10/16/2014 Trip Notes: My latest trip to the Bridge Canyon Wilderness Area resulted in a hike between the Sacatone Canyon and Grapevine Canyon. Instead of adding info and pictures for this hike here, I decided this time to create a separate page. Click here for additional information and pictures on this hike ... Trip Notes for 10/16/2014 (Sacatone Canyon).
01/31/2013 Trip Notes: The plan of the day was to skip grapevine canyon and hike up to the top of Sacatone Canyon, about a 2.5 mile hike from the road (Fig. 01) with an elevation gain of nearly 1,000 feet. Both of these canyons cut through the Newberry Mountains – with the top of Sacatone Canyon reaching a altitude of 3,145 feet. Shortly after the start of the hike we came upon several rock depressions that still contained pools of water (Fig. 03). Unfortunately less than halfway up we ran into a very narrow area (Fig. 04), with twenty foot sides, that resembled a waterfall like area where the rocks were worn so smooth (Fig. 05) that they prevented us from climbing up any further. Refer to map in (Fig. 02). We then backed up a bit and took a rather steep hike up the north side of the wash (Fig. 06) that would have eventually allowed us to circumvent this area. However, by the time we reached the top of this area, we decided we didn’t have enough time to make the detour and the rest of the climb to the top. Disappointed in not getting to the top, we still enjoyed the hike up this wash and some of the views it provided. The view northeast across the valley below is seen in (Fig. 07). In the very center of the view south (Fig. 08) you can just barely see a section of the Colorado River (click to enlarge). The two rows of mountains behind that are actually in Arizona. Click here to see two images from here that I converted to black and white ... Black & White Images of Sacatone Canyon. We never did find any of the petroglyphs reported to be in this canyon – maybe they were higher up.
Still having a little time left when we returned to the van, we spent the last 45 minutes hiking the wash on the south side of the road towards the Sacatone Spring. Even though this area of the wash started out relatively open (Fig. 09), the sides were soon covered with Cholla Cactus (Fig. 10) and the center of the was became so clogged with heavy brush, reeds and trees (Fig. 11), that is was impossible to navigate. We had to climb up out of the wash and hike along the sides. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to return to the van before we reached the actual spring. I think this might be a good hike in the spring when the trees and vegetation would be more in bloom from the winter rains. |
