WORK?!!

I left the apartment at 7 this morning and drove up to the Black Canyon Trailhead at Black Canyon City. Got there about 7:45. There were only a few folks there and the sign-in sheet had only about 3 names. I was the only one with a bike. Met Bob the BLM guy, who gave me directions, "Whenyou get to the river, go west about a half mile. You'll see us up on the hillside." or words to that effect. So I took off on the trail and found the river. 8:15 or so, sun on my back, I'm facing west. I follow the river (rivulet) about 1/2 mile. No trail, no trailworkers. I continue on. There was a fork in the trail back near the hilltop, maybe I took the wrong one. Another mile, damn river is now east. No trail, no trailworkers. Another mile, now there are houses. Must have gone wrong somewhere. Back downriver. Lots of sand and rock gardens, so its push and carry Mr Klein. Now its about 9:15. I signed in and now I'm off somewhere that wasn't in the plan. I know how to get back, but I don't want to backtrack all the way to the truck and have a bunch of folks wandering around looking for "that idiot." When I got back to the place where the river and trail met, I ran into a lady who was doing something with geo-caching. She pointed out the work crew up on the hillside and said that one of them headed upriver to find me. How long ago? About 10 minutes. We must have passed somewhere. On the way back downriver , I made a point of following my trail and leaving a separate set of tracks so someone would see that I had come back. As I was trying to decide whether to go back upriver and find the searcher, he came into view. He remarked that he could tell I had returned downriver because he saw two sets of tracks.

Off we went to meet up with the trail crew, after my wasting of 2 hours. The crew had made good progress already, and I joined them for about 3 hours. In all the crew completed about 800 ft. I broke rock, raked dirt, and didn't f**k up my back.

Temp was about 90 when we headed back where the folks drove to. I loaded Mr Klein into one of the trucks and accepted a ride back to the trailhead. Pie ala-mode and good conversation at the Rock Springs Cafe, and I was back in Phoenix by 4:00 pm.

Tomorrow I'll try Willow Canyon to Goat Camp at White Tanks. I've seen video of the Goat Camp trail and that was enough to convince me that I'll turn back rather than break something.