Wednesday May 8, 20.5mi/33.0km

Apache Maid Trail (90.7/5190ft) to Road FR679 (110.8/6320ft) (Arizona) +0.4mi to water

Even though I had camped right next to the trail, I wasn’t worried about getting an early start as it seemed like nobody ever hiked this trail. Less than 10 minutes after leaving camp, I dropped off the plateau and started switchbacking down into a canyon.

It was a very well constructed trail and it was impressive how they squeezed it onto the side of a cliff to make its way down into the canyon. At the bottom of the descent, there was a little forest and I even saw a mule deer.

Pretty soon I was at a troll junction where I joined up with a much more popular trail. It was so wide!

I turned onto the Bell Trail, and entered the Wet Beaver Wilderness.

The trail followed above Wet Beaver creek for about a mile through some fantastic redrock formations.

Pretty soon the trail dropped down to the creek to cross it, and there was a little swimming spot nearby called “the crack”.

There was one other guy sitting there taking some photos, and judging by the size of his little backpack he had hiked in from somewhere close. The water was absolutely freezing. I backtracked a little ways to the spot where I could cross the creek and continue on. The crossing spot also had a little swimming hole, and it was much warm because it was in the sun. So in addition to filling my water bottles, I also took a break and swam a few laps.

The climb out of the canyon was on another well constructed trail with lots of switchbacks, and the climb went by quickly since I was distracted by all the amazing views.

Once I got to the top of the climb I was back on the plateau again. As seems to be the pattern here, the trail was difficult to find in the wide open plateau areas.

Nonetheless, I followed an extremely faint two-track through the grassy and rocky plateau.

Somewhere off in the distance to the east I noticed some smoke rising from the forest. I hope that’s a controlled burn and not a new wildfire.

Eventually my faint little two track turned into a normal rough dirt road. I passed by this strange little cabin which was quite dilapidated.

And then only a mile later, I passed by another strange spot. The remains of some stone structure sat on top of a rocky knoll.

I sat and had lunch, and noticed how the temperatures were about perfect in the sunlight when I wasn’t hiking. It seems like May is the ideal time to be here. It was slightly warm hiking in the sun, but with the slight breeze that picked up it was pretty nice.

The only wildflowers I saw up here were these little pink ones with five petals.

All afternoon was just lots of easy relaxing walking.

Towards the end of the day I passed by this massive ancient juniper tree. I put my pack next to it for size reference. Huge trunk!

I went off trail for about a quarter mile, to get to a nice water source, it was a little stream down in a rocky gully. I had passed by many cow ponds all afternoon but skipped them as they looked either silty or cow-polluted. Once I was back on route I walked another mile and then started looking for spots to set up my tent. I noticed a small forest of Ponderosa pines up ahead and decided that would be perfect, I love camping in those trees!

What a nice peaceful day, I only saw one person all day, had perfect weather and tons of good views!