Hiking near Black Rock, Arizona

We set for a hike with Terry the day after I returned to Utah but there was a cold front and quite a bit of snow. Abby loved it. We humans decided to seek a warmer hike.

And so we headed south, deciding on hiking around on BLM land near Black Rock, Arizona, which is right on the Utah-Arizona border. There aren’t any trails but Tom and Terry had hiked here before and suggested we hike south across the volcanic hills. After ascending a few hills and skirting a bowl, we found ourselves at the rim of a large canyon. Or rather, I found myself there – Tom and Terry had planned this. After a pack adjustment and some photos we found a place where it was possible to descend and then picked and skidded our way 600 feet down the canyon. Proceeding west along the wash we soon discovered fossils and came across interesting sandstone outcroppings. There were fantastic examples of the latter along the bottom of the wash, eroded into incredible wave-like formations that made the canyon floor appear to undulate. Terry and I ran around for more than 10 minutes trying to capture the organic forms of the sandstone before we finally proceeded down the wash. ore visual treats were found – patterns in the ice and rounded sandstone ledges in the wash – before we finally arrived at the mouth of the canyon. Scrambling back up to the top of the mesa was less adventurous than our descent, and our path back to the car through the rolling mounds and drainage less photogenic than the canyon, but it was a pretty great exploration and a welcome respite from the below freezing temperatures up north.