GHOTM February 22 (Sunday), Hells Canyon Wilderness

UPDATE 1/4/09

The desert is looking great with the recent rains-green abounds! The mountains along the route are quite impressive.

Where we need to leave the cars is in the Regional Park, and they want $5 / car. The first park entrance is said to be open by 7 so we can decide who's going to leave cars in the park and they will have to get a sticker, or risk the ticket.

The GPS software I've been playing with changes its mind on distance. If a couple miles more or less matters, I'd plan on as much as 12 miles. We'll only know for sure after we walk and track the actual hike, rather than scribing the line on the computer map.

---------------------------------------------------------
The polls are closed, sorry if your date didn't prevail; there is no greater tyanny than democracy. Maybe some of the Saturday workers can make this one!

Those coming from the east, let's meet at Denny's parking lot on the SW corner of Bell and I-17. I'm open to suggestions for those of you living in East LA; if there is a better meet-up spot speak up, no sense in you driving east to get west.

The Hells Canyon Wilderness is located northwest of Lake Pleasant. If you've driven past Castle Hot Springs, the Wilderness is the pile of mountains to the west. This hike celebrates the BLM acquisition of the last private land in-holding in this designated Wilderness Area. We may have some of the BLM people who made this happen with us.

This will be a through-hike so we'll need car tricks. We'll leave a car or two on the east end where Garfias Wash flows into Lake Pleasant, then pile into others and drive around to the west end. Regular street cars are OK for the east end, the west end takes high clearance.

We need a recommendation for Mexican food place in the northwest end of town for afterwards. I'm fine with Te-Wa's recommendation but open to local preference.

http://www.arizonahikers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7609

The route is down Garfias Wash from North Castle Hot Srings Road almost to Lake Pleasant. If you go to Google Maps , click "Terrain," and search for "Garfias Mountain" the wash is just north (up) from there and this will start to make sense. Scroll around and you'll see the route down the wash.

And thanks to Todd, a TOPO map is in the gallery:
http://www.arizonahikers.com/forum/modules.php?set_albumName=albwb11&id=Hell_s_Canyon_Hike_001&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

Come on everybody, this is not quite an amble but it's not a butt kicker either, and it's on the west side!

oliverr99 · Joined: 04 Jul 2006 Posts: 632 Location: Glendale

I was thinking about the same place, at Lake Pleasant and 74. We must know that place well!
_________________
Anne
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" -- Dr. Seuss

Suz · Joined: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 3186

I'm confident they'll have good information soon.

Al_HikesAZ · Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 263 Location: Scottsdale, AZ

I tried adding photos to a new nested album and kept getting error messages. Here is one
Processing status...
- Adding IMGP7111.jpg
Warning: getimagesize(/home/gtmhpsp/public_html/board/albums/albxf69/IMGP7111.jpg) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/gtmhpsp/public_html/forum/modules/gallery/util.php on line 474

Error: Invalid image: IMGP7111.jpg!

What am I doing wrong? The image is on my h:\drive so I don't know why it says invalid image. I'll try again tomorrow night.
_________________
Anyone can make a hike harder. The skill comes in making it easier. Dosatéhigo nasádo

azhiker96 · Joined: 05 Jan 2003 Posts: 1419

I ran into problems when I first tried to upload my pictures, they were too big. It just hung up when trying to upload them. I made them much smaller and they went though fine. dunno

Todd, anybody, what is the maximum size picture we can upload to the gallery?
_________________
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -- Carl Sagan

thesuperstitions · Guest

The limit is about 1 megabyte in size if I recall correctly.

GTG · Posted: 2/27/2009, 7:02 am Post subject:

Al_HikesAZ · Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 263 Location: Scottsdale, AZ

I resized them all to under 1mg. I tried to get into the galleries about 15minutes ago. It seemed to take forever, so I went outside and played with my dogs for 10minutes. Came back in and I still wasn't in the galleries. I'll try again this weekend.
_________________
Anyone can make a hike harder. The skill comes in making it easier. Dosatéhigo nasádo

Suz · Joined: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 3186

Al, looks like you successfully got your pictures into the gallery. I really enjoyed them. I loved your perspective and angles for the shots you took. Sweet snake shots! Thanks for sharing them.