Willow Valley Hike

We have a friend, Terry Jorgensen, who has been our camping, hiking, Dutch oven cooking friend for over 20 years. About a month ago he started calling to get us to go on a new hike he had just found. He is always looking for adventure and I'm always willing to follow along with him. He planned the hike for Labor Day so Garth and Preston could go too. As you can see Preston opted out of the hike and stayed home to play basketball and golf, he made the safer decision.
Terry had also invited his friend Jim (in the jeans and blue shirt standing next to me), next is Terry, then Dennis' friend Don, Garth and our friend Dennis. We met at our house at 5:00am and had a two hour drive to the trail head east of Happy Jack. After dropping a car at one end of the trail, started on our adventure, a little after 9:00 and about an hour behind schedule, in 59 degree weather. Problem was that we couldn't find the beginning of the trail, so we just headed down a steep drainage area though rough, scratchy brush in the direction we knew we needed to go. Did I say that this was a remote area?

As you can see by Terry's arms we were all a little cut up by the time we hit the bottom and found the creek but we knew we were heading in the right direction because there was only one way to go!
Part of the adventure of this hike was the pools we would have to swim through, not just wade through but swim through. This was the first of those pools and Garth is trying desperately to find away around getting wet.
The water was ice cold and slimy green and by the time I got through the third pool I think that hypothermia was setting in. We had planned on the sun to warm us up. You know that Arizona has 363 days of sunshine a year so where was it yesterday?
Here is Garth swimming as fast as he can in the coldest and longest of the pools.
Just a little soaking wet from freezing, nasty green water. Oh, look a little sun.

Also, notice the boulders we were having to climb down, over and around. It was lots of work, especially when you are shivering to death. Terry had brought and carried a little raft he thought he would help him float - didn't work so well.
Here are Garth and I after finishing adventure number one - we made it through all the pools and are still alive.
In several places we found spider webs that had caught birds and squirrels. They were pretty creepy especially since the next part of the hike we were bushwhacking though brush above our waists or higher. You had no idea what was in there and I was just hoping it wasn't a spider who ate birds and squirrels.
The canyon was absolutely beautiful and reminded us a little of the Narrows hike in Zion National Park. The walls got very steep and high but the hiking was much more difficult than the Narrows. The rocks were slick and unstable and I think all of us had a couple of falls. The next portion of the hike was boulder hopping. Boulder hopping can be fun and is, but after 4 hours of it, it can get very tiring plus one missed step and you can really get hurt! But we safely made it through adventure number two!
We eventually came to some meadows and Garth wanted his picture taken right HERE. Most of the time there wasn't a trail to follow and so we just bushwhacked though the reeds, sticker bushes, trees, brush, fallen trees (which there were a lot off) and back and forth across the creek. Dennis had set his GSP and we could tell we were getting closer to the car, that is when we could get a signal, but after 7 hours of hiking we were all getting a little worried about finding the trail out. We finally came to the confluence which meant that the trail up and out was close but it evaded us.

Our next decisions could have been caused by being too tired, desperation or sheer stupidity but in our attempt to get of the canyon, we split up. Garth and I had been leading most of the hike and we decided to hike straight up a drainage wash. From where we were it looked as though the rim wasn't too far away. The soil was soft and moved with each step. It was very rocky but the rocks moved as well and couldn't be trusted for sure footing. We literally scratched and climbed on our hands and feet up a huge hill only to find that we were still far from the top. We could hear the rest of our group far below still looking for the trail. We decided to just keep hiking up and towards the direction of the trail, thinking that eventually we would hit the trail.
The next addition to the adventure was that the sun was beginning to set and we knew that we were running out of daylight and Garth was having a hard time catching his breath and couldn't go very fast. We both knew we could physically continue to make it up the cliff but we just weren't sure what we would find over the next ridge and if there would be a way out through the rock at the top. I was worried we would have to spend the night on the ledge because we would get stuck someplace. We were both praying a lot. Finally, Garth suggested we walk back the other way and see if there might be a place we could scale the rocks and low and behold, there was the trail!!!
We couldn't figure out where it had come from but there was a trail up through the hardest part of the cliff. We hadn't see any other hikers the entire day and all of the sudden there was a backpacker coming down the trail. He told us where we were and had seen our car and gave us directions to it. End of the biggest adventure of the day - we had made it up the cliff!

As you can see we were just a little happy to see the trail head when we made it out or is Garth too tired to smile? The six hour hike had taken us nine hours.

Our next big worry was were the rest of our group was. We made it back to the car and waited for about 30 minutes and finally the rest of our party hobbled in. They hadn't found the trail either and they too had hiked up a drainage wash only one ravine over. It was dark by the time everyone was back at the car and ready to go pick up the other vehicle and 10:30 by the time we made it home.

While it was a beautiful hike, it is one I will never do again. It was now the physically hardest hike I've ever been on (replacing Four Peaks) and an adventure that I won't repeat. We are using our caller ID now when Terry calls.