Mittry Lake Hike

25 January 2015  The end of the trail is just around the next corner…

Lakes are hard to come by in southern Arizona so every place the Colorado spreads out a bit is called a lake. Lots of boondocking sites plus a boat launch means this spot, just 10 miles north of Yuma, is a busy place. Near the water that is.

We set out for a “2 hour” hike from the parking lot on an easy to see trail that took us past one of the canal outlets (on our right as we headed south up the hills). Rather than route the canal around the hills the engineers decided to tunnel through 2 sets of hills, leaving 4 inlets/outlets and (this is important so pay close attention) some pretty rough hills in between. Helps to know in advance that if you come out of the hills on the wrong side of a wash you get to make a decision: go west or go east. You don’t get to go through the bush at the bottom of the wash (unless you’re wearing Kevlar) and if you guess wrong you get a very long walk on the south (wrong) side of the canal until you come to a bridge. You could swim I suppose but we’ve never actually seen anyone in the canals.

Boondockers beside the canal.

We won't see Mittry Lake again for another 3 hours (and spend another 1/2 hour getting to it).

We followed a trail outlined in a local guide. Not very well.

Like a trail superhighway at the beginning.

Tchotchky Central. Is this as far as they went?

Christmas decor of course.

Once you lose sight of the water, navigation is a combination of compass, guessing, argument, and blind dumb luck. You can follow game trails if you wish but they usually stop at the water or in the thorny thickets near the water. Since the game didn’t drive here they have no need to get to the parking lot like us. No trail GPS yet – that will have to wait until I get us really badly lost to justify the cost. And we have to make it back.

Choose. We went middle. We'll know for sure just around the next corner (yeah right).

We saw interesting flora since it had recently rained.

A little cactus family.

Teddy Bear cholla blooms.

We also lost the trail and ended up on one of those game trails I mentioned. No big deal since my unerring sense of direction eventually brought us to a promontory where we sighted the Lake. Victory! Lunch time! Just have to find a way to the water and get back to the car.

There's the lake - we made it.

Happy hiker celebrates how smart he is. Another premature moment.

All we have to do is follow the trail down - piece of cake!

Not exactly.

Looks a little rougher than we expected.

You can see the trail if you hold your head at just the right angle.

Turns out we are not sheep in the literal sense since we could not follow that trail:

We were on that faint line on the right. Good thing we gave up since it would have taken us miles out of our way.

Nor are we desert hares who can nip through the bushes.

All these trees and bushes want a piece of you.

We retreated and scrambled up and down some lovely loose scree. 3 hills worth. By this time our hiking ardor had started to subside. This had become the norm:

Most of these rocks are waiting for you to step on them to help them relocate.

Of course you could just slide down into the bushes.

Let's take the easy way down like the animals do.

After enough punishment we finally descended to the east inlet (on our left) of the canal we saw coming out on our right on the way in. There is a main road access from the canal entrance here which allowed us to enjoy a refreshing extra mile walk back to the car.

Norene seems happy with getting to the bottom of our last descent.

No - you jump in first.

If you look at our behaviour a couple of weeks later you will come to a conclusion about how much we learned on our first Mittry Lake hike. You will say “nothing”
You would be right.

But, in our defense, we learned quite a few things the second time. Like turn back if it looks like you will end up in the wrong wash and never follow what looks like a game trail (it is). Oh – and listen to Norene when she says “ I’m sure it’s over here”

It is.