Judy writes “Rock Creek, Eastern Superstitions Down to 3 left to do in the Superstitions, Yea!!
Nancy, Colleen, Judy & June was dropped off on road 650 by husband – Possum. It started off knowing it was only a rock cairn at the trailhead due to the trail had been abandon many years prior. But due to it been on my original map that I was going by to finish the trails in the Superstitions I had to do it.
As we were approaching my way point we came across a cowboy with his 8 Walker Blue Tick Hounds, that was in training for Mt Lion hunting. This was a experience for all of us, as we were in a remote area & it was like a western movie. He was very interesting & said he had been in every trail in the Superstitions & the route we would be taking was treacherous as him & his mule had taken a few years back. He asked if it wouldn’t be better to go to Haunted Canyon instead. I mentioned to him that trail had been done & this had to be finished to hi light my map, he seemed to understand the challenge & put a comfort tone in his voice & said we would be fine just follow the ravine till we got to the Rock Creek & it would take us into Miles Ranch. Without a lot of way points that was reassuring, as we were looking for the rock cairn I found a heads up penny in the middle of know where, so now I knew it was going to be a great hike. No rock cairn at where we started so made a small one & took off down the ravine. Yes it was steep, rocky in places but I so enjoyed the not well traveled trail, the scenery, huge boulders & clear stream running. Walking sticks, gaiters & leather gloves came in very handy. . We had lunch at the corral found the cement water trough mentioning 1-39 Even though it was more of a scramble, & brushy we did hit cat claw in sections that was unavoidable, after the old corral it was worst. The history in this area was another reason I so enjoyed this section, as I imagined what it must have been like. Once you approach Bull Basin a nice camp area with water & the trail becomes a trail, & it was a breeze to hike into Miles Ranch. We got in about dusk, so we averaged 1 hr a mile. After looking back on this trail vs. Spencer Trail which is the trail next to this one, I enjoyed this one much better. Check out 3-17-10 story. Now our real surprise came, 2 weeks before we had gone to a AZT meeting in Superior & decided to check out Miles Ranch area, so we decided to cache, some whiskey, wine, water, food & any thing left over in our packs that was not used for the car camp to make it easier for us for this backpack as we still are doing Wildcat & Cuff Button Trails & had 4 more days on this trip. To our shock 2 different caches, 1 hidden with tree bark, the other literly buried under dirt ( in coffee & tupperware ) in a totally different location had been dug up or missing. The joke for this trip was some hunter was enjoying our whiskey, water, newpaper & toliet paper. For some reason the cache that had our food in coffeee cans our bottles of wine was left alone, just opened with a knife, & placed in plastic bag that we had covered it with before shoveling dirt on top. The bag on it was Patient Bag from a hospital, & I wrote on the outside, plz do not remove backpacker coming thru. It gave us the weebe geebe’s at 1st knowing there was no vehicle there when we cached. I decided it could have been a person with a metal detector that found it as it all had metal someplace in the cache, & lots of history in this area for people to scout out. This is also Javaline hunting season.Fri we had a day off as we were waiting for Connie to show up on Sat to finish the hikes with us. Colleen & I did 4 miles of Wildcat to the fence line, this is not on my map nor do I need to do it to finish the trails. But this would make a loop out of Cuff Button to Oak Flats & back to Miles Ranch. In the meantime a storm was being predicted & June & Nancy decided to move our tents to the old barn, got dry firewood prepared & made a nice home while we wait for Connie to show up. What a great place, we found metal sheeting to make a fire on top of & one for the side to radiate heat which would not destroy the ground. It did rain on & off so once Connie showed up we decided to do just a short hike to Paradise Trail as she came with the weather report of heavy rain & high winds. We were so glad we decided to spend a day in or around the barn because the real down pour & heavy rain was just beginning. It was comfortable, & by Sunday it was not letting up so decided the Cuff Button Trail would need to wait & we headed home after having lunch at Superior- Dos Hernandez.”