Long Distance Hiker

Thru Hiker's Blog and More

  • HOME
  • TRAIL JOURNALS
  • TRAIL PHOTOS
  • RESOURCES
    • Trip Planning & Debrief
    • Fitness, Food & Health
    • Gear
    • Community
    • Recommended Reading
    • Arizona Trail (AZT) – Resupply Plan
    • John Muir Trail Resupply Plan
    • Long Trail (LT) Planning Guide
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT
You are here: Home / Mogollon Rim Trail 2019 / MRT 22 – May 05 – Black River

MRT 22 – May 05 – Black River

May 5, 2019 by SweetPea

Daily Miles: 18

Total Miles: 379

It seems like we don’t need to even bother setting an alarm anymore…the turkeys do a fine job of waking us up. Although they seem to think we need to be up at 4:30am, which is entirely too early. In addition to hearing turkeys, we have been seeing a lot of hunters (mostly driving their trucks, not walking in the woods) and hearing a fair amount of gunfire.

Today started at another spring near camp. This one was pretty cool in that the spring was designed to fill up several hollowed out chunks of trees, although now none are filled, but the spring still had some flow to it.

Our first trail of the day was pretty rough and filled with a lot of downed trees. The area had been affected by a fire in the past, so most of the trees had fallen, although there are a lot of tiny aspen trees starting to grow in the area. At one point it felt like we were walking through an aspen tunnel.

Then we got a respite from the blow downs and got to walk a nice dirt road for a few miles. After that, we headed down a small valley which contained a small creek. It was a really picturesque area and we really enjoyed the walk. For most of the walking, we were on a raised swath of land and only had to deal with a few blowdowns. However, for the final mile or so of the valley, there wasn’t a trail, and we were just looking for the best route. There were a lot of downed trees, but also a ton of very scratchy plants. They left our legs very scratched up and bloody.

When we came out of the valley, we came right to a picnic table, which we enjoyed for a few minutes even though we had just had a long break a short time earlier. Then, it was back to another several miles on a nice dirt road.

When we got to a trailhead, the MRT presented another alternate…either hike in the Black River Canyon, along (and cross multiple times) the Black River, or take an alternate route which bypassed the canyon, mostly staying on dirt roads. We decided to go for the Black River, with the knowledge that there were two possible bailout points along the way if we felt like the river crossings were too sketchy.

We had about three miles from the beginning to the first bailout point. This included four crossings of the river. The trail alongside the river was often good and me made decent time (although we did lose the trail several times and had to scramble over blowdowns and ramparts to find it again), but when it came to the crossings, it was really slow. The water got noticeably deeper with each ford (the water on the final ford was over SweetPea’s hipbelt), and the current was very strong, but what made the crossings so difficult was the fact that the rocks on the bottom of the river were incredibly slippery. And there was mostly really big rocks, so it was very hard to get any kind of secure foothold. It seemed like it would take us at least five minutes just to cross the 15’ or so of the river.

On the third crossing, Mace lost his footing and went down in the river. Luckily he was able to get his footing quickly, so the only damage done, besides Mace being soaked and cold, was a lost water bottle.

On the fourth crossing, the water was so deep and strong, that it was really difficult to get across. It took us some time and luckily we all made it across safely, but we knew that we wouldn’t be able to handle crossings that were any deeper than that. Our data book mentioned that the fords get deeper as you go along, and knowing we were at our limit at the beginning, we made the decision to leave the river on the first bailout.

It was too bad, but we were glad that we had at least tried it. The Black River seems to be something best tried during summer when the water levels would be much lower.

The bailout route took us to the alternate trail…basically walking on a dirt road. We walked for a few miles and then stopped to camp for the night. We were all pretty exhausted from the day.

Filed Under: Mogollon Rim Trail 2019

« MRT 21 – May 04 -Mount Baldy Wilderness
MRT 23 – May 06 – Fish Creek »

Questions or thoughts on this article? Please leave them below: Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join our email list to be updated of our latest posts.

All Slovenia Mountain Trail 2022 Posts

Buffalo Roamer Podcast Image

Buffalo Roamer Podcast Feature

2021 Gear Lists – CDT and John Muir Trail

Don’t Patreon Us, Donate to these guys instead

Special Thanks To:


Top Posts & Pages

  • Thoughts and Advice for Hiking the Slovenia Mountain Trail
    Thoughts and Advice for Hiking the Slovenia Mountain Trail
  • PCT Resupply & Town Thoughts - Part 1 (Mile 0-454)
    PCT Resupply & Town Thoughts - Part 1 (Mile 0-454)
  • GET Day 28: Continental Divide Trail
    GET Day 28: Continental Divide Trail

Thru Hiker Blog

Well over 14,000 miles of our thru hiking blogs, photos of our trips and resources can all be found on this site.  We hope that the pages herein can be of help and inspiration.

Like Us On Facebook

Long Distance Hiker

Click Here for RSS Feed

Follow us on Instagram

Affilate Disclosure

Some of the links within the pages Long Distance Hiker are affiliate links.  We are discontinuing the addition of affiliate links to new pages as of February 2019.

We encourage you to support the trail organizations that make hiking around the world a possibility.

Copyright © 2023 · longdistancehiker.com · Thanks for Visiting ·

Sign Up for our mailing list to get our newsletter with new posts.
This is typically emailed 1-3 times per month.

powered by MailChimp!

 

×