Weekend Wanderings (photo post)

Wow, where did the last week go? Anyway, here I am again with more from the Gila Wilderness.

The third day of our trek was a shorter hike up the Middle Fork to the point where we would be crossing over to the West Fork. 

Heading out.

We'd been in no doubt that we weren't alone out there, passing many piles of bear poop on the previous days. We'd spotted a bear early in the second day's hike, as well. This morning, we found fresh tracks shortly after leaving camp.

My size 9.5 (40.5) boot next to the print.

The same bit of sandy trail also provided some tracks of a mountain lion (spoiler alert: we never saw any of them).

We carried on, being sure to announce our presence before pushing into the brush.

 

We seemed to be coming out of the narrow canyon, with more and larger open spaces. That just left us more exposed to the sun, and things were heating up.

"Meadow" and pointy bits of eroded rock. 

Not sure about the ID--my app says Black Locust. Beautiful pink blossoms, anyway.

Lunch break means lying around in the shade, looking up at the trees. I thought we'd run out of cottonwoods, but they were back!

 Since there was no guarantee of water on the 10-mile crossing between the Middle Fork and the West Fork, we stopped at the junction, even though it wasn't yet 2 p.m. We'd done perhaps 6 1/2 miles, and had no desire to commit to another possible 10+ with some actual climbing! We are all pretty good at lying around doing nothing (confession: I always carry a journal and an ereader; I need to work on my "doing nothing" skills), so that wasn't a hardship.

My part of camp. With clear skies and few bugs, it didn't seem worthwhile trying to put up the tents, especially as the ground was sandy--not good for holding stakes.

With time to kill, we all strolled around the meadow at one point or another. The low light of late afternoon made everything beautiful (except the mylar balloon I found--I already ranted about that on Facebook, so I'll just repeat my mantra: DON'T. BUY. THEM. I packed it out the remaining 30+ miles of our trip.).

One nice thing about our early stop: we were able to fully dry our boots, a great boon as the next day would be a long, dry, climb and descent. Dry feet were a treat as we started out the next morning.

We were kind of hoping to camp in or near Lilley Park and explore more of the high country. Water was the big "if".

 None of us knew quite what to expect as we climbed up to the divide. Both of the guys I was with had backpacked in the rivers before; neither had left the canyons to explore up above. It turned out not to be quite what we expected.

I was expecting something more mountain-like; the landscape reminded me of the eastern end of Lassen National Park: rolling hills and lodgepole pines. It was good to get out of the canyon, but we ended up walking mostly in a forest with no views.

Petey Possum was glad to get away from places where he might get wet.

Horned toad. I remember catching these when I was a little kid in Arizona.

 There were even juniper trees up here. These were alligator junipers, for reasons that became obvious when I looked closely.

The alligator skin of the juniper.

After a bit over 3 miles, we had done the primary climb (with a lot of ups and downs to go), and reached Clear Creek, which actually had a trickle of water and some decent pools. We debated camping there and spending the rest of the day doing an exploration of the high country, but it would leave a lot of distance to cover in the final days of our trip, and we were kind of stuck on our original plan. We pushed on.

The largest pool in Clear Creek

Lilley Park spring was reported to be the most reliable water up there, so we were feeling pretty confident we could fill up there and camp in the "park," or open meadow, which we envisioned having broad views over the surrounding country.

Imagine our shock, then, when I did a map check--and found that we'd walked past the springs. We all remembered a seep a little way back, which had to have been the spring. After much debate, two of us hiked back (a good half mile, as it turned out) with a bunch of water bags, with the intention of filling up so we could camp.

The reality was what we should have known: the spring was barely a seep, and the only pool big enough to get water was full of bugs and debris. We took a liter or so from it anyway, to be on the safe side, and returned to the packs and our companion with the news: we'd be continuing on to the Middle Fork.

Lilley Park

The big views we'd expected weren't there at Lilley Park. We did eventually find some, another mile or two on and just before we dropped down to the river. It might actually have been kind of nice to camp up there (if we'd had enough water), but not, in our opinion, as nice as having lots of good water down at the river. 

The view west to the Mogollon Mountains

Starting the descent. At this point it looks innocuous, but a set of steep and narrow switchbacks drops you about 1200' in a hurry, making us glad our packs were getting pretty light by now.

Maybe halfway down, and looking straight down to the West Fork. The roof is a ranger cabin, possibly mostly used by fire crews.

Once down, we had to cross the river (I managed to keep my boots dry!) and find a campsite. The distance was longer than marked on the maps, and adding in the backtracking to find the spring, my day was probably around 12 1/2 or 13 miles, with about 2000' of up and down. Not killing, but tiring enough. 

Camp. I struggled to get the tent up in wind and soft sand, and managed to lose one tent stake in the process (I always carry a couple of spares; stakes are super easy to lose). 

 

The breeze that made setting up my tent a frustration did keep the temperature mild and the bugs away. We all again did little explores around the meadows. 

A historical corral.

The guys came back from their explorations with reports of seeing a bear, and suddenly we were all a bit more jumpy. We took a little more care in storing our food! Especially since, just at dusk, we spotted the bruin again, wandering down towards the river about 200 yards away.

Black blob is the bear. 

Eventually, after seeing and hearing nothing more of our furry friend, we gave up and went to bed. I was closest to the food, so I got to have the cook pot and lid to bang if I woke up and found anything messing with our food. I'm happy to report, nothing did!

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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