Goat Springs Trail

The only descriptive information I could find when preparing for today's hike on Goat Springs Trail was a single hike report on HikeArizona.com. The only information provided on the Prescott National Forest Website was the laconic comment that the “trail is 2.5 miles long. It begins at Goat Camp Spring and ends at Forest Road 9602j.” Thankfully Lila Wright, our leader, had scouted the trail last spring in company with Gary Jacobson and Frank Lombardo.

The day dawned bright and sunny, if a bit chilly, on 20 December 2014 when we set off for our weekly hike. We drove east on Hwy 260 to the Oasis Road junction in Camp Verde, just 1.7 miles after crossing I-17. Turning right onto Oasis Road we proceeded to the bottom of the hill in Copper Canyon, turned right onto Salt Mine Road and drove 7.2 miles before turning slightly right onto a dirt road that is labeled Forest Road 574. The signage in this area can be confusing. The National Forest Motor Vehicle Use Map actually indicates that FR 574 started two miles back. But, whatever the signage, we continued another 1.1 miles after turning onto the dirt road and then turned right onto FR 9602J. From there we drove for another 1.7 miles before parking at a convenient spot alongside the road. Although we were still about 0.1 mile from the trailhead, we decided that this was a better parking spot.

To get here on FR 9602J we had entered into a parcel of private property and passed through an old surface mine area located in a sharp bend of the road (right). I was unable to locate any information about the mine. The closest mine listed on minedat.org (the site I normally use to identify mines) is Squaw Peak Mine which is an underground mine that operated between 1944 and 1946.

Donning our gear we hiked along the road to the clearly marked trailhead. The trail begins by crossing an old fence through an opening formed by two living junipers. Just to the right of the opening is posted a trail sign (left) that informed us that this was Trail 542, that Trail 541 (Hell Hole Trail) branched off one mile ahead and that it was two miles to Goat Camp Springs.

We posed for a group photograph and then were on our way down the trail.

Left to right: Betty Wolters, Gary Jacobson, Joyce Arregui, Anita Jackson, Daisy Williams, Joanne Hennings, Lila Wright, Bill Woolard, Marywave Van Deren, Collene Maktenieks, Connie Woolard and the author – photograph by Name Withheld

We were now just outside the eastern boundary of the strip of private land we had driven through. But the trail would reenter and cross it to access the Cedar Bench Wilderness. The private strip is a little more than 0.1 mile wide, so even crossing at an angle as we did we soon entered the wilderness (right).

The trail, lined with junipers and pinon pines, led downhill into Chasm Creek Canyon and followed along the north slope above the creek for about a mile. Looking downstream and out the mouth of the canyon we could see Hackberry Mountain and Towel Peaks on the distant horizon.

Looking out the mouth of Chasm Creek Canyon

The trail, although rising and falling along the way, led us gradually down the slope, ever closer to Chasm Creek. The ground was damp from the rains we had received earlier in the week, but not really muddy except for a couple of places where water was seeping from the hillside.

I was hiking in the rear and had time to stop and look around without obstructing anyone else. This enabled me to spend time examining the pinon pines and their cones. I had never really noted before that the cones are largely spherical rather than cone shaped. I found several that still had edible nuts in them and decided to take some home with me. Unfortunately, in the process I managed to get my pockets all gummed up with rosin and had to clean them with alcohol before putting my jacket in the washing machine. Nevertheless, I did come home with a few, a very few, that were edible (left).

Just before reaching Chasm Creek, we came to a trail sign (right) that marked the end (or start, depending on which way you are hiking it) of Trail 541 (Hell Hole Trail). The sign unhelpfully indicated with arrows that both Trails 541 and 542 continued on toward the creek when, in fact, Hell Hole Trail is a very faint trail leading directly up hill from the junction. Actually, to be quite specific, the arrows really do not point in the direction that either of the trails leads, just sort of splits the difference between them. I wonder whether the erector noticed that something was amiss and just decided to muddle the issue instead of correcting his error.

Just a very short distance beyond the garbled sign we came to the Chasm Creek crossing and stopped to enjoy the view while we had a midmorning snack. We saw a unique lichen (left) growing in a roughly circular ring on a nearby rock. To me the inside of the circle, or donut hole if you will, looked like a house. Or perhaps it was just my imagination.

Meanwhile, there was a trickle of water at our feet (right), just enough to provide a pleasant, soothing backdrop while one enjoyed the surrounding wilderness.

While I was engrossed in the lichen and listening to the trickling water, a lone hunter came down the trail riding a mule and followed by two dogs. A friendly fellow, he stopped to chat for awhile. Being a little far away from the rest of the group and anyway more interested in the lichen and the trickling stream, I missed most of the conversation. However, Lila later provided me with a recap of the conversation. It turns out that the man was hunting mountain lions and, having recently seen one near her house, Lila was particularly interested in the subject. She later provided me with the following recap of the conversation:

The lion hunter on the mule was quite interesting. He had GPS on his hounds and could tell that "Taco" was 150 yards in a direction he pointed and "Pinky" was 130 yards in a slightly different direction. He had seen lion tracks but they were too old for the dogs to pick up the scent. My thought was that if they got a fresh scent the lion would not have a chance with the GPS unless it got in a canyon out of GPS range. Hounds usually tree a lion pretty quickly and that mule could go anywhere. He described his tack to us which enabled the saddle and rider to stay in place up and down extreme slopes.

When we resumed our hike, we found ourselves climbing rather steeply up the slope on the other side of the creek. We were leaving Chasm Creek, which drains the area around Squaw Peak, behind to climb up a side canyon that contains Goat Spring and which drains the Arnold Mesa area.

We found a string of earthstar fungi (left) in a bare spot alongside the trail. Look carefully and you can see the fungi lined up in a row that extends from the upper left to the lower right in the photograph. This fungus is hydroscopic and a dried-out specimen will seemingly come to life before ones very eyes upon the application of water.

Continuing up the canyon toward Arnold Mesa we eventually crossed to the other side of the wash and approached Goat Camp Springs from the other side. The first hint that we were almost there was the sight of a grove of sycamore trees ahead (right), lifting their bare, ghostly limbs to the wintry sky .

When we arrived at the spot marked by the sycamores the group decided that it was a good place for lunch and scattered out on the large rocks in the sunny open wash. Having a GPS track that located the actual spring on up the wash, and accompanied by one other hiker, I continued on. The trail became very faint after awhile but we found our way with the aid of a few stumps and some cut branches that indicated long-ago trail marking. We also found one cairn and a single ribbon.

As can be seen from the map (left), we were traveling south up the wash and the spring is actually located about 100 yards beyond where the main group of hikers had stopped for lunch. At first we passed it by and came out above it on a relatively flat spot where the wash forks, one branch leading directly down from Arnold Mesa, the other draining the area east of the mesa. The spring is located just about where the wash forks, but actually in the east branch.

The spring when we found it turned out to be a series of seeps in the bed of the wash. I grew up in east Tennessee, in the foothills of the Smokies, and springs there tended to be unambiguously springs. These seeps, shown in the photograph below, didn't look very springlike to me, but I suppose they do provide water in a thirsty country.

                          Goat Camp Spring

Our curiosity satisfied, we hurried back to where we had left the rest of the party. As shown in the below photograph, they had finished eating and were on their feet and ready to go.

Hikers at Goat Camp Spring, on their feet and ready to go

On the way back we found more colorful lichen. This one (right) might have been some weird creature from another planet.

When we arrived back at the parking area, my GPS indicated that I had hiked 4.5 miles, that the maximum elevation was 4714 feet and that the total ascent was 997 feet.

Our GPS track is shown in red on the included map (next page). The light rectangular shape outlines private private, traversed by both FR 9602J and by Goat Springs Trail.