Many moons ago, when Mary was just eight months old, John and I - along with John's parents, Bill and Erika - devised a plan to backpack into Fossil Springs for Mother's Day.  We thought it would be cool to take the Mail Trail into the Fossil Springs Wilderness Area and meet the Guckenburgs (who would be day-hiking the Flume Road) at the springs.  It sounded like a great idea at the time...that is, until we actually tried to take the motor home in on FR9247B.  We made it in about 100 yards on that road and realized that the motor home was never going to make it all the way to the trailhead.  At that point, we turned around and went to the Flume Road Trailhead instead, just in time to meet the Guckenburgs as they were stepping off on their day hike.

Since then, we haven't been back to Fossil Springs, mainly because a lot had been happening in the wilderness area during those eight years.  For one thing, the Irving Power Plant closed down, and soon thereafter, the dam came tumbling down, restoring Fossil Creek to its free-flowing state.  In 2005, the Flume Road Trail was closed (and is still closed at this point) in order for the Forest Service to decommission and remove the old flume that paralleled the road.  I read that the Flume Road will reopen someday; we certainly hope so, as it is the easiest route into the wilderness area.

Most recently, the State began pushing for an act to declare Fossil Creek a Wild and Scenic River, which would give it federal protection and would enable the Forest Service to do more to help restore it to its natural state.  This particular piece of news appeared in the Arizona Republic in December of 2008 and continued to appear in the news several times over the next few weeks.

And, of course, as we continued to read more and more about it, we decided that it was time for us to return to the wilderness again.

With the Flume Road closed, we knew that we only had two other options to get into the Fossil Springs Wilderness Area: the Fossil Springs Trail #18, or the Mail Trail #84.  We had already done the Fossil Springs Trail, back in 1998, and really had no desire to take Mary on that steep groaner of a hike.  The Mail Trail, however, was the only trail that we had not done yet, so we decided that it was high time for us to do it.

In order to do this trip successfully, we spent a good portion of the week planning everything out.  John read up on the trail in our Arizona Wilderness guide, and I did some research on the Coconino National Forest website.  John also attempted to print out the topographical maps of the trail but was unable to find the trail on the software; that bothered him, but he thought, "As long as we have the book, we'll figure it out."  Finally, the night before our hike, we packed up our backpacks, making sure that we didn't forget a single thing.

On Saturday morning, March 14, we loaded up our gear into the 4Runner; and, at 7:30, we left for our backpacking adventure.  At that point, everything was falling right into place: traffic was good, the weather was beautiful, and we were off to a smooth start.  By 9:00, after an uneventful drive, we were in Camp Verde and within 30 miles of our destination.  The excitement of returning to Fossil Springs was mounting.

"Mary, you are going to love this place," we told our child, to help build her anticipation.  "It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  We took you there once, but you were too young to remember."

After stopping in Camp Verde to use the facilities, we continued east on SR 260 for about 25 miles, looking for Forest Road 9247B...only we weren't sure of the road number at the time.  We had an idea of which road it was and where it would be, but when John went to look it up, he realized that he had left the book at home.  So, we had to locate it based on inaccurate GPS coordinates and what we remembered from eight years ago.  We came to one road that looked right, but since the GPS coordinates were off by three-quarters of a mile, we kept going.  Then, we came to another road, two miles down the highway, that also looked right, but we quickly discovered that it was not the right road after all; in fact, it dead-ended at a farm.  That meant that the first road was the right one after all.

We drove two miles back up the highway to that first road, turned onto it, and learned that it was indeed the road to the Mail Trail Trailhead.  There was a forest service road marker indicating that it was FR 9247B; and, 100 yards up the road, we came to a kiosk and trail sign, indicating the start of the Mail Trail #84.

"The trail starts HERE?" John exclaimed.  "Had we known that all those years ago, we would have just parked the motor home here and started hiking!"

I, on the other hand, had a feeling that something about this trailhead just didn't seem right, but without the book to verify my suspicions, I decided just to go with it.  After all, we were at a signed trailhead...right?

We started hiking the Mail Trail around 9:45 a.m., and from that moment on, our trip (which had started so smoothly) turned rocky...literally.  From the get-go, the trail was so rocky and rutted that it was hard to maneuver.  To add to that, Mary slowed us way down because her pack was riding badly, even though we didn't pack it any differently than we had before.  Within the first quarter-mile of the hike, we had to stop to completely readjust her pack.  After that, though, she didn't have any more problems with her backpack.

But there was nothing that we could do about the trail.  In a nutshell, it just sucked.  It was rocky, rutted, and - in some places - completely non-existent.  In fact, if it weren't for the ranger-made cylindrical cairns, strategically placed along the route, we would have gotten completely lost.

Actually, we did get completely lost, within a mile of the trailhead.  We continued to follow what appeared to be the trail even though we hadn't seen a cairn in a while.  Before we knew it, we ended up at a tank, within a tenth of a mile from SR 260.  "This doesn't look right," John said.  "I don't think we're on the trail anymore."

"I think you're right," I replied.  I suggested that we turn around and head back to the last cairn that we had seen - a quarter of a mile back - and try to figure out where to go next.

Once we found that last cairn, we easily found the next several cairns and figured out exactly where we had missed the turn.  At that point, we learned our lesson: follow the cairns.  As long as we kept following the cairns, we wouldn't get lost.

Now that we were back on the trail, we decided to take a short break under a gnarly, old juniper tree.  The old tree proved to be a great diversion for Mary; it had all of the features of a great climbing tree, and Mary loved climbing.  She climbed up about fifteen feet into the tree and posed for pictures out on a limb.

After Mary came down out of the tree, we continued on our hike.  From there, the trail began to head south, across a grassy plateau.  We stayed on this plateau for a long time; and although the cairns were easy to follow here, the trail was in no way easier to hike.  The terrain was still very rocky, with ankle-breakers at every step.  What should have been a nice stroll was instead quickly becoming a death march.

The only saving grace, of course, were those cairns; despite how bad the trail was, those cairns kept us going.  At some point, we started counting them, which proved to be a good way of keeping Mary focused on the task at hand.  Along the way, we also found signage on the cairns.  Some of the signs simply said "MAIL TR"; some had horses on them.  We explained to Mary that this route - this really rocky route - was once a mail route between Camp Verde and Payson; back in the old days, we said, people used to ride through there on horses to deliver the mail.  "Whoa!" she said.

All things considered, the hike was going about as well as could be expected.  Then, Mother Nature threw us for a loop.  Suddenly, just before lunchtime, grey clouds began to roll in, and a very cold wind picked up.  This came as quite the surprise to us, because there was nothing in the forecast about bad weather; it was supposed to be sunny and warm all weekend, which was why we had decided to head north in the first place.  Even worse, there were a few times when we could hear the low rumble of thunder in the distance, signaling that a thunderstorm was approaching...and here we were, stuck on a high plateau!

Around 11:30, we decided to stop for lunch under an old juniper tree - mainly, so that we could pull our jackets out of our backpacks!  (Yes, it was getting that cold outside!)  As we sat there eating our sandwiches and watching the grey clouds approach, John studied the topographical maps and the GPS to try to figure out where we were.  Although we had been hiking for almost two hours, we were still several miles from Fossil Springs, which seemed impossible considering that the Mail Trail was only supposed to be 3.1 miles in length.  And what happened to this steep, 1600 foot elevation loss that was supposed to occur?  When was that going to happen?  Without good information, we just didn't have a clue.

"Well," John concluded, before our lunch break was over, "let's just keep going; and worst comes to worst, we may just have to find a place to camp as soon as we find water."

And so, with that, we kept going along the trail, with renewed determination to get where we were going...and to figure out where we were.

We became more optimistic as we began approaching the power lines.  Seeing the power lines in that area meant that we were getting closer to the power plant, and that meant that we were getting closer to Fossil Springs.  Or so we thought.

The trail led us to the powerline road, high up on another ridge.  After crossing the road and a cattle guard, we turned left and continued south on the jeep road, where we followed the cairns deep into a forest of junipers and pinions.  Once again, we briefly got lost when we couldn't find the cairns to guide us along the way.  It was then that we learned the secret to the cairns.  It wasn't just that you had to follow the cairns to find the trail.  They had been strategically placed with line-of-sight in mind; each cairn was placed within line-of-sight from the last one.  To find the next cairn, you had to stand directly behind the cairn and look in all directions to find it.  It was a brilliant plan; too bad we had to get lost twice before we figured it out!

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, we emerged from the pinions and junipers and once again began following the old jeep road.  By this time, we had been hiking for over five hours, and we were just exhausted.  Unfortunately, the GPS still showed that we were two miles from Fossil Springs.  Two miles?  In our minds, we should have been there already!  This was impossible!

At the end of the road, we came to a stock tank and - much to our surprise! - a trail sign: "Mail Trail #84 - Fossil Springs 4 Miles".  This was not welcome news: we had just hiked all day, only to find that we were still FOUR MILES from Fossil Springs?  It was then that we realized what had happened; we had just hiked all that way, only to end up at the actual Mail Trail Trailhead!  So what had we just hiked?  Our guess was that we had parked at the horse trailer parking lot and had hiked the horse trail!

By that time, we were exasperated, exhausted, and freezing cold.  To make matters worse, it started to rain on us, too.  It was then that we decided that we only had one option: to camp there at the stock tank, then to hike back out the next morning.  It meant that we were not going to make it to Fossil Springs on that trip; but now that we knew where the actual trailhead was, we could probably make it there some other day.

So, with that, we dropped our packs and began to look for a nice, flat area at which to camp.  We found a nice area just below the stock tank, where we would have a bit of a wind break; there, we set up our tents and called that our home for the night. Of course, once our tents were set up, the skies cleared and the sun returned; the cold, rainy weather was gone.  Figures!

Although we were exhausted from our hike, John still managed to find the strength to go on a little bit of an exploration, just to see where the Mail Trail went.  He hiked a quarter of a mile up the trail, beginning at the sign.  When he returned, he related his findings to us.  From the trailhead, the Mail Trail climbed about a hundred feet up to a ridge; then, on the other side of the ridge, it began to drop sharply into Fossil Creek Canyon.  This time, he was certain that it was Fossil Creek Canyon; in fact, he could even see the Fossil Springs Trail on the other side.  There were also more of those same cairns; he counted four of them before he turned around to return to camp.

When John returned to camp, he had some ideas.  He suggested that, in the morning, he could hike out on the Mail Trail by himself and bring the 4Runner in to come and get us.  Although it sounded like a good idea, I decided against it, stating that it was better for us to stick together.  "We aren't even sure if we can get the 4Runner all the way in here," I pointed out.  "What if you got halfway here on that road and discovered that it was closed?" 

"Point taken," he said.  With that said, we decided to hike out together in the morning.  However, if we had time, after we were done hiking, we would take a drive to the trailhead to see if we could actually get there.

After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening relaxing around the campfire and watching the stars overhead.  It was a clear night, so we had a most brilliant display of stars.  John showed Mary the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the North Star, and Orion's Belt, and she was completely fascinated.  Despite the rough hike to get there and the disappointment of not making it to Fossil Springs, that made it all worthwhile.

We were in bed early that night - before 8:30 - but that meant that we were up early  the next morning, too.  John awoke at 5:30 a.m. and got the campfire going for us.  I emerged from the tent shortly thereafter, and Mary awoke around 6:30.

Once we had eaten breakfast - and once the sun was up - we started packing up camp in preparation for our long hike out.  As Mary began cleaning out her tent, she made a startling discovery: she had been carrying extra weight in her backpack and didn't even know it.  Deep within her sleeping bag was her best friend Zoey's Manatee Webkinz!  It had ended up in there when Mary last spent the night at Zoey's house; and not one of us had ever noticed that it was in there, even though John packed Mary's sleeping bag into its compression sack, and I unpacked it, and Mary slept in it all night!  "Zoey is going to be so excited!" Mary exclaimed.  "She has been missing her Webkinz for months!"  (Zoey was indeed excited to have her Webkinz back, and from that moment on, they were more careful to check their sleeping bags after sleepovers.)

With everything packed and ready to go, we stepped off onto the trail around 8:30 a.m.  However, our hike got off to a slow start that morning; a hundred yards into our hike, we had to stop so that John could readjust Mary's pack.  He had to do so again about a half-mile later, just as we left the Jeep road and began winding through the pinion-juniper forest.  After that, her pack was finally riding better.

Around the twentieth cairn or so, John realized that he had left his hiking stick somewhere; he had set it down at one of the two places where he had stopped to adjust Mary's pack, so he sent me and Mary ahead while he went back to retrieve it.  Unfortunately, he couldn't find it and didn't feel like going all the way back to the beginning of the hike to see if it was there; therefore, he abandoned his search for his lost stick and met up with us again at cairn #24, where we were waiting for him.

Our hike that day went much better than it had the day before, mainly because we knew where to find the trail and we had learned the trick behind the cairns.  So naturally, Mother Nature had to find a way to make our hike difficult.  As soon as we made it up to the grassy plateau, we were hit with cold winds that made us completely miserable.  Mary was so miserable that she began crying; she couldn't even find amusement in the fact that her butterfly net had become a windsock in the wind!  (John and I, however, thought it was hilarious!)

While hiking across the plateau, we caught a glimpse of something moving in the distance.  We stopped and watched, and that was when we realized that there was a family of javelina, grazing under a juniper tree.  They stuck around for a while - long enough for us to take pictures of them using the digital zoom.  (We didn't dare get any closer to them!)  Thank goodness for the powerful 18X optical/3X digital zoom lens of our new Nikon P80!

A bit later, around 11:30, we stopped for lunch along the plateau.  While John cooked up some Top Ramen for us, Mary and I spied a family of deer, about a tenth of a mile up the trail.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get the camera out fast enough to capture pictures of them.

After lunch, we made our final push towards the trailhead, which was still about an hour away.  Unfortunately, Mary was completely exhausted by about cairn #90 and just wanted to be done with that difficult hike. She no longer cared how many cairns there were or who was going to win the bet for guessing the correct number of them; she just wanted to be back in the 4Runner again - out of the wind, sitting down, with her boots off.  Of course, by that time, I think we all just wanted to be off that trail; it was just a bad hike.

Finally - at 1:00 that afternoon, after counting 110 cairns - we arrived at the trailhead! Oh, the 4Runner was certainly a sight for sore eyes; I don't think I had ever been happier to be done with a hike.  (Okay, maybe after Towel Creek...)

We were starving when we finished our hike; although Top Ramen was easy to carry, it just wasn't a filling food.  John suggested that we drive into Pine on the way home to get a real meal, as a reward for having finished that difficult hike.  From there, we would then take the Beeline Highway home, so that we could avoid the usual Sunday afternoon rush hour on southbound I-17. 

When we arrived in Pine, we stopped for lunch at Sidewinder's, which had become one of our favorite places to eat in that area.  There, we enjoyed a delicious lunch, a couple of brews, and a couple of NCAA basketball tournament games, too.  It was a great way to reward ourselves for making it through that backpacking trip!

Our adventure that day was far from over, though.  After lunch, we continued south on SR 87 and stopped in Payson for gas.  That was when we heard the bad news: SR 87 was closed at the junction with SR 188, due to a fatal crash.  This had happened to us before, and just like before, we had no choice but to drive north again on SR 87, go west on SR 260, then head south on I-17.  We just hoped that there wasn't an accident on I-17, too, like there was the last time!

We were in luck this time; I-17 was accident-free, and by 4:30 that afternoon, we were home again...

The next day, John figured out exactly how far we had hiked during our backpacking trip.  He concluded that we had hiked a total of 11 miles roundtrip.  Eleven miles...and we had only planned for a six-mile roundtrip!  That explained why we were so exhausted when it was all said and done.  And what's more, we still didn't even make it to Fossil Springs.

Oh well, maybe next time...

Return to Naked in the Woods.