Hike to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte

On 21 March 2016, Jim Manning led a hike that included the author and six others to the top of Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte. We left Cottonwood at about 0800, drove east on SR 260 through Camp Verde and parked alongside the highway just 16.2 miles from the I-17/SR 260 interchange in Camp Verde.

Thirteen-Mile Rock, a marker on the General Crook Trail, is actually located about a tenth of a mile west of the parking area and we briefly paused there, in a spacious, graveled area, to read a sign posted by the Camp Verde Historical Society in conjunction with the Coconino National Forest. The sign identifies and explains the significance of the rock. The inscription reads:

Each mile was marked on the trail from Camp Verde to Camp Apache by the soldiers under General George Crook.

First traveled in 1871, the road was improved and used by wagons in 1873. It was the principal supply route from Fort Whipple at Prescott to Camp Verde and Camp Apache.

The following information is from an Arizona State Parks online article titled General Crook Road¹:

In 1871, General George Crook came to Arizona Territory as Commander of the Department of Arizona. His orders were to subdue the Indians of the Territory and place them on reservations. General Crook realized at once that in order to accomplish this goal he must be able to move troops and supplies into the haunts of the Indians with swiftness and surprise.

In August of that year, General Crook left Fort Apache with a unit of cavalry troops to locate and mark a supply road from Fort Apache to Fort Whipple in Prescott. As they moved westerly across the Mogollon Rim, then called Black Mesa, Crook realized quickly that he must stay close to the edge of the escarpment, otherwise, when he moved north, he encountered deep and rugged canyons. It was rough going but the trekkers found water in small lakes. Crook pushed on, and in early September of 1871, he reached Fort Whipple in Prescott. Actual construction of a road started in the spring of 1872. By 1873, supplies began moving by pack train from Fort Verde to Fort Apache. One year later in September 1874, the first wagon supply train left Fort Whipple for Fort Apache. Martha Summerhayes, the first woman to travel over the road, was on that trip. She later wrote the book, Vanished Arizona, telling of her experiences on the road and describing her travels in Arizona Territory.

During the next twenty-two years, Crook Road was used by troops patrolling across the Territory and the northern boundary of the Apache Reservation. The road was in continual use for thirty-two more years, until the Rim Road was built in 1928.

But our purpose on this hike was not primarily to hike on a section of General Crook Trail; it was rather to ascend to the summit of Thirteen-Mile Butte. To do this, we would first ascend the ridge that lies behind the butte, connecting it with the Mogollon Rim escarpment, and then follow the ridge back to the butte summit which towered some 500 feet above us on the north side of SR 260. Along the way, we would follow old roads, including parts of Crook Trail, and cow paths and also do some straightforward bushwhacking along the spine of the ridge.

Leaving the 13-Mile Rock sign behind, we continued about another tenth of a mile to our parking area, arriving at about 0840. We parked for the hike at a wide shoulder between two rocks on the south side of the highway. Just across the road is an access point for Crook Trail, as well as for Strawberry Road², a later but now abandoned road, that paralleled Crook Trail up the ridge at a more gentle gradient.

Crossing the road, we scrambled up the steep, rocky slope on the other side and crossed a fence. A pedestrian gate was once provided at this spot; however it has since been removed and is lying on the ground, having been replaced by fixed strands of barbed wire. Nevertheless, the fence was easy enough to crawl through and we soon found ourselves on the other side.

From this point, the hiker can take the abandoned Strawberry Road, heading in a northeast direction, and hike up the ridge at a rather gentle slope. On the other hand, General Crook Trail can be accessed by climbing around some large rocks straight ahead. One then travels northwest for about 0.1 mile before turning to the northeast at a higher level along the ridge. If this route is chosen, one arrives at another decision point as shown in the photograph (right) after climbing a further 0.1 mile.

We chose the easier route and followed Old Strawberry Road up the slope, passing numerous old bits of broken culvert along the way. One of these (left) was composed of two-foot sections fitted together to form the desired length. None of the several culverts we saw were still in operation, having either been washed out or filled in at the uphill side. There were no signs of the road ever having been paved and I think it may have preceded an old General Crook Trail Road that was in turn replaced by SR 260.

We saw a few flowers along the way. Among them a colorful stand of Indian paintbrush (below left) and a ceanothus shrub in full bloom (below right).

                               Indian Paintbrush                     Ceanothus shrub

From the old road we could look down on 13-Mile Tank, long breached, and now certainly dry. Thirteen-Mile Spring, possibly still a water source, is located about 0.2 miles below the spring.

Thirteen-Mile Tank

After 1.6 miles on Old Strawberry Road we came to the top of the ridge, the point at which Crook Trail joins the road and is contiguous with it for the next 1.1 miles going east. But that was not our route; we left the trail and walked about a 100 yards directly to the edge of the ridge for a view into Black Mountain Canyon and the rugged mountains to the north.

Looking to the rugged mountains across Black Mountain Canyon

Returning to Crook Trail we turned southwest, soon making another detour, this time on a dead-end road, for another look to the north. About 0.2 miles, not counting the two detours, from the intersection of Old Strawberry Road and Crook Trail, we came to a fork (right) in the road we were following. The path to the left was Crook Trail; however, we chose to go right because the official trail is, as can be seen, quite rocky and wherever the other trail ended we had only to continue along the crest of the ridge to reach our goal. That turned out to be a good decision because the smooth dirt road continued for a good distance and when it did end we found ourselves hiking through open, grassy country broken only by scattered junipers.

Had we taken the rocky Crook Trail, we would have come to another fork about 0.5 miles ahead. I photographed this fork (below left), along with the remains of a sign (below right) identifying the left fork as the easier route down the slope, on a December 2014 hike. Having hiked the upper trail in 2008, I chose the lower trail for the 2014 hike, finding it much easier. Since we had chosen a route for today's hike that bypassed this section of Crook Trail altogether and were anyway continuing on to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte Summit, we had no choice to make.

                               Original Trail to right;             Sign once posted at the fork

                                  easier trail at left

That detour from the trail added an extra 0.1 miles to our hike but allowed us to avoid most of the rocky upper trail. We returned to the official Crook Trail at a trail marker (left) just 0.9 miles after leaving it and just before we dipped into a saddle that rose on the other side to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte Summit.

Continuing southwest on upper Crook Trail, we came, after another 0.1 miles, to the place where the trail turns sharply down hill, joining first with the easier lower Crook Trail and then finally with Old Strawberry Road where we started our hike. However, saving that for later we left the trail and continued on our southwest course, now following old cow paths. Luckily there were not too many trees with low growing branches of the sort that cows tend to use for brushing flies off their backs, so we had little trouble following these readymade paths all the way to the summit. The top of the butte has two separate high spots, lined up in a northeast to southwest direction. We climbed first to the north-easternmost high spot, beyond the rocks shown in the photograph (below), still about 120 feet below the summit, and stopped there for an early lunch, eating just before 1100. Somehow, the cows had found way up and around the rocks shown below to reach the grass above.

Ascent to the northeastern part of the butte.

After lunch, we continued across a small saddle to climb to the summit, which rises to an elevation of 5520 feet. We found a survey marker (right) mounted in a rock outcropping at the highest point. No elevation was engraved on the marker but my map indicated it was 5520 feet and my GPS read the elevation as 5516 feet. From this position we had a view all the way from Pine Mountain in the southwest to Black Hills in the west and on to the San Francisco Peaks in the north. Having recently hiked some new trails in the Black Hills Mountain Range, l was particularly interested in the comprehensive view of that range, anchored in the northwest by Woodchute Mountain and in the southwest by Pine Mountain. As shown in the photograph (below), Mingus Mountain, Copper Canyon and Squaw Peak all stood out prominently in between those two anchors. With a pair of binoculars one could make out the antlike progress of vehicles making their way along the interstate highway as it snakes its way up Copper Canyon.

Looking across Verde Valley to the Black Hills

I watched closely for any flowers that might be found on the way back and did note a few such as Wright's deervetch (below left) and goatsbeard (below right).

                               Wright's deervetch                  Yellow goatsbeard seed

Growing at the very top of the butte, near the survey marker, we saw a banana yucca (below left) that was in the process of opening up. On the way back to the saddle where would rejoin Crook Trail for the descent we found a verbena plant (below right) growing alongside a line of rocks that apparently formed part of the foundation of an ancient fortification.

                               Banana yucca                           Verbena

I had been a little disappointed in the number and quality of flowers we had found on the hike so far but, after we rejoined Crook Trail and started our descent back to our cars, we saw a few more. Such as the milkweed antelope horn (below left), standing all alone awaiting the first monarch butterfly of the season and one fairly decent clump of mallow (below right) growing at the lower fork between the original Crook Trail and the “Later Wagon Reroute.”

                               Antelope horn                           Mallow

The hike had gone pretty much as Jim had planned and we were back at our cars by 1245, having hiked 5.1 miles as recorded by my GPS. Our maximum elevation for the hike was 5552 feet, recorded at the point where Old Strawberry Road joins with Crook Trail atop the ridge, and the total ascent was 1195 feet.

To properly display our GPS track for this hike and place the different trails discussed in the report in perspective, I have included parts of GPS tracks from three separate hikes on the included map (following). The first track, recorded on 21 March 2016 and shown in red, follows the route we took on this most recent hike; the second track, recorded on 4 December 2014 and shown in green, follows the lower wagon road and the third track, recorded on 10 May 2008 and shown in blue, follows the part of the original Crook Trail not included in either of the other two hikes.

1 http://azstateparks.com/trails/historic/trail_08.html

2Garmin's Topo U.S. 24K Southwest map. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-MapSource-Southwest-Topographic-Coverage/dp/B001RYK0JE