Saturday December 2, 44.9km/27.9mi
Rawhide Mountains Wilderness (382.4/1760ft) to Planet Ranch (410.3/640ft) (AZ)
After such a tiring day yesterday, I slept hard and woke up refreshed, in our quiet and cozy little camp spot. We left at 6:15 and finished the climb to the top of the ridge, before dropping down the other side in a wash.
Eventually the wash grew larger, and we came to an impassable pouroff that needed to be circumvented.
After we got around the pouroff and back into the canyon, we were surrounded by redrock cliffs for a mile.
They grew to be pretty tall!
It was a nice little canyon, and the wash was compacted gravel so it was easy to walk.
We exited the canyon and traveled cross-country for a few miles, occasionally ducking under a barbed-wire fence.
The rest of the morning was easy xc or old roads, and it a nice change from yesterday.
After lunch, we began our descent down the the Bill Williams river.
We followed an ATV road all the way down to the river, entering the Swansea Wilderness along the way.
We followed the road / wide wash to the trailhead, where there was surprisingly a trail register.
This is the same river we hiked in yesterday, and this section is downstream and usually dry most years. But not this year!
We had to cross it several times as it meandered across the valley.
After a few miles, we were far enough downstream where the water had gone underground and the riverbed was dry and cracked.
By the time we left the river, it was just a dry wash.
It was close to getting dark, but we wanted to make up some of the miles that we didn’t get yesterday. We continued hiking for an hour after dark, and we were able to pick up the pace following some good burro trails.
According to the map, we would be following a very old abandoned road for four miles, but really the road had long ago been washed away by the nearby river.
We got to our planned camping area at 6:45pm, and went across the road to a place called Planet Ranch, where we filled our water bottles from a tap.
We set up our tents quickly since it was getting pretty cold, and we were pretty tired after a very long 28 mile day.