to City Creek (not the smartest direction of travel).  The year after this inaugurated an approximately 13-year annual backpacking or backcountry trip tradition among the three of us.  The Superstitions passage, as well as part of the Four Peaks passages were done as annual group trips.

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But here are the notes from May 15-18, 1999, with Richard.

5/15 Mt. Peeley to Windsor Seep

Weather:  Clear, high 70’s low 45 degrees.  Fair amount of initial climbing, but with good vistas.  We could see the Mt. Peeley Road until 2 p.m.  (Road surface good, but narrow and steep.  Many recreational people.)

Approx. 4 p.m. we found Bear Spring.  It was running decently and the spring had been improved with concrete.  We did not check Fisher Spring.

Widnsor Seep 5 p.m.  Great views (as usual).  Very tired.  At approx. 5:30 two younger men came from the Barnhart.  They seemed nice, but fired their gun several times in their camp at night, the last (2) times at 11:30.  Nervous night, but perhaps this was just cowboy stupidity.

5/16

Did not check Windsor Seep, since I would have had to pass our marksmen’s (?) camp.  We were walking by 8:45.  Nice views, but uneventful, to Chilson.  At Chilson, I was expecting the tanks to be full.  They weren’t.  I followed the pipe to the spring, which was running decently.  Lunch at Chilson, met a dayhiker, and filled the bottles at Chilson spring.  As it turned out, we needn’t have spent that extra 45 minutes.  About a mile down the trail, we came to some (slightly) running pools, right across the trail.  We sponged off here.

At Horse Camp Seep, water is available, but not immediately apparent.  We decided to camp here (at 3:30) because it was just a bit longer to get there, and because we knew there was water at Horse Camp Seep.  That means a longer day tomorrow, but I’ll be backtracking some of the trail I did last year.

Been feeling funny this trip, a bit.  Just nervous – about water, about gun-toting campers – even though so far everything’s been fine.  I put it down to severe exertion (though the trails aren’t as hard as last year, I’m not in as good of shape).

(If I ever digitize my film slides from this trip, there will be pictures.)

Here's the passage map:  https://aztrail.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/23_MazatzalDivide.pdf