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| Backpack | 20.87 Miles |
5,784 AEG |
| | Backpack | 20.87 Miles | 2 Days | | |
| 5,784 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | This was definitely a memorable trip for all I think. Ended up starting off on the TH at about 10:45. Before we knew it we had gone 5 miles in 1 hour 40 minutes and were down at the creekbed. Where the Dogie Trail crosses the creek there is currently no water. This had us a tad worried so we conserved our water for a bit.
About 2 miles down the west side of the creek we did run into a nice pool so we knew we had a last resort source of water if there was none by the cabin but te-wa was pretty sure there would be water there. Sure enough 2 hours after having lunch at the crossing, we get to Taylor Cabin and find that there is some very nice flow up by the cabin.
It was rather nice to do 9 miles in about 4 hours and we had plenty of time to relax and set up camp, find firewood and meet our neighbors. We had a group of 7 NAU students that were also down there with us. They had gotten to the cabin about the same time as us. They were going to chill out there all Sunday and leave out the same way on Monday. I wish my school calendar had said we had MLK day off and I would have just had one of them bring me back down to the valley and I could have relaxed up there longer 
Eventually we finally got our all hammocker camp setup. Three of us setup next to the fire while I had a nice secluded spot near the flowing creek but with tons of wind protection. One of us even setup between two trees practically stretched over the creek in a small rocky rapid section. Basically he slept with nothing but the noise of the creek drowning everything out....it basically lulled him to sleep. All of us slept incredibly warm and comfortable during the mid 30s night.
Ended up having some good breakfast and managed to get back on the trail at 10:20 that morning. After continuing up the west bank of the creek for about half a mile we cut across for our first creek crossing. From here we followed a side creek that we had to cross quite often. After a while of that we finally hit the spot where the trail peels off into a canyon that works it way up a bit up Casner Mountain. This canyon was amazing and in spots had snow and was very very cool...absolute perfect hiking temperature. In one spot we ran into a very cool looking icefall. The way the sandstone was carved just amazed me.
Eventually we climbed out of the canyon and started up one of the actually arms of the mountain. Very soon we were running into about 6" deep fairly hard snow. This stuff was tough to get up without at least some mini-crampons but our hiking poles helped tons in this stuff. Soon the trail started to get steeper and the snow deeper. Once it turned into switchbacks we were having to go across some stretches with extremely steep angle on the downside of the trail. All this with 1' deep frozen snow made the going fairly treacherous but we all took it very cautiously and tested all our footholds and made it up the ridge of Casner without incident although Topo had a few close calls. Speaking of which Topo did a great job all this way and was usually running around with more energy than us. That dog is a real trooper.
From the ridge we took the 4wd road that runs along with the high tension power lines all the way down the ridge back to the TH. The going was slow in alot of spots here because much of it was still covered in anything from frozen snow to slush to super muddy conditions. All this together wore us out pretty bad and it stretched on for 5 or 6 miles of this.
Finally we got to the end of the ridge were the mountain begins to decend into the valley below. Right here I almost broke into a sprint as I was bringing up the rear and wanted to catch up with two of the others I managed to get down probably 2 1/2 miles of switchbacks in a matter of 30 minutes. Finally after 15 minutes of walking down that road we ran into a really nice guy with a big chevy truck that offered us a ride for the last 1 1/2 miles to the TH. We agreed without a second thought as we were all beat.
All in all the views throughout the entire trip were absolutely amazing and definitely a trip I would like to do again. |
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