It had been quite a few weeks...okay, months...since our last backpacking adventure, and John was chomping at the bit to get us out in the backcountry again.  True, it was the middle of winter, and I do not like to be cold; but John kept reminding me that we have twenty-degree sleeping bags. "We'll be fine!"

"But Mary's bag is only a thirty-five degree bag," I said. 

"She'll be fine, too," he replied. "It's not going to get that cold outside anyway. It's the desert, remember?"

Famous last words...

The trail that we chose to backpack that weekend was the Cave Creek Trail #4 - an old favorite of ours, but one that we've never backpacked before. The trail leaves from the Seven Springs Recreation Area and follows Cave Creek, which is perennial, and connects to other trails in the system. This would be our first time on this trail since the Cave Creek Complex Fire had torn through that area last summer, so we hoped that we would be able to find a campsite within the first three miles of the trail and that the water in the creek was still relatively clean.

We set off on our backpacking adventure, bright and early on Saturday morning, January 7. Knowing that it would take us about ninety minutes (at least) to get to Seven Springs, we tried our hardest to be out of the house by 7:00 a.m., but with all of the last minute details that we had to deal with, it was closer to eight before we got out of there!

Once we were finally on the road, we started north on Cave Creek Road, towards the towns of Cave Creek and Carefree. After passing through both, Cave Creek Road became Forest Road 24 in the Tonto National Forest. From there, it was another thirty minutes of driving before we would reach the trailhead near Seven Springs.

As we first entered the area, we were surprised to find that there wasn't as much fire damage as we expected.  The further in we drove, however, the signs became apparent. There were charred trees scattered across the desert floor; where once there was brush and grass, now there was ash and dirt.

We were most surprised to find that the small community, nestled next to the creek at the halfway point on the road, had escaped complete devastation. Some of the outbuildings had been destroyed in the fire, but most of the houses were still intact. How they survived, I'll never know, but it just goes to show how randomly destructive a wildfire can be.

When we arrived at Seven Springs, we found that the campground and the day-use areas were still intact - this was a good sign! Also intact was the Cave Creek Trailhead and its parking lot and structures - another good sign!  Perhaps we weren't going to see much fire damage along the trail after all.

We kicked off our backpacking excursion at about 10:00 a.m. - a late start for us, but we weren't planning to go very far anyway.  From the trailhead, we immediately climbed up the ridgeline and followed that for a half of a mile, until we reached the road. There, we crossed the road and picked up the trail again on the other side. The trail descended sharply at that point then leveled out when it reached Cave Creek.

After we passed over the fence line (by way of steps), we came to my favorite part of the trail, and I was pleased to find that much of it had not been touched by the fire. It was still just as pretty as I remembered it, except that the sycamores were still leaf-bare due to winter. Even the creek was flowing with clean water and not sludge from the burn. It was refreshing to see.

As we continued down the trail, though, we began to find small pockets of fire damage: a singed tree here, a burned stump there, but no major, wide-spread destruction.

We stopped to take a break about halfway through our hike, on a sandy spot in the shade. Although it was wintertime, it was still a very warm day, even for January in Arizona; so we took a break to cool down and rest before continuing on.

After hiking for about ninety minutes, we began looking for a campsite; and we found one moments later, across the creek. It was on a sandbar, under a giant sycamore tree that had not been touched by the fire. It was a lovely spot, so we dropped our packs there and set up our campsite.

And there we stayed for the rest of the day. Once our site was established, a feeling of laziness kicked in, and we decided to take it easy.  We took naps in our tents, we played games, we read, and we even worked crossword puzzles. It's not often that we are that lazy; but every once in a while, it feels good to kick back and do nothing. 

Around 5:00 p.m. - dinnertime - the sun began to set, and the air started to cool.  In fact, it was starting to get cold outside. It was a good thing that there were no fire restrictions in effect (despite the fire damage), because we were going to need that campfire to stay warm.

After dinner, we all changed into warmer clothes, put on our jackets and gloves, and huddled next to our small campfire. Except for the crackling of the flames and the gurgling of Cave Creek, it was a quiet evening out there in the wild. A cold evening...and a quiet one...

As the evening wore on, the temperature dropped...a lot. We were so cold that we decided to turn in early - around 7:30 - just so that we could crawl into our warm sleeping bags.

Unfortunately, that didn't help at all. Although our sleeping bags were once rated at twenty degrees, they were no longer. After many years of hard usage, the stuffing had worn out, so our twenty degree bags were now more like forty. As a result, we slept poorly that night, because we spent most of the night shivering.

And to make matters worse, Mary was so cold by 5:00 a.m. that she ended up wetting herself - basically, she, too, was shivering, and she lost control of her bladder.

So there we were, at five o'clock in the morning, in below-freezing temperatures, dealing with a cold and wet child. While John got the campfire going, I changed Mary into warm, dry clothes. Then, John pulled his own sleeping bag out of his tent and laid it out on a tarp next to the campfire. We put Mary inside of it, and very soon, she fell back to sleep.

I, too, fell back to sleep for another hour, while John sat next to the campfire with Mary. He attempted to dry out her clothes and sleeping bag so that we could at least carry them out without them weighing a ton!  As he sat there, he reached for a bottle of water to take a drink...only to discover that the water was frozen!

Yes indeed, it was that cold outside!

Mary slept until 7:00 a.m.; by the time she awoke, John and I had most of our campsite torn down. As cold as it was out there, it was all we could do to warm up. We also just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

Once Mary was up and fed, we loaded up our packs and started hiking back to the trailhead. Since it was so early in the morning, Mary was hiking at her strongest, so we were able to make it back in less time - in just over one hour.

And as we drove away from Seven Springs that morning, we pondered the important lesson we had learned that weekend: yes, it does get that cold in the desert. And twenty-degree sleeping bags don't hold their temperature rating forever.

The following month, before we embarked on our next backpacking adventure, we went to REI and invested in new sleeping bags: a fifteen degree Zigzag Junior for Mary, a zero-degree men's Zenith for John, and a minus five-degree women's Zenith for me!  We hope never to be that cold again!

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