Oak Creek/Verde River Confluence

We hiked to the Oak Creek/Verde River confluence on 10 January 2015. From Cottonwood, we drove north on Hwy 89A, turned right on Cornville Road, continued for about 2.2 miles, turned left onto Forest Road 9816 and parked just through a gate. We had an unusually large group of hikers and I decided to gather them for a group photograph while we were still all together at the trailhead.

Left to right: Chris Jensen, Collene Maktenieks, the author, Terry Johnson, Joanne Hennings, Leon Girdner, Daisy Williams, Anita Jackson, Jim Manning, Joyce Arregui (front), Tamura Laue (middle), Karl Sink, Lila Wright, George Everman, David Beach, Gilliam “Jill” Ashworth and John Ashworth – photograph by Name Withheld.

We left the FR 9816 parking area, walked across Cornville Road, passed through a pedestrian gate on the other side and headed south on FR 9806D, a road now closed to motorized traffic. A sign clearly stated that the road was open only to hikers, bikers and equestrians.

The weather report had called for a 50% chance of rain and, although the sun was flirting with the clouds and occasionally even peeking through, we all knew that we were likely to be donning raingear before the hike was done. Our assorted raingear ran the gamut from at least one raincoat through a variety of ponchos and a lone plastic garbage bag which, by the way, works very well for keeping dry.

I hiked near the rear of the group because, with such a large group, we needed someone to make sure we didn't lose a hiker along the way. An additional benefit was that I could make frequent stops to view and photograph our surroundings. I climbed a small hill just off the trail to a good viewpoint for the following scene. The photograph below shows Mingus Mountain at the left (west). At the right (northwest) Black Mountain and Casner Mountain with Sycamore Gap in between can barely be discerned through the ever more threatening cloud cover. This again brought home the notion that we would surely need our raingear before this hike was done.

View to the west and northwest – Mingus Mountain to Casner Mountain

None of us had hiked this way for several years and we were a little unsure about the best route to take, so we just followed the road. Unfortunately, there were too many roads to choose from and we made a wrong turn about 1.3 miles from the start of the hike. This added close to an extra mile to the hike. When our error became apparent, we changed course and soon were back on the correct road. But, even following the correct road, the one that leads most directly to the conjunction, involves a lot of unnecessary steps for hikers. We later found that by following the road, and including the extra mile added by taking the wrong road, we had hiked 6.1 miles to reach the conjunction. We resolved to correct those errors on the way back.

Eventually, we were close enough that we could see our goal, or at least the general area, including the Thousand Trails RV park just beyond it and across the river.

Looking beyond the conjunction to RVs lined up in the park across the river, just left of center

But we still had a wide loop in the road as it turned east and made its way along a ridge and descended into the Oak Creek Canyon. Although we could see that the road was taking us out of our way again, it was not yet apparent just how much additional hiking that would entail. I measured later and found that we had gone a full extra mile by following the road.

As we approached the conjunction we came to another fork in the road. We turned left so to pass by some ruins located high above Oak Creek. The road we followed led directly to the ruins; however the ruins themselves are located on private property and are posted to prevent trespassing. Below is shown a view from the road.

Ruins near Oak Creek/Verde River confluence

As can be seen from a different angle, specifically from the road farther up the river, there are numerous caves in the cliff just below the visible portion of the ruins. It must once have been a quite sizable settlement.

Just beyond the closed-off entrance to the ruins the road ends but a trail continues on, following closely along the cliff rim above the creek. This trail is quite rocky and steep in places and on this day included a climb up a slick muddy bank to reach the cliffs above the juncture. There is, however, an alternative; if we had continued straight ahead instead of turning toward the ruins at the last road fork we would have come out atop the cliff, just where we wanted to be. The map insert (right) shows these details.

As we made our way along the cliff above Oak Creek toward the river, we could see the creek below and the opposite side of the river between Thousand Trails RV Park (barely visible on the left) and Alcantara Vinyards and Winery (just out of sight on the right).

Looking down Oak Creek and across the Verde River

There are two distinct levels to the cliff at the juncture. The view shown here is of the lower level as seen from the upper one. It rather reminded me of looking down on the bow of a ship from the wheelhouse. Oak Creek flows in from the left and the Verde River brushes the right flank. The prominent land feature on the distant, southern horizon directly ahead is Squaw Peak.

The “bow” between Oak Creek (left) and the Verde River (right)

I descended to the lower level, the “bow” so to speak, for lunch. Looking back up the river from there I had a view along the cliff face of the smoothly flowing river and Mingus Mountain, now partly obscured by a rain shower, in the distance.

Looking north up the Verde River

After some discussion it was decided that six of the hikers would remain in the area while the while the other twelve would hike back to the trailhead. Those who had hiked back would then drive down Tissaw Road, turning from Cornville Road, at Verde Santa Fe to pick up those who had chosen to wait.

As it turned out, the rain began almost at once and, according to reports, much harder along the river where we had left the six hikers than for those of us who chose to hike back to the trailhead. Chilly and uncomfortable, they chose not to wait and had a friend pick them up and deliver them back to Cottonwood, notifying our leader of the change by cellphone.

Meanwhile, those of us returning to the trailhead were soon donning our raingear. We were touched by rain twice on the way back, never very hard but enough for a thorough soaking without raingear.

We did, as planned, take a shorter route back by climbing directly up two hills and avoiding the error we made by taking the wrong road on the way in. As a result, our return trip was only 3.7 miles instead of the 6.1 miles for the trip in.

This hike, based on our return track, is 7.4 miles round trip. The highest elevation was 3588 feet and the total ascent was 626 feet.

Our track is shown on the included map (next page). Our return track is shown in red. The hike to the conjunction is shown in blue but is covered by red except for those areas where the two deviate. The mm 2 notation near where we parked indicates mile marker 2 on County Road 30 (Cornville Road).

The turnoff onto Tissaw road is approximately one mile to the west of where we parked. The road is clearly signed.