Location : El Orso Road just west of Four Peaks (NOBO Mile Marker 369.3 )
Date: 4-30-2019
Weather: Moderate clouds, starting temperature 64 degrees and the turn about 79 degrees.
Total Mileage Completed : 19.2 on AZT
Hike Description: Hi all, So we caught a cool temperature day in late April here in the Arizona desert and Tom and I jumped on the chance to knock out this 19 miles section of the AZT from Orso Road connecting way back to Hike #9 in year 1.
So…. lets talk about the drive. This time instead of taking the scary-ass Lake Roosevelt drive up to El Orso road I though it would be helpful to try to get to our starting trail from highway 87 – the Beeline. Taking a right on Cline Cabin Road and following it for a very very long time you will eventually get back top of El Osro Road / Pigeon Spring Trailhead and the Four Peak region. Was it still scary driving…? yes but not nearly as 5000 foot dropoff as El Orso road. With only a couple sketchy spots, the drive up was very scenic and not too bad. Very time consuming though. On the way back we did the Roosevelt Lake scary road down… Tom drove.. I hate the spoon section. Far too much for my fear of heights.
On to the hike. This section was a bit of an up and down, down and up and up and down hike with 3529 feet of elevation change throughout the day. Pretty much though nearly the entire hike was a jeep road hike only changing into singletrack trail right before the connecting area heading toward Sunflower. We did get really lucky with the weather and the dense clouds kept the sun away for most of the hike.
All in all tough hike on the legs, some sporadic amazing views but a lot of jeep road hiking.
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