Friday morning was overcast. The forecast said about 50% cloud cover, but it was closer to 99% until noon. Then it got a bit less. We did a 5 mile loop south east along the main road, then followed a road south west for a while. Then we got into a bit less well traveled areas heading west then northwest until we got back to a line of trailers. We could see why there was not many south of them, as there was a deep fairly steep walled wash going east-west. We managed to work our way across it, then traveled north toward the trailer.
We were planning to move the trailer to the west side of the LTVA to be closer to the trails on Granite Mtn next Monday, but the weather forecast is for rain then. We moved on Saturday. The only disadvantage of the new location is that it is just east of Old Yuma Road which runs along the west side of the LTVA. It is very popular with ATVers, who raise a bit of dust. While setting up, we heard a couple of souped up off-road cars roaring by, ignoring the 15 mph speed limit. They raised even more dust. We can't complain too much, as this is about 1.5 miles closer to the ATV trails on Granite Mountain and its surrounds.
Sunday morning after watching about half of the morning Tim's draw, we hiked west toward a couple of trails running up the SE corner of Granite.
We entered the wash running north-south between a couple of truck campers. One, from Alberta, had a beautiful fluffy white dog who greeted us. We wound our way across the wash
to the ATV trails on the hill, and followed the left one up a ridge, since it was the lower of the two.
From the top of the ridge we could see further into a canyon into the mountain.
Lots of nice flowers.
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| Beavertail cactus flower |
A little further, down from the ridge we came to another trail joining the one we were on from the south. We took this, as the slope looked better than the one we came up. As we got back down into a wash at the bottom, we heard some ATV's which parked on the top of the ridge we had been on. A bit further on, we came to an intersection. We took the trail heading back east toward the trailer. We saw a few quail cross the trail ahead of us.
Shortly after this, the ATV's that had been on the ridge approached us. When we got back down into Tyson Wash, we encountered the white dog we had seen on the way out, taking its owners for a walk.
Back to the trailer for more curling, and Nascar in the afternoon.
Monday morning we did a trip into Quartzsite to empty our recycling bin. On the way, we stopped at Main Street Eatery again for breakfast. After recycling, we picked up a few groceries before returning to the trailer. Then about 9:30 we started a hike to the west, targeting J. Cone's cabin on the SW side of Granite Mtn. As we were entering the wide part of Tyson Wash, we saw a quail perched on a tree limb. When we went to take a picture, we saw that the memory card hadn't been put back in. John returned the .4 mi to the trailer to pick up the memory card. By the time he got back to Joan, the quail had walked along the tree limb it was on, jumped down to another branch, then down to the ground. The first mile or so of our hike was retracing the route from the day before. Then we continued along the wash on the south side of Granite. There was another ridge road about half way along the south side. It just looked like an ATV climb, although you might get some good views. When we arrived at the Cone cabin, we saw that it is fenced in, with DANGER signs. Pity that people are so careless that they have to be protected from themselves. There are good views of the hills around from the cabin. Cone was an artist and worker of ironwood. The larger building was his workshop. A few years ago, there were
roofs on the buildings.
On the way back, we encountered a fellow on a bicycle, who figured the road was really rough, and two ATVs. A while later we heard and saw some more quails, from a distance. Then we came up to a group of about 10 ATVs who were stopped for a break. We notice they usually travel in groups. We have been thinking about getting an ATV to be able to go further off-road than we can hike. Seeing the goups of ATVs makes us think it might be a good idea to have one each, just in case we had a breakdown. Then we wouldn't have to walk a long way back to get help.
Rain started at 1:04 as predicted (.02in forecast), but figure we must have got more than that.
On Tuesday, we went south west from the trailer. Crossing the wash, we spooked a hare. Once across the wash, instead of heading west on our route yesterday, we followed the atv trail further south then up a small hill
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| hills to south |
with a dig on it.
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| dig | |
From the crest, we could see south to La Paz Valley. Between us and La Paz Valley, there was a series of small digs . Click picture for better view of the digs.
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| line of digs with La Paz Valley beyond |
We had a choice of following the atv trail up over a couple of higher hills higher to get down, or taking a faint route down into the wash. The digs were spread out over an area about 1/6 mile. Further southwest, we noticed a little hill with a flag on the top, but opted not to climb it today. We worked our way back across the wash further south than the we had come out. We saw another hare. This one wasn't as quick to get out of sight, as it didn't notice us. However, there was too much cover to get a picture.
Wednesday we decided to hike up a trail on the northeast corner of Granite that we saw from the stone cabin by the wash a few weeks ago. We followed the same route to above the cabin, then headed uphill on an ATV trail until we got to the trail angling up over a little shoulder.
It was a fairly steep climb on a narrow little path, but not unreasonable.
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| variety |
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When we got to the shoulder, we could see the west end of Quartzsite ahead of us.
From here the trail continued across the side of the hill, coming out above a gap going north south.
The track continued northwest around the hill towards Quartzsite, but we decided to work down a good slope to an ATV trail below. We followed that trail southeast toward the trailer. It climbed a bit to get over the next shoulder. From there, we worked our way back to the trailer. In one of the washes coming down the hill we saw an usual dry waterfall.
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| dry waterfall |
We spooked a hare which hid under a bush, then darted away and paused out in the open. Finally got pictures.
On the way back we saw a few more quail in a couple of places. We even saw a squirrel-type rodent with a bit of something in it dash across our trail. Makes me want to get a Go-Pro to have on while hiking to get pictures of the animals that dart by too fast to get the camera out.
Thursday we retraced our route to the little ridge we did on Sunday. This time, instead of climbing the ridge, we followed the wash north of it.
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| warbler? |
We thought we had seen paths above the wash on one side or the other, but we couldn't find one, so we exited the wash when it crossed the ATV trail that comes across the west shoulder of the ridge. From there, we walked along the ATV trail toward a shoulder to the NW. The last bit up the shoulder looked pretty steep so we followed a path to the left to a shoulder a bit west.
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| thin trail heading left |
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After looking north into the gap we had come south through yesterday, we followed the little trail along a ridge that came back out on the ATV trail.
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