Huachuca Mountains of Southern Arizona - Exploring the Oversite Trail
June 14, 2016; Don & Suzanne; in-and-out hike about 4 miles RT Short but sweet - er, tough
1 Location of this hike near the AZ/Mexico border
2 GPS track of our trek along part of the Oversite Trail (green line). Blue line - part of the Oversite Trail not hiked. Yellow line - part of the AZ Trail not hiked.
3 Our trek's GPS track on GoogleEarth.
4 The Huachucas as seen looking east from one of our hikes along the Arizona Trail, Passage 2. The approximate locations of our Huachuca hikes are shown.
5 This is the end of the old, un-maintained forest service road that ends at the wilderness boundary. Wisely, I didn't try to take the Xterror over the large rock denoting the end of the road, otherwise the end of the road would probably have been the end of the Xterra also.
6 The Miller Peak Wilderness boundary sign
7 We're just starting into the Miller Peak Wilderness. The first part of the Oversite Trail follows an old mining road.
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9 Signs of the old mining road disappear as the trail begins to parallel the stream bed that drains Oversite Canyon. It crosses the stream bed back and forth several times.
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12 The trail begins to get higher on the canyon wall.
13 Looking up we can see the ridge line above. The AZ Trail follows this ridgeline
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15 We reach the lower part of some switchbacks which get you higher, quicker. There we find some mining artifacts. This mining cart/box, contains mainly old cans left behind by previous visitors. This is a tuna-size can that once held some type of food.
16 Included with the mining box cans were several Jumex cans, probably left there by illegals trying to sneak into the US from Mexico.
17 I'm thinking that the dips in the hillside may have been used as a sluice box for separating gold nuggets from streambed gravel.
18 The streambed is quite steep above this point, so we used this as our turn around point.
19 There are ample signs that a spring is active here in the more moist times of the year.
20 An old tree trunk that has been burned out to form a water diverter ?
21 I explored down in the streambed looking for more signs of old mining activity. No such luck.
22 We are now about halfway back to the Xterror. On the way back out the primative forest road we will explore the trailhead for the Ida Canyon Trail.
