Aravaipa Canyon
Sat 22nd - Sun 23rd April
Visiting Aravaipa canyon has been a dream of ours for many years. It is a wild and beautiful area situated about 50 miles north east of Tucson and is popular with hikers, back-packers and birders. There aren’t many places to stay in the vicinity of the canyon, but when we found out about Aravaipa Farm and Orchards from the internet, we thought this would be a great place to be based. It is located about 5 miles from the entrance to the canyon and has several beautiful casitas, in an idyllic setting, that are available to stay in. Tasha and Mac were keen to join us and so we booked two casitas for three nights and this became perhaps our most highly anticipated stop on the whole trip. However, we almost screwed up. I knew when I booked the accommodation that we would need permits form the Bureau of Land Management to enter the wilderness area. I figured I’d get round to booking these in due course and didn’t think much about it. When I finally got round to securing the permits about six weeks ago, there were none left. They allow 30 people per day to enter the canyon from the west end (and 20 more from the east) and all of these slots were booked for weeks in advance. On the advice of BLM I kept checking back on the recreation.gov website and got really lucky. It appeared that a party of three people cancelled a three day visit for Thur/Fri/Sat. I took two of the permits for Friday, thinking Gloria and I could go in then, and three permits for Saturday, hoping that one more might become available, or failing that, at least Tasha and Mac could visit the canyon with either Gloria or myself. No additional permits appeared and so in the end I contacted BLM and asked if we could hold over a pass from Friday so that we could all go in together as a family on Saturday. They seemed happy enough and so that’s what we did.
After a hearty breakfast we drove up the dirt road to the trailhead and started hiking about 9 am. The route meanders up the stream and for the first mile or so passes through dense riparian woodland. Part of the time you are walking on the banks and some of the time wading through the river. It was a magical place and we made slow progress mostly because we kept stopping to listen and look for the plentiful birds. Hiking and birding can be a difficult compromise at times. We ate lunch sitting on a gravel bank in the shade the trees and then continued upstream with more and more wading required. Gradually the heavy woodland gave way to rock canyon walls and we entered an astonishingly beautiful section with the sun lighting up the rock and river sparking as it flowed briskly through the narrows. Above us we could see steep mountain slopes dotted with saguaro cacti. I have rarely been in a place that was so atmospheric and thrilling. We never had a fixed destination for the day but decided that we should plan to turn around shortly after 3pm. We figured it would be quicker walking / wading out and even though we had only covered 3 miles or so, we wanted to leave enough time to get back in daylight. However, before turning around we all went for a full-body dip in the stream. Let’s just say it was “refreshing” and I’m not that embarrassed that I was whimpering a bit! We finally got back to the car at 6 pm after 9 hours in the canyon. We were all quite tired and looking forward to some cold drinks and dinner. The experience lived up to all my expectations, but left me with a desire to return and complete the full traverse at some point.
Sunday was a wonderful lazy day! We wandered around the orchard, looked at birds, lounged around the swimming pool and ate lots of fine food!
Mike
Looks like an amazing place! Glad you are (were) all together!
ReplyDelete