Bear Trail above Jerome

On 11 December 2010, fifteen Skyliners (John McInerney, Linda Tovar, Jan Prefontaine, Anita Jackson, Dolly Yapp, George Everman, Jim Manning, Dona Goodman, Daisy Williams, Marvin Alt, Lila Wright, Miriam Sterling, the author and two others) hiked on an old road running from the Walnut Springs/Jerome Grande Shaft area on Hwy 89A to Perkinsville Road.

For lack of a better name, we call this route Bear Trail for the large number of rather large bear tracks (right) we saw during a scouting hike on the trail six weeks earlier.

For this hike we drove through Jerome on Hwy 89A and parked alongside the highway at Walnut Springs. The old road we hiked on leaves the highway at the bridge in the hairpin turn, leads a short way up the wash and then loops back to pass by the Jerome Grande Shaft. The following picture shows us straggling from where we parked up the road to the bridge where the old road leaves Hwy 89A. Walnut Springs is located to the left of the highway where we are parked, and Jerome Grande Shaft is located up slope to the right.

Left to right: John McInerney and Linda Tovar - The rest of the party
 is strung out ahead

At first the road climbs steeply, rising 700 feet in the first mile and a half. From there it slopes gently downhill most of the way until it intersects with Perkinsville Road (FR 318) about two and one-half miles from the start of that road at the Fire Station in Jerome. It does become a bit rocky and pretty steep as it nears Perkinsville Road.

NOTE: About one and three-tenths of a mile from Hwy 89A, and almost to the top of the ridge, we came to a fork in the road. Our route for this hike led us to the right. However, Jim Manning had researched the road leading to the left and determined that it is FR 503A and that it comes out after about four miles on Hwy 89A at a hairpin turn just above the exit at Mescal Tank. We are scheduling FR 503A for a scouting hike to determine its suitability for a future Skyliner hike.

The elevation at the end of today’s hike was almost exactly the same as at the beginning. In other words we climbed and descended 700 feet each way to and from the high point of the trail which is about one and one-half miles from Hwy 89A.

Some of the hikers stopped when we started down the rather rocky descent to Perkinsville Road, ate lunch there and waited for the rest of the group to return. Three hikers who continued on down to the end of the trail chose to return to Jerome by Perkinsville Road and wait at the Firehouse to be picked up as the main group returned to Cottonwood.

After downloading the file from my GPS and cleaning it up on the computer to remove false signals picked up along the way, I found the hiking distance to be seven and eight-tenths miles round trip.

Daisy, one of the hikers who returned by way of Perkinsville Road, was kind enough to carry my GPS and measure the distance to the firehouse in Jerome. That turned out to be just two and one-half miles.

I think we all agreed that this was a very good hike, with great views all along the way. One could modify it if desired by leaving cars in Jerome (The parking area on Perkinsville Road beyond the firehouse would do nicely), driving on to Walnut Springs and hiking back to Jerome by the old road (Bear Trail) and Perkinsville Road. That would be just over a six-mile hike with all the serious climbing at the start.

Although the views were great, I had recently scouted the trail and didn’t take any additional pictures on this hike. However, I am including several photographs from the October 28, 2010 scouting hike just to show what the views are like from this trail.

Looking out across the old copper pits at Verde Valley and on to
the Mogollon Rim – 28 October 2010

Looking down a canyon into Verde Valley – 28 October 2010

This is a 7.8 mile round trip hike. The highest elevation is 6466 feet and the total ascent is 782 feet.

On the included map (below), Bear Trail is shown in red, Perkinsville Road from the trailhead to the Jerome Firehouse in green and Hwy 89A in yellow.