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Having failed in our last
two attempts to hike the
Ben Avery
Trail in the Eagletail Wilderness Area, John and I decided to give it another
go - since, as you know, three times a charm. In order to keep from getting
lost this time, John printed up the topographical maps of the area, from which
he would use the GPS to track our journey through the wilderness. We also
decided to invite John's mother to join us, because it had been a while since
she had hiked with us.
We left at 6:00 a.m. on a beautiful Saturday morning. After our obligatory
stop at Einstein's Bagels for breakfast, we headed west on I-10 towards
Buckeye. During the trip, John related the story of our first failed trip to
Eagletail, in November 1998. Back then, we didn't have clear directions on how
to get to the trailhead, and after driving around the area for almost an hour,
we gave up and went to Sundad instead. "Fortunately," John explained to his
mother, "we know how to get there now!"
Except for one small section of rough road, getting to the Eagletail
Wilderness was easy, once we knew where to go. To get there, we took I-10 west
to the Salome exit (number 81), turned left, and then proceeded south on
Harquahala Valley Road for five miles, until we reached Courthouse/Centennial
Road. After turning right on Centennial Road, we took an odometer reading,
because from that point it is exactly 10.8 miles to the trailhead. At the end
of Centennial Road, which is a "super-slab" dirt road, we merged right onto a
gas pipeline road and followed that until we reached the turn-off for the
trailhead. The turn-off is marked with a Bureau of Land Management sign, so it
isn't hard to miss. From the turn-off, it is only a quarter of a mile to the
trailhead on a dirt road that is passable in a passenger car - we made it
there in the Oldsmobile - but we found it much easier to get there in the van,
which has higher clearance.
We arrived at the trailhead at 8:30 in the morning and found that the parking
area was empty - it looked as though we were going to get the whole wilderness
to ourselves again! Just before we began hiking, though, another vehicle
arrived. I was actually a bit surprised by that, because I thought that the
Ben Avery Trail was a little used trail. Apparently, it is more popular that
we thought. (On a side note, to find out more information about the Ben Avery
Trail and the Eagletail Wilderness Area, John typed those words into a search
engine on the Internet, and two web pages were referenced: both of them were
ours!)
After sharing a "wilderness" kiss, we embarked on our journey into the
Eagletail Wilderness, via the Ben Avery Trail. The trail begins as a hike
along an old jeep road that meanders through the pristine desert and is
surrounded by giant monoliths like Courthouse Rock, which marks the trailhead.
There are also some interesting spires to be seen in the distance, including
one spire that has a natural arch in the middle, making it look like the "OK"
sign. Having seen all of this before, John and I took the time to point all of
these things out to Erika, who was truly fascinated by them.
Another site we were happy to point out was the wash where John and I had
fooled around the last time we were there - it was there that we thought we
had conceived our child, but our doctor proved us wrong! (We know now, based
on our ultrasound that it happened while camping in Eloy, in
October.)
Upon emerging from the wash and rejoining the jeep road, John began to rely
heavily on the topographical maps that we had brought along, because we were
nearing the point where we had gotten lost during our second failed attempt to
hike the trail (November 1999). John was able to pinpoint exactly where that
had happened. Just before reaching the stock tank, we were supposed to begin
hiking in the wash again. Instead, we had continued along the jeep road, which
took us east instead of south and led us into a canyon. John explained to his
Erika that the route that had gotten us lost was not a bad route. In fact, we
had seen some rather fascinating things, like a double natural arch on top of
a mountain. (We were able to see the natural arch from the real trail, but it
wasn't as distinct.)
This time, we took the correct trail, and eventually, we came to Indian
Spring. According to the literature we had read about the trail, hikers could
find many Indian petroglyphs carved into the rocks around the spring. At
first, we didn't see anything, but then we found our first Indian "artifact":
a pothole carved into the rock floor of the trail. The Indians had used large
poles to pound holes into the rock to catch water during the rain. Since it
had rained recently, there was still three inches of water in the hole.
Just a few feet away from the pothole, we found a large, blackened monolith,
surrounded by fallen rocks. The sun was hitting the rocks in such a way that
we immediately saw the petroglyphs carved into them. Fascinated, the three of
us scrambled halfway up the monolith to see what else we could find, and we
discovered that there were carvings everywhere! We spent the next twenty
minutes climbing around the rocks, taking pictures of the monoliths and trying
to decipher what they could have meant.
John took his exploration one step further and climbed all the way to the top
of the monolith. Upon reaching the top, he sat down on a rock and took in the
view around him. From that vantage point, he was able to fully understand why
the Indians had chosen that location as their hiding place: because it was
nearly impossible for anyone to pull a sneak attack on them, not when they
could see for miles around them from the top of the mountain.
Once we had had our fill of the petroglyphs, we continued on along the trail,
which, at that point, was almost entirely in the wash. After passing through
Indian Spring, which had some water puddles left over from the rain, we hiked
through a beautiful narrow canyon, where we found some interesting rock
formations as well as geodes embedded in the boulders. There were also a few
more petroglyphs, some of which were much more distinct than those we had
found earlier that morning were. Together, all of these things made hiking
that trail very enjoyable.
Just as we began to emerge from the canyon, around 11:30 a.m., we decided to
break for lunch - afterwards, we would begin our return trip. By that time, we
had already hiked six miles (a total of twelve miles round trip), and I was
getting tired. We were also getting quite sunburned. John, who had failed to
wear sunscreen, was beet red in the face and arms, as were the backs of my
legs (I had used sunscreen everywhere else but there!). Erika was the only one
who didn't get burned, because she was smart enough to use sunscreen
everywhere.
During the return trip, we discovered just how popular the Ben Avery Trail was
when we ran into two more groups of hikers. One group we spoke to said that
they had just gone skiing the day before in Flagstaff, so this hike was quite
a change in temperature for them. The other group we encountered was doing
what we had done earlier: exploring the petroglyphs on the rocks. Upon
arriving at the trailhead, we found that the parking area was packed - there
were now five vehicles, including our van!
On the way back to the trailhead, John and Erika took a side trip to the stock
tank, just so that he could show her what it looked like. Meanwhile, I sat
under a palo verde tree and rested. When they returned ten minutes later, John
told me, "We found wildlife!" I thought that he had seen a deer or maybe a
coyote, but instead he had found a large, dead bullfrog floating in the stock
tank. I thanked him for sharing the details with me.
We finished hiking before 3:00 in the afternoon, during the hottest part of
the day - it must have gotten up to eighty or eight-five degrees that day! To
cool us down after that long hike, John drove us to the next truck stop, where
we bought double scoops at the Thrifty Ice Cream shop. Then, we drove non-stop
back to Phoenix. |
