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| Hiking | 5.00 Miles |
1,400 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.00 Miles | 4 Hrs 15 Mns | | 1.18 mph |
| 1,400 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Been staring at the Cave Trail loop on one of my trail maps for a while and decided the weather was nice enough to do it. The peralta trail head parking lot was surprisingly rather empty maybe 7 cars there which made the trail not as crowded as the last time I came here (first time on the trail got about 30 min in and realized I had something I had to head back to town for). The trail was incdibly easy going up to Freemont Saddle and I ended up meeting 2 people about 20 minutes before hitting the saddle. I ended up asking one of them about the cave trail and the guy replied that I wouldn't believe it but he had pretty much made the cairns for the trail way back in 73 when he was a teenager. Seemed a pretty interesting meet if this guy was not embellishing. Anyways I made it to the saddle in about 1h15min and took the time to have a nice lunch staring at the Weaver's Needle. Even got to pin my shirt up on a boulder to let it dry out some sweat.
After standing in awe of the various stages of forming hoodoos leading to the needle I quickly set off to find this well marked path the old man had spoken of. Of course the first part was very well trodden but I soon had to put those path finding skills to work and ended up loosing the trail several times (only for a brief amount of time). Then I finally managed to weave my way to those awesome yellowish green rock formations I had seen from the canyon trail. I don't if its just me but these almost seem to be the very earliest stages of hoodoos forming and I was quite facinated. I stopped for a bit to drop my pack and scramble up to Geronimo Cave. I took an nice shady breather on one of the stone benches up there.
After this it really started getting fun as you realize you have to somehow make your way down much steeper versions of the "baby" hoodoos. At one point I found a cairn that seemed like it wanted me to go down a quite steep one but I soon found another path that lead up to the back of the butte that the cave is in. soon I found a nice switchback with cairns going down a much better slope of solid rock although it was fun making the last little slide to connect back with the dirt path. Getting around the next butte was quite fun as well as I ran into a spot that kinda looped me around but after a bit of time I found the cairns leading out of the area. From there it started getting a bit more straightforward and I could see the path winding down the ridgeline and connecting back with the Bluff Springs Trail. Finally after about 2 1/2 hours of this quite strenuous hike I arrived back at my car to give my legs a much needed break.
Definitely a very good workout on the way back but the view were totally worth it. In particular the last bit of the trail the sun was about an hour from setting and I got an incredible view of the low lying desert with the small hills and buttes casting immensely long shadows across the landscape, can't wait till I can afford a good camera : ) I definitely got alot more experience with trail finding on some unique terrain as well.
BTW this is my first triplog on here (although I have done a few other hikes out here in the Supes already).
Edit: Not sure why but it put my photos from my hike just to Freemont saddle 2 days later. Anywho ya I took a friend and his brother with so they could see the magnificent view of the needle. Also tried to go back into the cave about 5 min from the saddle but only got like 40-50 feet back before it became apparent that you have to slide on your belly for a good way and it split off to the right so we weren't going to attempt any further. |
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