HikeArizona.COM

If anybody is interested I plan to hit Jeff MacE's Cathedral Rock - Hutch's Pool Traverse on Sunday Feb 15th in an effort to train for a bigger upcoming hike. If anybody wants a ride I'll be leaving central Phoenix at 3am. I'd be happy to transport up to 3 others as I get free gas through work. I'll be moving at a decent clip of 2.5mph hoping to knock this out in under ten hours.

It'll be interesting to see what it looks like later in the week. I'm not interested in a muggy death march, had enough of that yesterday

That whole system got either reduced to nothing, moved north and/or pushed back to Monday. So we should have beautiful sunny 65° weather on Sunday.

Sweet!

JeffNICK patty whack, do either of you fine Tucsombros think there's still snow on this route or will it likely be muddy?

I would be willing to bet that there will still be a good amount of mud, snow, ice when you get further along the Cathedral Rock trail. There will probably still be snow near Cathedral, itself. The section along West Fork and Esperero should be fine even if there are occasional patches of mud or snow, both have wide and well-defined tracks. When you get past Mormon Spring on Esperero just remember to keep left to rejoin the trail after it leaves the creek bottom

I'm still trying to find time to edit that route file, I'll try to get it up tonight for you guys.

yes. there will definitely still be snow up there. as MacE said, the essential area of losing the trail is just past Mormon Spring when it breaks left out of the creek - this area could be bad right now because it's one of the few permanently shaded spots, so I'm sure its still snowy and mucky. West Fork will be fine. the creek will be raging, so crossings will be soggy.

by the way, that's NICKJeff to you ...

So how did it go. I wasn't able to join ya'll because I tore my rotator cuff on friday : ( Was camping out at the REI garage sale and some climbers strung up a tightrope between two posts and were walking it. I tried it a bunch throughout the night and did fine until one time when I slipped back and tried to brace myself with my arm. I might be able to dayhike but I'm still scared to make it any worse.

rushthezeppelin wrote:So how did it go. I wasn't able to join ya'll because I tore my rotator cuff on friday : ( Was camping out at the REI garage sale and some climbers strung up a tightrope between two posts and were walking it. I tried it a bunch throughout the night and did fine until one time when I slipped back and tried to brace myself with my arm. I might be able to dayhike but I'm still scared to make it any worse.

Slacklines are always fun

The trails are in much better shape than when I did this loop two years ago. Up Esperero wasn't to bad, up Cathedral to the saddle is slow going in some sections but in better shape with some light snow patches. Now from the saddle down, there had to be a foot of snow up there until I got below 6000ft. The trail was impossible to find, so I just found a drainage and 'postholed' my way down to a section where some trail maintenance is slowly making its way up. Below 6000ft, the snow was down to 3-6 inches and wasn't too bad as I dropped to West Fork trail. They've done a lot of work on that West Fork trail and now it's a freeway with 3ft high rock piles at the creek crossings. The creek was flowing pretty good, but the crossings were at great places to rock hop across. And of course that Sabino trail and Sabino road were in good shape.

Jeff MacE wrote:Slacklines are always fun

Up to a point. I think he went a few steps past it.

The West Fork is a part of the AZT system, hence all the extra work and well-signed crossings. From down here it looks like Cathedral is still pack in snow, no?

big_load wrote:

Jeff MacE wrote:Slacklines are always fun

Up to a point. I think he went a few steps past it.

Ya my mistake was trying to do it after drinking......learned a bit of a hard lesson on that one : ( Remember kids don't drink and walk a tightrope ><