Friday May 24, 22.4mi/36.1km

Home Creek Tank (375.3/8010ft) to Elk Tank (397.2/7860ft) (Arizona)

I was out of camp at 6:15 and continued my downhill trek into Home Creek valley.

It was a fun little XC jaunt through some meadows and alongside the stream. After a couple of miles I could see some buildings in the distance, and could tell I was getting closer to civilization when I saw an old concrete dam.

The dam looked like it could topple over at any second. I navigated around some private property and then found myself on a nice easy road.

The main attraction for the day was Black Creek Canyon. I navigated my way over to the East Fork of Black River, and crossed it on a road bridge which was under construction.

Usually I would take a break at the trailhead, but it was all torn up and had some construction vehicles parked in it so I just continued down the trail. The first mile of hiking along the river was easy, on a nice wide trail. After that, the East Fork of Black River merged with the West Fork and now it was just the main river. The GPS track showed that I should ford the river here, and then re-cross it again in less than half a mile. That seemed like a waste of time and energy, and all my maps showed that the trail just continued on this side of the river, but a little higher up the side of the canyon. So I followed some switchbacks up…and up. And I accidentally found myself on a plateau above the river.

It was beautiful and there were dozens of elk! I followed a pretty nice trail for almost a mile and then I left it to drop back down into the river canyon.

Now that I was back in the canyon, I was following the proper trail, which indeed was traversing a sidehill a little ways above the river.

A little while later I came across a pile of feathers blocking the trail and realized it was a dead bird. Poor guy. I wonder what would cause a large predatory bird to die here?

I walked a little ways above the river on that nice sidehill trail for an hour, just soaking in the views of the canyon ahead of me.

Eventually the trail dropped down to the river, and I had my first river ford of the day.

At this point, the river was quite shallow (only shin deep) and the water was moving slowly. But the rocks on the bottom were so slippery! Using my hiking pole, I was able to balance and slowly cross without incident. I was now soaking wet from the knees down, but it was a nice warm day so I didn’t care.

Mostly I was hiking above the river, on trail that was easy to follow. I knew there were lots more river fords coming up, but for now I was just enjoying the trail.

I stopped for lunch at a fork in the trail. This was a decision point, do I continue down the river canyon on a trail that was expected to deteriorate, and with dozens more river fords? Fortunately my Luna bar had the answer.

There were a couple options to leave the Black River Canyon, escaping up to the rim on either side and taking some roads to rejoin the trail later. But I decided to stick with the river. As expected, the trail did have quite a few more river fords further downstream. Usually getting to the river involved pushing through some willow bushes.

Surprisingly, it was mostly still a nice trail.

Usually when trails are this remote, they don’t see much foot traffic and the tread begins to fade away. And trail crews have a hard time accessing them for maintenance. There were a few times where I lost the faint trail, but it was easy to find again with all of the cairns. As I got closer to the trailhead for the bottom end of the canyon, the trail improved again.

I even saw signs for a trail junction, which was a little surprising because I had not seen any signs since I left the paved road this morning.

After the fish Creek junction I knew I had just over a mile to go, and now the trail was easy to follow again. I made it to the trailhead and exited the Black River Canyon, and it was 4pm. Those last few miles were pretty slow, but I expected that, given there were about 27 river fords. I left the canyon, hiking uphill on a dirt road, and it felt good to move quickly.

I enjoyed not having to focus on navigating, and for an hour I listened to a podcast while I hiked on the road. Then, the route abruptly left the road and dropped into Snake River Canyon. It was incredibly steep down to the creek, but it was a good water source and it really was the only way across to the plateau.

I hiked straight back up the other side, and since there’s no trail here, I just chose my own route through the open forest. Eventually I emerged onto an old dirt road which was nice walking for the last part of the day.

Because the Black River Canyon miles were so slow, I decided to hike a little later to make up some distance. Just before 7pm I stopped to camp in a nice big flat area near elk tank/pond. Hopefully I will hear some elk tonight.