Hike: Four Peaks to Roosevelt Lake - 19 miles

3/20/2009.
Highlight: Digging for water when water bottles lost
Lesson Learned:  Always tie bottles onto the pack
Companion: Spencer Miner
Arizona Trail Passage: 20

March 9, 2009.   Our trek begins in Lone Pine Saddle, which is in the Four Peaks area.  We are hiking to Roosevelt Lake. We started  on March 9th, 2009. I was accompanied by Spencer Miner.  Four Peaks is   between Maricopa County and Gila County.

Passage 20 follows goes Southeast from Four Peaks about nine miles, and then turns due east to Roosevelt Lake. Total distance is about 18.3 miles that we hiked. We left home at 7:00am  on the 9th, 2009. We took Highway 87, the beeline highway, which goes between Phoenix and Payson. About an hour out of Phoenix we turned off on the road  marked as Four Peaks. On that windy, dirt road, you can only go 10-15 mph. It took about an hour‑and‑a‑half to get to the top of  Four Peaks.

We started hiking at 8:30 in the morning.  On the northern side, in the shady areas by some of the tall pines, we saw snow.

There was running water in several places during the first two hours of the trek, as the wetter snow melted.

 
  At the top of Four Peaks there are pines, and then, after about an hour of hiking, you rapidly get down to low‑level vegetation which ranged in height from 4 feet to 10 feet.

Every hour or two during the entire trip we would get a wide view of the Roosevelt lake.  It backed up for many miles from the dam all the way to Jakes corner.

There were a lot of rocks and loose shale. Occasionally we saw pinnacles, granite pinnacles jutting upwards. By late afternoon our hiking trail had pretty much deteriorated.

In 1996 there was a major fire in the area which burned 60, 000 acres and was caused by careless campers.

As we were going through this area, we lost our trail several times. And it was extremely tough climbing up to the next waypoint. Very rugged area, in terms of vegetation and rocks.

GPS waypoints were absolutely necessary on this particular trail. If we had not had our GPS guidance, we would still be lost up there.

The trail just completely disappeared with the fire. Several times we found ourselves climbing on our hands and knees to get through brush, to get back to the next wait point.  It is a wonder that we did not meet up with rattlesnakes or other wild animals in the brush.

Spencer..Where did you go?

It was during one of these thickets that while I was crawling on my hands and knees two of my canteens must have fell out of my backpack.

This oss would cause us a great deal of grief and trouble as we discovered.

Spencer of course had three canteens. We made camp that night at Buckhorn Mountain. We camped at a low point between the two peaks of the pass.  I remember the wind was howling very loud that night. And we were fortunate to have our tent there.

And so we had Spencer's water. He had just enough water to cook our dinner that night. But nothing for the rest of the trip, or even for breakfast.

For dinner we had freeze dried food which we reconstituted with what water we did have. And Spencer was nice at sharing his water.

We had a steak which we cooked on some wire and a stick.  It was hard to cook but it tasted good.

 We had enough of Spencer's water for a good meal that night. We looked at the map and saw that there was a spring a few hours down the trail.

It was called Shake Springs. So we decided to go sleep and hike out the next morning. We would hike to the springs in the morning and have breakfast there.

We got up very early, probably at 6:30 or 7:00. next morning and found frost on our tent. Harvesting the frost for drinking water was certainly a lot of work and did not return much . So we started hiking early that morning, March tenth.

We arrived at Shake Springs at 11 am. We saw the sign that pointed to Shake Springs but it was really unclear where the springs were. We certainly could not see any bubbling water jumping up. Finally, we located a mortar and rock structure  18 inches high and 4  feet across that was supposed to hold the spring.

The whole spring was filled with dirt but we did see clover on the top.  We were in a little bit of a panic as we thought we might not have enough water to complete the trek.

The answer  came when we started looking really closely at the clover. It seemed to be so green and so healthy. So we decided we were going to dig down into the dirt. We dug down about 12 inches with our cups, and we could see a little bit of moisture starting to seep out of the sand in this spring.  So we dug another six inches. And there we saw our first puddle of water which was like two or three tablespoons, a quarter cup of water. So we kept digging down for a total of two feet and then we could  barely scoop some water out.

And sure enough, we were able to scoop muddy water out of this spring.

We used Spencer's shirt and filtered the water to get all the large dirt and any little animals that were visible. We filled up all of his canteens, as well as the pan that we were cooking water in.

With all that water we were able to have a nice breakfast and fill our canteens, even though the water was a little brown. We put some pills in the bottles that killed the bacteria. Even though the water was a bit gritty it was very satisfying.

We left Shake Springs and headed on. We seemed to be following a ridge southeast to Roosevelt Lake.

Note the trail on the ridge.

And sometimes the road was quite steep going down to Roosevelt Dam.

We finally could see Roosevelt dam.

 

By the time we got there it was starting to get dark. And I was able to capture a beautiful picture, full moon coming up over the combination arch and suspension bridge that was just adjacent to the dam.

Barbara picked us up at 7:  00 pm, on March 10th, 2010. She brought a lot of food in the car for us to eat, and we were really starved. We had a great trip back to Phoenix.  Spencer and I have some good memories of that trek.