Cactus Canyon from Cornville Road to Oak Creek

It was a warm and pleasant winter day when six Skyliners hiked from Cornville Road to Oak Creek on 17 December 2016. We followed Cactus Road south from Cornville Road for about 0.3 miles to the point where the road crosses a wash on a rock ledge. There is an approximate ten-foot dropoff on the downstream side of the ledge and we left the road, climbed down to the bottom of the wash and followed it all the way to Oak Creek.

Today's hikers were: Dave Beach, Lila Wright, Jim Manning, Joanne Hennings, Daisy Williams, and a one hiker, Dana Smith, new to our group, who is planning to hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018 and was seeking advice on how to prepare for that adventure.

Although today's hike was routinely scheduled, this route is also a popular alternative for the Skyliners when other plans fall through. I have hiked it twice before, in 2006 and again in 2010, both times as an alternative to other hikes. A report of the 2010 hike is included in “Hiking in and Around Verde Valley”.¹

This is a loop hike in that we normally follow one route to Oak Creek and another one on the return trip. One route follows Cactus Road and the other follows a wash. Today we followed a GPS track made during the 2010 hike, although in the opposite direction. For that hike we had followed Cactus Road almost to its end at a gated community and then turned down a side wash (map at right) to join the main wash (the same wash that Cactus Road crosses on the ledge with a ten-foot drop near Cornville Road) about 0.6 miles from Oak Creek; today we would follow the wash downstream to the creek and would return by way of Cactus Road.

After leaving Cactus Road at the rock ledge, we climbed down a rocky bank to the dry streambed of the wash. The sides of the wash (or arroyo) varied in height and sloped from gentle to vertical as we made our way south toward Oak Creek. The wash we followed, located at the northwest end of an area called the White Hills is not named on any maps we found. We elected to call it Cactus Canyon after the Forest Service road that it parallels. It is surely deep enough and the sides close enough together to deserve the name canyon.

For much of the way we were walking in the shade of high canyon walls such as the large rock with patches of moss and a bush growing on top (below left) and the sheer water-cut cliff at right (below right).

Solid rock forming canyon wall                Sheer water-carved canyon wall

At one place in the canyon a high dropoff (sometimes called a dryfall or pour-off.) required us to climb up the canyon wall and then back down in order to detour around it and continue our journey. I was so busy climbing around the dryfall that I neglected to photograph it. The two following photographs, the lip of the dryfall in the canyon floor (below left) and one of the side wall of the canyon adjacent to the dryfall (below right) were taken in 2010.

Lip of the dryfall in Cactus Canyon          Canyon wall adjacent to the dryfall

About 1.8 miles from the point where we entered the wash, and still around 0.6 miles from Oak Creek, we passed a side wash flowing in from the west. That was the route we intended to take to reach Cactus Road for our return trip. Just a short distance below the side wash, we came to a teepee-like structure, located high atop the canyon wall, apparently used by one of the landowners in the gated community at the end of Cactus Road for an outbuilding.

Teepee atop the canyon wall near the junction of Cactus Canyon and Oak Creek

A little further along the canyon turned sharply to the west. Just beyond the bend we crossed under a fence and arrived at Oak Creek.

Oak Creek at the mouth of Cactus Canyon

We paused at a tree alongside the creek for a snack with the pleasant sound of the stream in our ears and a mesmerizing view of flowing water lulling our senses. Looking up we could see through the branches of our tree a windmill (left) standing like a sentinel outlined against the blue sky.

This was indeed a pleasant spot in which to linger and had Ellis been with us, he would surely have insisted on a nap. However, he wasn't and we soon donned our packs and resumed our hike, retracing our steps up the canyon to the side wash and climbing the hill to reconnect with Cactus Road.

On our way up the hill we passed a cluster of Soaptree Yuccas and then several Christmas Chollas (right).

Just a short distance along Cactus Road we turned onto Forest Road 9205J which leads out to a viewpoint high above Oak Creek. The below photograph, taken from the viewpoint, shows Lower Oak Creek Estates, just across the creek, Mingus Mountain (left of center) and Woodchute Mountain (right of center) in the Black Hills range. The round hump in the foreground just to the right of Woodchute is Sugarloaf.

Looking across Oak Creek and Verde Valley to the Black Hills Mountain range

Leaving the viewpoint we returned to Cactus Road and continued on to our vehicles, stopping along the way to eat lunch on a hill at a spot surrounded by crucifixion thorns.

This hike was 5.7 miles long, the highest elevation was 3504 feet and the total ascent was 494 feet.

The GPS track for this hike is shown in red on the included map (below). The yellow track at upper right is Cornville Road and the blue track at lower left shows Cactus Road as it continues to its end at a gated community overlooking Oak Creek.

This report was written by Daisy Williams and assembled, edited and posted online by Ellis Price with help from Lila Wright.

1Price, Ellis F. Hiking in and Around Verde Valley. USA: CreateSpace, n.d. Print. pp 53-58