Sometimes, I'm convinced that we just don't when to say when.  Sometimes, there are powers at work, showing us clear signs that we should stop while we are ahead...and yet, we always seem to ignore them.

Three weeks before, we attempted to hike the Mail Trail #84.  We ended up hiking the horse trail instead; and, after 5.5 miles of hard hiking, we successfully arrived at the Mail Trail Trailhead, with four miles ahead of us to get to Fossil Springs.  Needless to say, we didn't make it to our destination that day; instead, we spent the night at the trailhead and hiked back the next day.

Now, you would think that, after an experience like that, we would have learned our lesson.  Most normal people would...but not us.  No, we decided that we were going back to the Mail Trail, but this time, we were going to start from the second trailhead.

During the three weeks leading up to our return trip, we had the opportunity to do some shopping at REI.  John and I had both received high-dollar REI gift cards and decided to spend the money on new gear.  We bought a new, two-person tent that weighed one pound lighter than the one that we had; we also bought a new titanium cooking pot and collapsible rubber bowls.  Additionally, I bought a new sleeping pad to replace the open-cell sleeping pad that I had been using; I decided to give the closed-cell pad a try, because it was much lighter.  After buying all of that, we still had money left, between the gift cards and the REI dividends, so John looked for a hiking stick to replace the one that he had lost during our last trip to the Mail Trail. However, he didn't find one that he liked.

"I'll bet that we find your hiking stick on this trip," I said to John.  After all, I was sure that no one else had been there during those three weeks; his stick probably didn't move from its spot.  John agreed and decided not to purchase a new stick until after we had returned to the Mail Trail Trailhead, just in case we found his stick.

During the week leading up to our trip, we carefully prepared for our return to the Mail Trail.  John read and re-read everything that he could find about the road going in to the trailhead; he learned that the road - FR 9247B - was passable in a two-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle.  If that was the case, we would have no problem getting the 4Runner in there.  He also read everything that he could about the trail (what little there was to be read), in hopes that this trip would be much more successful than the last.

Then, we packed our backpacks; in fact, we packed them several days earlier than normal, just to be sure that we had everything that we would need.  We didn't miss a single detail.  Once they were packed, we placed them in the laundry room - Mary's and John's on the floor and mine on top of the dryer - and waited for the weekend to come.

Friday night came; and since we had everything ready for go for Saturday morning, we were able to enjoy a night out.  Mary had just survived a week of AIMS testing, so we decided to take her to see the new movie Monsters Vs. Aliens, which was just hilarious!  We were still laughing about that movie when we pulled up to our house at 9:00 p.m...

The first thing I noticed, as we pulled into the driveway, was that there was water running through the carport.  Quickly, we dashed into the house and immediately stepped into a flood: the entire laundry room was flooded, as was half of the kitchen and half of the living room.

And yes, that included the backpacks.  All three of them.

The flood was caused when the hot-water hose on the washing machine burst, sending gallons upon gallons of water shooting through the laundry room and into other parts of the house as well.  Once we had the water turned off, we acted fast to try to clean up the water mess before any more damage could be done.  While I used the Hoover Wet/Dry Floor Vac in the living room, John raced to his parents' house to borrow his father's shop vac to pick up the rest of the flood waters.  Then, we had to unpack and dry out the backpacks; all three of them were wet, but mine was the wettest, because it was sitting right next to the hose when it burst.  Everything inside had to be removed, and the backpack had to sit outside overnight to dry.

By the time we had everything cleaned up from the flood, it was nearly midnight.  John and I were completely exhausted.  Oddly, though, John was still convinced that we were going backpacking that weekend.  I thought he was completely out of his mind; how could he possibly entertain the idea of going backpacking after all that we had been through that night?

I mean, that was the first sign...wasn't it?

The next morning, after only getting a few hours of sleep, we awoke to the smell of wet wood and wet cat fur.  The laminate wood floor in the living room was beginning to warp, and it smelled musty.  On top of that, we still had some cleaning up to do, and the hose on the washing machine still had to be replaced.  In my mind, there was no way that we were going backpacking that weekend; it just wasn't going to happen.

As the morning progressed, however, I began to change my mind.  John repaired the hose on the washing machine; and, by 8:00, I had the rest of the mess cleaned up.  So it came down to this: do we sit at home the rest of the weekend, wishing we were someplace else; or do we just go backpacking anyway, even though we were going to get a late start?

"We've never started this late before," John indicated, after I had made the suggestion.  Of course, I happened to have the website open in front of me on the laptop, so I was able to cite precedence.

"As a matter of fact, we have started this late before," I said.  I pointed out that, on John's birthday, back in 2005, we got a late start; in fact, we didn't even start backpacking until after we had had lunch in Strawberry.

That was all the convincing John needed.  With that, we made the decision to go backpacking anyway, despite the disaster.  It would be much better than sitting around the house all weekend, smelling the musty, wet wood.

We repacked our backpacks and loaded them in the 4Runner; and, by 9:15 a.m., we were on the road, heading towards Camp Verde.

Our drive to Camp Verde was rather uneventful, and despite some heavy traffic getting out of town, we made it there by 10:30 a.m.  After a brief stop there to use the facilities, we continued on, heading east on SR 260 until we came to FR 9247B...and that was when things became very interesting...

Up until then, our experience on FR 9247B had been limited to that first 100 yards; we had made it only 100 yards in the motor home back in 2001 and three weeks ago.  That morning, we quickly learned what the next five miles of that road were like...and they were nothing like the road that had been described in our Arizona Wilderness guide.  In fact, it was one of the worst roads we had ever traveled!  This road was not passable in a two-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle; in fact, it was barely passable in a 4WD, high clearance vehicle.  The road was so rocky and rutted that, even in our stock Toyota 4Runner, with high clearance, on 4WD-Lo, we hit several rocks along the way.  Several times, John got out of the vehicle to move rocks out of the way, hoping to avoid any oil pan damage; we certainly didn't want to get all the way into the trailhead, only to find out that we had fluids draining from the underside of the vehicle!

By some miracle, we made it all the way to the trailhead, even though it took us an entire hour to get there.  One hour to drive five miles; that was completely absurd!  Something was telling us that we should not be there; apparently, the condition of that road was the second sign, and yet we still didn't heed it.

I guess we ARE that crazy!

It was noon when we arrived at the trailhead.  Since it was so late, we decided to eat lunch first, before embarking on our hike; before we could eat, though, there was some unfinished business to take care of - mainly, the matter of the lost hiking stick.  John and I left Mary with the 4Runner and wandered around, trying to retrace our steps from three weeks before.  By some stroke of luck, I managed to find the hiking stick, lying under a pinion about fifty feet away! 

So maybe things were looking up after all!  Maybe we WERE meant to do that hike...

After eating lunch in the 4Runner, we geared up to begin our hike.  As we geared up, though, John and Mary had to change clothes - from shorts to long pants - because the cold wind was just howling, much as it had done three weeks before.  Surely, this was the third sign that we shouldn't be doing this hike...?

And yet we started hiking anyway, at 12:30 in the afternoon, on the Mail Trail #84.

Just as John had explained, the Mail Trail started out with a short, 100-foot climb up to the top of a ridge; it then flattened out for several hundred yards before beginning its descent into Fossil Springs Canyon - a total of 1600 feet in elevation loss over the next 3.5 miles.  A half of a mile from the trailhead, we entered the Fossil Springs Wilderness Area - finally, for the first time in nearly eight years!

As we hiked along the trail, we continued to follow the cairns, just as we had done along the horse trail.  The first fifteen cairns were easy to follow - of course, it helped that there was actually a distinct trail - but after that, we were back to the game of finding the cairns to guide us.

We counted a total of 37 cairns on the way down to the bench, about 1.5 miles from the trailhead and seven hundred feet down.  After that last cairn, though, all bets were off.  Now, it was up to our keen route-finding skills to stay on the trail - and, although we were experienced route finders, we had no idea how bad the trail was going to become!

After the last cairn, the trail turned east and dropped onto a lower plateau.  At first, there was a distinct trail to follow, but it was choked with our "favorite" non-native plant: the catclaw mimosa, otherwise known as the "wait-a-minute".  This is a horrible plant - one that has, unfortunately, ruthlessly taken over in many of the high desert wilderness areas, especially in the Superstitions.  We did what we could to push these plants out of our path, but there were just too many of them - they had us overwhelmed! (I guess you could call them the fourth sign that we shouldn't be hiking that trail.)

And then, once we found our way past the catclaws (for now) we lost the defined trail.  There were hiker-made cairns to guide us along the way, but they were few and far between.  After a while, we ended up lost.

After some maneuvering through the trees, we did find the trail again...but as soon as we found it, we lost it again.  The trail led us to a drainage, but without those hiker-made cairns, we didn't know which way to go.  One way led to a dry waterfall, with a fifty-foot drop; another led us further east over the plateau.  While Mary and I rested under a juniper, John scouted it out and finally found the route again. 

For some reason, we kept going...and within a half an hour (wouldn't you know it?) we were lost again! (Sign #5, of course, that we shouldn't have been hiking that trail.)  We weren't quite sure where exactly we had lost the trail - after all, there were hiker-made cairns everywhere, as well as one last official Mail Trail cairn (#38) - but with all of the catclaw mimosas in the way, choking the route, it wasn't surprising.  We continued along on what looked like a trail, but it only led us into a creek!

At that point, we had two choices: we could hike back to the last place where we had seen a trail sign, which was about fifteen minutes ago; or, we could boulder-hop down the creek until we came to the junction with Fossil Creek, which we knew couldn't too far ahead.  Two guesses which option we chose.

The boulder-hopping proved to be more difficult that it was worth.  After about fifteen minutes of trying to maneuver downstream, John told me to go ahead and continue on, while he and Mary looked for a better route through the trees.

And after that, I didn't see them again.  I was all alone, boulder-hopping down the creek.  (Yes, this was sign #6.)

After about ten minutes or so of boulder-hopping, I reached the junction with Fossil Creek.  I waited there for several minutes, hoping to hear John and Mary behind me, but when I didn't hear them, I decided to keep going, in hopes that I might find them downstream somewhere.

As I made my way downstream by boulder-hopping, I wondered if John and Mary were making any progress hiking through the forest.  Had they found the trail, and were they making their way towards Fossil Springs now?  Would I find them ahead of me at some point, at a creek crossing?  Or, were they lost?  Periodically, I stopped and looked around for them and strained to hear them, but all I could hear was the rushing waters of the creek.

This went on for about twenty minutes, and that was when I realized that I needed to go back.  It had been a more than half an hour since I had seen anyone, and I was in danger of spending the night alone in the woods, without John and Mary.  That would be bad for them, because I had all of the food with me - not that I would have been able to cook anything, though, because John had the cookware with him.  And they certainly wouldn't have starved to death or anything, but they would have been pretty miserable.

I made my way back upstream.  By this time, it was 4:30 in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to set above the canyon - it was going to be dusk soon.  I just hoped that they were thinking the same way that I was thinking and that I would find them in the creek, making their way downstream towards me.

Fifteen minutes later, I found them!  And yes, they were boulder-hopping downstream, too.  I was overjoyed to find them but exhausted, too, having burned all that energy hiking through the creek. By the time I reached them, I was ready to call it quits.

We rested for a while and discussed our options.  Where we were, there were no places to camp at all, even though we had a good water source.  We could continue downstream in the same fashion, but having been down there already, I knew that we were in for more of the same for at least 30 minutes.

"Let's see if we can find a trail over here," John suggested.  We followed him as he wandered away towards the south bank of the creek. 

And wouldn't you know it?  He found a trail!  And not just a game trail either; this was a true hiking trail, with footprints, horse apples and everything!  What's more: it was the best trail that we had seen all day: flat, no rocks, not overgrown, and very well-defined.

How did I miss that?

Our luck was finally improving. The trail that we had found was in fact a spur trail that took us straight back to the Mail Trail, at the point where it crosses Fossil Creek.  Not only were there signs and cairns at the crossing, but there was even a trail register.  We were so relieved to see all of that, that we were smiling and laughing to see it.

We continued on down the Mail Trail and soon came to the junction with the Fossil Springs Trail #18; here, the Mail Trail ended, and we continued on the Fossil Springs Trail for the next tenth of a mile, until we finally found a campsite, just past the next creek crossing.

Since it was so late in the day, there was no time for us to rest.  While I pumped fresh water from the creek, John and Mary worked to set up the tents.  Then, John cooked dinner while I gathered what little firewood I could find; unfortunately, the area had been picked clean, so we didn't get a whole lot of wood to burn. 

Although we thought that we had left our bad luck behind when we found our way, we were blessed by once more, when I ended up with a migraine headache, just before dinner.  I don't get migraines very often - in fact, I get about one migraine a year - so this must have been the seventh sign that we shouldn't have done this trail.  The migraine was so excruciating that all I could do was sit by my small campfire, with my head in my hands, praying for something to end the pain.

Meanwhile, John and Mary were having a great time.  After dinner, they decided to go and meet the neighbors.  (We kind of figured that we weren't going to have complete solitude there in Fossil Springs, given its popularity among day-hikers and backpackers.)  About 100 yards down the trail, there was a young couple camped nearby; they were playing Frisbee when John and Mary approached them, so they invited them to join the game. 

Not long after John and Mary returned to camp, I decided to take a couple of Tylenol PM and go to bed.  Never mind that it was only 7:30 p.m.; the first star had already appeared in the sky, so it was perfectly "legal" to retire for the night.  True, it meant that I was probably going to be up at 5:00 in the morning (or earlier), but I just couldn't stand the headache anymore.

Of course, I wasn't able to get to sleep right away...mainly because I was shivering.  Although it wasn't that cold outside, I still found myself shivering as though it was - and in my -5 degree sleeping bag, nonetheless.  This continued for a while, but once the shivering subsided, I finally fell asleep.

The next morning, I awoke completely refreshed - minus the headache - and ready to start the day.  And what a day we had ahead of us.  We still had to hike out of there; and, even once we were done hiking, we still had that road to deal with before we could drive home.

Before we began hiking that morning, we still had some unfinished business to take care of: we still had to take Mary to see Fossil Springs!  I mean, that was our whole reason for being there, wasn't it?  And it was only fifteen-hundredths of a mile away, according to the GPS.

So, at 8:00 a.m., after we had gotten dressed for the day, we all walked down the trail to Fossil Springs.  Along the way, we passed by the raspberry brambles that lined the trail - there were no raspberries, of course, because they wouldn't be ripe until at least September.  A few minutes later, we arrived at the springs, which pump out 250,000 gallons of water a minute - and the water is 72 degrees year round.  We hiked down to one of the springs so that we could check the water and discovered that it did indeed feel like bath water.

We could have gone further downstream, to see if John's favorite swimming hole was still there - along with the rope swing - but we just didn't have time, not if we wanted to get started on our return hike soon.  So, with that, we returned to camp to pack up.

At 9:30 a.m., we stepped off onto the trail, to begin our long hike back to the trailhead.  Although we knew that we had a very difficult hike ahead of us, we were very confident that it was going to go much better than the day before, because now we knew where the trail was.  True, we were going to have to deal with the catclaw mimosas and the steep climb, but those were the least of our worries.  We weren't going to have to boulder hop, nor were we going to be separated from each other.

After crossing the creek, we followed the Fossil Springs Trail to the junction, then continued along on the easy part of the Mail Trail until we reached the next crossing.  From that point on, we had to switch on our route-finding skills once again, to keep from getting lost.

Cairns marked the spot where the trail crossed Fossil Creek; unfortunately, these cairns were hard to spot from the trail register.  We ended up taking a wrong turn and following a game trail for about twenty feet, until it dead-ended at a tree.  We turned around immediately and went the other way, and that was when we spotted a small cairn in the creek.  "A lot of good that does!" I scoffed, and with that, I built a small cairn at the start of the creek crossing, to point the way.

Once on the other side of the creek, we followed a faint trail into the trees. It was hard to tell at first if we should be following that path; but once we spotted the hiker-made cairns, we knew that we were on the right track. 

The trail soon climbed a ridgeline and paralleled the creek through which we had boulder-hopped the day before.  Though the track was a little more distinct there, it was completely choked by catclaw mimosas, which made travel very difficult. But at least we were on the trail!

As we made our way up the trail, we discovered something very interesting.  The trail was not just marked with hiker-made cairns and the occasional ribbon in a tree.  There were also blue rocks to mark the route.  This was something that we had not seen on the way in; but now that we knew about them, we had one more thing to keep us from getting lost again. 

Eventually, we made it to the place where we had gotten completely lost; what is funny is that there was a sign there - and the sign had an arrow on it - but it was not very clear which way to go.  It appeared to be pointing straight ahead, but in fact, we were supposed to go right.  Had there been a cairn there - or even one of those blue rocks - we would have figured it out.  I decided to add another cairn, so that others would not make the same mistake that made.

We emerged temporarily from the catclaw mimosas as the trail cut across the plateau, through the dry grass.  Along the way, we passed by the first of the official cairns (or cairn #38, depending on which way you're going.)  Seeing that was a positive sign; we had already made it all that way without getting lost!

Continuing on, we finally arrived at the first place where we had gotten lost.  Here, we discovered that the cairns were misleading. There were two distinct paths branching off from the trail; we had taken the higher path, but it was in fact the lower track that we were supposed to take.  Fortunately, they ran parallel to each other and led us to the same place.  To help others avoid the same mistake we had made, I added a small cairn next to the right path before we continued on.

Soon we were back in the catclaws mimosas again, as the trail climbed up onto the higher plateau.  Fortunately, this was the last cluster of them (with the exception of one or two towards the top of the trail), and we were happy to see the end of them.

We arrived at the high plateau - and cairn #2 - at 11:30 a.m.  Ahead of us, we had a very long, steep climb; so we decided to stop there and eat lunch first, to help build up our strength.  Near the cairn, we found a great place to have lunch; it was in a cool, grassy spot that was shaded by the canopy of two juniper trees.  We dropped our packs there and cooked up a pot of Top Ramen, which we split between the three of us.  We also shared a small brick of cheese, which really hit the spot.

By 12:30, we were ready to continue hiking.  We had about two miles left to go of our four-mile hike, but this part of the trail was going to be the most difficult - mainly, because it was steep and rocky.  The good news was that were were back in the area that was marked with ranger-made cairns - thirty-seven in all - so we were no longer in danger of getting lost, despite the lack of a defined trail.

The placement of the cairns along the trail helped us put together a good strategy for conquering that difficult climb.  It allowed us to break the trail down into smaller segments; and, when hiking with an eight year-old, it was much easier to say to set smaller goals for her than to tell her that we still had two miles to go.  As we reached each cairn, we stopped for a few minutes to take a breather; at every five cairns, we took a longer break.  This strategy worked well for us, despite the fact that there were still tears - it was, after all, not a kid-friendly hike.

It took us just over two hours (a total of five hours, including breaks) to finish hiking the Mail Trail.  As we crested the ridge and began the last descent towards the trailhead, we were so happy to see the 4Runner that we probably would have broken into a run, had it not been for the rocky terrain.  We had completed the entire Mail Trail and had lived to tell about it!

Well, okay, we were almost out of the woods.  We still had to get back to SR 260 without wrecking the 4Runner on the oil-pan eaters along FR 9247B.  That feat took us a little more than an hour of careful maneuvering and skillful driving, with clenched teeth and butt cheeks; but somehow we made it without wrecking our ride!

We arrived back in Camp Verde around 4:00 in the afternoon.  Exhausted and hungry and grateful to be back in civilization again, we stopped at McDonald's for an early dinner and ate it on the way home...

As we drove home that evening, John turned to me and said, "Well, we finally hiked the Mail Trail."

"Yes, we did," I replied.  "We finally did it."

"And now," he continued, "let us never speak of it again..."

Return to Naked in the Woods.