Caught in a Superstition Wilderness Time Warp

Shortly after my Hayduke section trip in November, Clay started talking about a route he put together in the Superstition Wilderness that we hiked the beginning of December. Leaving from Woodbury Trailhead and ending at Tortilla Flat, his route would connect Fish Creek Canyon to Peters Canyon somewhere in the middle. He had hiked the length of Fish Creek Canyon in the past out to State Highway 88 (closed now at Fish Creek Vista) and hiked about three miles up Peters Canyon. Everything else in between would be new outside of the small part of Peters Trail (which I had hiked on about a year ago) and the trails leading into Angel Basin.

On paper this trip looked pretty straight forward. At about twenty-three miles in length (a pretty rough estimate by Clay) we planned for about two days of backpacking. On top of planning to complete the trip in two days, I also had a family event that I could not miss the following day in the evening.

The day before our trip we drove down to drop my car off at Tortilla Flat before driving around to Woodbury Trailhead. Tortilla Flat is a small collection of buildings with a restaurant, bar, and mine shaft tour for people visiting Canyon Lake and the western Superstition Wilderness. It’s kind of a weird place to visit around 8PM. With almost no one at Tortilla Flat, we dropped my car off at a pull-out about a mile up Highway 88 where we would exit Peters Canyon. After, we drove around to Woodbury Trailhead to car camp before starting the next morning.

The next morning we briefly hiked on the Woodbury Trail to reach the JF Trail. This route took us up to Tortilla Pass, where we saw a hunter with his pack goats. Intrigued, we stopped to talk to him about his goats and asked how much water he’d found so far on his hunt. We knew of some reliable springs we would pass, but it’s nice to hear of other sources. Even though it rained a few days before the trip, we decided to start out with four liters of water, since we were unsure of water availability. But overall, we knew you are more likely to find more water in the desert during non-summer months (please still check the likelihood of your water sources, it’s important!).

From Tortilla Pass, we continued down into Angel Basin on Rogers Canyon Trail. The year before, Angel Basin was flowing with water as far as the eye could see. This time we found no water in the basin.

We continued down Rogers Canyon, technically on the Frog Tanks Trail, which is really just walking down the canyon. Eventually we arrived at the entrance of Fish Creek Canyon.

A little ways down the canyon we found a decent pool of water to fill up from. We found multiple pools where the canyon walls reflected back at us and even flowing streams in some parts.

Fish Creek Canyon is beautiful and remote. As we worked our way down the canyon the rugged walls glowed in the afternoon sun and all the vegetation sported fall colors. Caves were tucked into the canyon walls.

With the sun going down and a little over ten miles hiked, we found a flat area to make camp for the night. With about thirteen miles to go and planning to start hiking earlier than the first day, we figured we’d finish the trip within the second day.

We were very wrong.

The day started off well as we finished hiking our section of Fish Creek Canyon to the exit point. There were a few pile ups of boulders to scramble down, but otherwise we were making good time. We found a scoopable pool of water before leaving the canyon and connecting over to Peters Trail.

Peters Trail starts on the northern end of the Superstition Wilderness near Tortilla Ranch. From this point the trail takes you all the way to a junction with the Dutchman Trail, near Charlebois Spring further south. We followed the trail for about a mile and a half before leaving the trail to head up a drainage to a saddle that would connect us to Peters Canyon on the other side.

Clay was very interested in the saddle when planning the trip because it’s probably one of the straightest feature in the Superstitions. All the other canyons and drainages curve in some manner, but this one is relatively straight for about two miles.

Arriving at 2PM, it took us about an hour and a half to make it a mile and a half up to the saddle. While the drainage was relatively clear of brush, it was just slow climbing up the rocks. Once out of the rocky part of the drainage, it was a demoralizing tenth of a mile climb to finally reach the saddle.

If going up to the saddle was demoralizing, hiking down the other side was heart breaking. The terrain leaving the saddle was chocked with brush and we always seemed to be on the wrong side of the drainage for finding a good path through. After fighting through the brush for another hour and a half, we finally entered an area of clearer walking.

Once we made it through the brush we came to some giant pour offs. The views from the top were incredible. We probably would’ve been more impressed with them had we not spent three hours trying to hike about two miles. Our chances of finishing the trip on the second day were dwindling quickly. Luckily, there was a wide shelf of rock we could scramble down to make it off the pour offs.

Once through the pour offs we’d finally made it into Peters Canyon. With it approaching 5PM and about five miles to Tortilla Flat, we decided to camp a third night (we both had an extra dinner and snacks) and hopefully be out no later than noon. We figured this would be enough time to shuttle back to Woodbury Trailhead to pick up Clay’s truck and get me back to Phoenix in time.

It’s a good thing we decided to camp, because the next day had many boulder scrambles and narrow parts of the canyon with large pools of water to navigate.

We’d been hiking for about nine hours and traveled less than nine miles.

The final day was spectacular. We encountered many decently sized and deep pools of water tucked into narrow parts of Peters Canyon. Most of them were pretty easy to navigate, either by rock hopping or skirting around the sides on protruding rock ledges.

One pool of water stands out in particular. In a narrow part of the canyon, the pool was perfectly still and curved through the rock. The sides of the pool were too steep, so we hiked up and around the pool to a ledge about four feet off the ground. Clay jumped off first before I passed our packs to him. If I’d been by myself I probably would’ve jumped off the ledge eventually, but luckily Clay helped me slide off the rock shelf.

Once through all the pools, we had large piles of boulders to scramble down. For the most part the piles were simple enough, as we could easily scramble or slide from boulder to boulder. There was one boulder scramble requiring more bushwhacking to reach the bottom as the drops from the boulders were too high. I was thrilled about more bushwhacking.

Peters Canyon was finally starting to open up and we knew we were getting close. Peters Canyon meets up with Tortilla Creek, about a mile from Tortilla Flat. We still found many little pools of water as well as a time line of receding water in the dry pools.

Many rocky steps later, we saw the powerlines running over the highway and then finally my car, still safely parked in the pull-out. Even with our best efforts, the pools and boulders slowed us down so much that we didn’t reach my car until 1PM.

We now had a difficult decision because it would easily be at least a two hour drive to retrieve Clay’s truck and probably an hour and a half for me to make it back to Phoenix. My family event had us leaving early evening and with rush hour traffic there was a good chance I wouldn’t be on time.

After much deliberating we decided the best option was for me to drive Clay to the dirt road heading up to Woodbury Trailhead and then he would walk/ try to hitchhike back to his truck (about nineteen miles). Now I know this doesn’t put me in the best light as a girlfriend, but let me explain:

I suggested Clay come to Phoenix with me and we could pick up his truck the following morning, but he pointed out this would be a lot of excess driving. He figured it being a Friday many vehicles would be traveling up to the trailhead (it’s a popular road for UTVs and ATVs) and he’s hitchhiked up that road in the past. He also preferred to be back at his truck that night so he could start heading home to Payson. Clay also just really likes hiking in the desert. Reluctantly, I agreed and made sure he was topped of with water before starting off.

He did eventually get picked up, but he had only two miles of hiking left. By complete coincidence, Clay was picked up by two people he used to work with on the Globe Ranger District, Tina and Sam. They were both out hunting and just happened to drive by.

Overall, we loved this trip. It was beautiful, remote, and we both got to see parts of the Superstitions we’d never visited before. Clay really wanted to know if he could connect Fish Creek Canyon and Peters Canyon and the short answer is yes, you can, it might just take a bit of time.

We discussed multiple times how trail miles are so different from overland miles. The amount of time and energy to cover a small distance is a weird feeling. We were constantly moving forward, but barely moving on the map. Our pace was so slow we started joking we were stuck in a weird canyon time warp. But these are the kind of trips we’ve both started to enjoy much more because the places it unlocks are worth every beautiful, challenging, and remote moment. Hopefully I’ll be writing soon about more wilderness time warp adventures!