North Maricopa Mountains Wilderness (Gila Bend, AZ)
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The Sonoran Desert National Monument to the east of Gila Bend, Arizona, was established by President Clinton literally four days before he left office in 2001. But large portions of the area remained open to grazing and to rampant abuse by the ATV crowd, so I never really felt like visiting. At least until recently, when I read that the BLM had actually closed the North Maricopa Mountains portion of the monument to all motorized travel. Enough incentive for me to go and take a look. | |
Planning and Preparation For my first visit to the North Maricopa Mountains Wilderness (Sonora Desert National Monument), I opted to follow the two established trails that the monument has to offer. My plan was to hike from AZ 238 (Maricopa Road) cross-country, largely paralleling and following the old jeep road, to the former Brittlebush Trailhead. From there, I would follow the Brittlebush trail until it intersects with the Margies Cove Trail, turn east, circle back around Butterfield Pass, and then to cut across the open expanse of desert to again reach AZ 238 and the car. All in all, my roughly planned route came out at about 16 miles. Adding my "desert hiking is never as straight as it looks on the topo map" safety margin, I guessed the whole loop would be 20 miles or so. Here's an overview map of the planned route, a link to the actually hiked route and waypoints can be found at the bottom of this page. Twenty miles are certainly doable as a day hike, but since early dawn and morning are the hours I enjoy most in any desert, I decided to backpack the loop hike, and to spend the night. Hiking in ![]() ![]() The trail heads upstream, and is well marked with cairns even in the wash bed where no such markers would be necessary. The wash soon peters out, and the trail continues a gentle incline up to the HUMP, at 1975ft the highest point of the hike. Beautiful views await, the plains to the east are studded with saguaro cacti growing as tightly together as I've ever seen them. From here on, the trail loosely follows a wash heading east, descending to an old rusty FENCE and onwards to a dilapidated dirt road (RD02). I believe that this is where old maps of the Monument show "Margie's Cove East Trailhead", but I didn't see any parking or trailhead sign. What I did find though is an enclosed fenced off space with a large sloped concrete patch inside. I had never seen such a contraption before, and it took me a while to figure out that the concrete patch was basically a funnel used to collect rainwater and make it run into a roofed concrete water tank nearby. A nearby "warning" sign explained that this was "Game Water". Needless to say that I didn't take any of the water, but in a true emergency, GAMEWATER1 is one of the very few locations in the wilderness where a dehydrated hiker might have a small chance to find a wet spot even during dry season. Hiking in the desert, I'm constantly on the lookout for signs of water and water itself, but even though I was hiking in a comparably cool and wet early March, I only found two natural water sources on the entire hike. Both were puddles holding about one gallon, in the shade of a canyon and along a stretch of apparently non-porous rock. I have no doubt that during the heat of summer these puddles dry up within minutes after a downpour. In other words, if you go hiking in North Maricopa Wilderness, carry all the water you need to hike back to Hwy 238 or Hwy 85, no matter what happens. ![]() Night and Morning The night got cold ... really cold, my guess is close to freezing, but since I had brought both my REI 25F sleeping bag and my A+mazing Exped Synmat, I didn't mind the temperature one bit and slept serenely until way too early, when a cactus wren nearby started its ratchety bird"song" to complain about something. The dawn was only just breaking over Butterfield Pass to the east. I should have known better, but got up out of the warm sleeping bag way too soon, and then spent half a hour shivering, until the sun finally deigned to pop over the ridge and let her rays reach my camp site. After thawing my fingers enough to strike a match, I cooked a mug of oatmeal on my hobo stove, and welcomed the desert morning that I so cherish. ![]() Now, if it had been late on day one, and I had wanted to do this loop as a day hike .. I would simply have followed the road all the way back to the CORRAL and then to the car. But since it was bright and early, and I felt like exploring and marveling more than like hiking, I decided to go cross-country and make a bee-line to the car. Doing so would lead me along and across more washes and - as I hoped - interesting vegetation and features than I would get to see when following the road. Heading from DESERTSTATION to CARPARK is easy, there is a convenient prominent ridge on the horizon that you can aim for and that allows to hike ahead without constantly checking the GPS. The stretch about half a mile from Hwy 238 is again pretty trashed by ATV tracks, but in between, there are several small washes, pristine, studded with cacti, wildflowers and budding creosote bushes. Around 9:30, I got back to the car, and the full loop turned out to be 19.82 miles. After a big gulp form the Gatorade bottle that I had left in the car and after a quick change of shirt and socks, I was ready for a second breakfast. Two cups of coffee and "Huevos con Chorizo" at the Space Age Diner in Gila Bend were exactly what I needed! A Google Earth KMZ trackpoint file is available for this hike. The words in UPPERCASE on this page refer to GPS waypoints in the track log. © 2010 Daniel Wesemann (back to travel overview) |