“Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” has been notified that Bill’s hike was 100% on trail—well, almost.

Five hikers left the valley at 6:40. We met Rudy at Camp Verde. On our way to the trailhead Dave realized that he left his sunglasses on the car hood. A quick turn around trip back to McDonalds found none.

At 8:45 under clear skies we were walking. We followed what appeared to be a trail that was later confirmed by an unlabeled trail marker. The trail was an easy climb with switchbacks.

However, a problem was developing. It was not tracking with Bill’s pre-loaded GPS points nor Lance’s track downloaded from Hike Arizona. Were we on the wrong trail or did we have old documentation?

After the trail took a turn to the north, we connected with the old trail (blue) at “TX”. The trail was mostly clear of catclaw. It narrowed as we got higher. Where washes crossed the trail we encountered scratchy ivy-looking brushes. Tree cover was sparse.

We stopped several times as Dave was having heat issues. At “B2” Dave decided to bag it. We gave him a radio and continued upward. After waypoint 11 we experienced shade. Some came from small oak trees but most was due to the hill blocking the sun.

Thick vegetation ruled out our bushwhacking attempt to follow the ridgeline waypoints 12 to16 on the way to peak 6731. We continued to “L” where we broke for lunch. On the return trip, Bill and Lance did some off trail exploring up a wash to point “W”. It was surprisingly wide and open, but self-imposed camaraderie pressure limited our efforts to explore further.

After rejoining with Dave we all followed the trail to “TX”. At that point we took the “Old Trail” (blue). It was steeper and rockier due to erosion.

We stopped at La Fonda in Camp Verde to eat. We were too late for the lunch specials and too early for happy hour. Bummers. However, the surprise upside was that Ted and three hikers from Quy’s hike joined us.