Monday, November 28, 2005
I woke up early this morning with the moon in my eyes - it was only a tiny sliver, but it was bright! Then Savannah burrowed underneath the covers and draped herself purring across my stomach. Made it very hard to crawl out of the warm bed into the cold room.
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Now, I know that the people who post the writeups on Hike Arizona tend to be gonzo hikers, so I make allowances when I'm reading the trail descriptions. Even so, the 14-mile hike from the Peralta trailhead to Canyon Lake looked like it fell into the challenging but fun category. My friends "Skeet" and "Judy", who asked me not to use their real names, accompanied me on this hike on Saturday.
For starters, I severely underestimated the time it would take to drop the one car at Canyon Lake and shuttle down to Peralta. It was after 8 by the time we hit the trail - our target had been 7:00. Still it was a nice morning if a bit humid, cool with shifting clouds. On the way up to the Fremont Saddle we met a hiker in a sombrero who identified himself as a Snowbird from Tennessee. It's a healthy climb to the saddle; we had a quick breakfast and started down the other side with great views of Weaver's Needle as we passed it. We were slowly getting more and more blue sky, but still nice and cool. After the Needle the Peralta goes through an area that was hit by fire long enough ago for the blackened trees and bushes to be sprouting new growth. Following that there's an area with a lot of quartz and what looked like iron-rich outcroppings (red). We passed Palamino Mountain, where we could see another hiker investigating Aylor's Arch, and stopped for lunch around 2:00, near the southern end of Boulder Canyon Trail.
This is where we met one of the 2 other hikers we saw on this trail, a woman coming the opposite direction from First Water. She warned us that the Boulder Canyon Trail was very rugged from there on, and very easy to lose (she had added some extra cairns along the way). Hilarity ensued as we discovered her warning was accurate. Miles of scrambling over boulders, criss-crossing the riverbed, and cairn-spotting. In some places the trail disappeared completely. We kept pushing on because I knew the trail got more civilized at the Second Water junction, and I didn't want to be stuck on this section when dusk started falling.
In fact, we were well past the Second Water junction and at the saddle where you can first see Canyon Lake in the distance when night fell. Coincidentally, this was the point where my past experience of this trail ended. Since "Judy" and "Skeet" were sharing a headlamp, and "Judy" had no depth perception after dark, it fell to me to lead the final 2 to 2-1/2 miles. Stumbling along a twisty, up-and-down trail that you can only see about 10 yards in front of you with the wind rising and the coldest night of the year so far coming on is a needlessly exciting way to experience the Superstition Wilderness. I became convinced that we were on the wrong trail and headed towards Tortilla Flat, except on the rare occasion when the marina lights popped into distant view. "Skeet" pulled a muscle, and then suddenly we topped the last ridge and found ourselves looking stright down at the parking lot. As we stumbled sorely to the car, a gentleman who worked at the marina asked if we were OK - he'd been watching our lights coming down all the way from the top of the mountain.
And I do this for fun.
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------------------
Now, I know that the people who post the writeups on Hike Arizona tend to be gonzo hikers, so I make allowances when I'm reading the trail descriptions. Even so, the 14-mile hike from the Peralta trailhead to Canyon Lake looked like it fell into the challenging but fun category. My friends "Skeet" and "Judy", who asked me not to use their real names, accompanied me on this hike on Saturday.
For starters, I severely underestimated the time it would take to drop the one car at Canyon Lake and shuttle down to Peralta. It was after 8 by the time we hit the trail - our target had been 7:00. Still it was a nice morning if a bit humid, cool with shifting clouds. On the way up to the Fremont Saddle we met a hiker in a sombrero who identified himself as a Snowbird from Tennessee. It's a healthy climb to the saddle; we had a quick breakfast and started down the other side with great views of Weaver's Needle as we passed it. We were slowly getting more and more blue sky, but still nice and cool. After the Needle the Peralta goes through an area that was hit by fire long enough ago for the blackened trees and bushes to be sprouting new growth. Following that there's an area with a lot of quartz and what looked like iron-rich outcroppings (red). We passed Palamino Mountain, where we could see another hiker investigating Aylor's Arch, and stopped for lunch around 2:00, near the southern end of Boulder Canyon Trail.
This is where we met one of the 2 other hikers we saw on this trail, a woman coming the opposite direction from First Water. She warned us that the Boulder Canyon Trail was very rugged from there on, and very easy to lose (she had added some extra cairns along the way). Hilarity ensued as we discovered her warning was accurate. Miles of scrambling over boulders, criss-crossing the riverbed, and cairn-spotting. In some places the trail disappeared completely. We kept pushing on because I knew the trail got more civilized at the Second Water junction, and I didn't want to be stuck on this section when dusk started falling.
In fact, we were well past the Second Water junction and at the saddle where you can first see Canyon Lake in the distance when night fell. Coincidentally, this was the point where my past experience of this trail ended. Since "Judy" and "Skeet" were sharing a headlamp, and "Judy" had no depth perception after dark, it fell to me to lead the final 2 to 2-1/2 miles. Stumbling along a twisty, up-and-down trail that you can only see about 10 yards in front of you with the wind rising and the coldest night of the year so far coming on is a needlessly exciting way to experience the Superstition Wilderness. I became convinced that we were on the wrong trail and headed towards Tortilla Flat, except on the rare occasion when the marina lights popped into distant view. "Skeet" pulled a muscle, and then suddenly we topped the last ridge and found ourselves looking stright down at the parking lot. As we stumbled sorely to the car, a gentleman who worked at the marina asked if we were OK - he'd been watching our lights coming down all the way from the top of the mountain.
And I do this for fun.
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