I thought I’d give everyone some tips on…
How NOT to Do Black Canyon.
1. Decide to do Black Canyon on a day for which you receive an email alert regarding severe weather in Phoenix due to extreme heat.
We had had Black Canyon on the schedule for June 16, 2007 for a while. The day before the trip, I received the severe weather email. Things might have gone okay if we’d been able to complete the trip as planned. (See tip #2.) I figured the weather alert was for Phoenix and we’d be near Cottonwood. Most of us had been doing trips in the heat this year, although not quite this much heat.
2. Assume that you can set up a shuttle for this canyon based on the Prescott National Forest web page for trail 114 (
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/prescott/rec...kcan114.shtml), which gives directions for getting to the top of the Black Canyon trail with no mention of road closure or a 4WD section.
First, part of the road is closed Monday through Thursday (for daylight hours I’ve forgotten), according to a sign posted on the road by Phelps Dodge. We went on Saturday, so that wasn’t an issue for us.
Second, when we got above the part of the road that gets closed during the week, the road was so bad and, although I am by no means a good 4-wheeler, I was having enough trouble getting my 4WD Xterra through it that we figured our other shuttle vehicle, a pickup, probably would not be able to get through reasonably. So we headed back down the road after doing only a few yards of the bad part of the road.
3. Start a HOT, dry, HOT, shade-less, HOT, uphill, scorching HOT hike at 8:40 a.m. on a day when the temperature is going to get up to around 100 degrees with no clouds.
Once we realized we couldn’t set up the shuttle, we thought about doing something other than Black Canyon because (1) we had lost time and (2) it was clearly going to be a very hot and sunny day. But we decided to do the loop hike, since we still had plenty of daylight, the canyon would probably have cool water, and we had reconned our take-out point the previous night.
At our start of the hike, at an elevation of 4110 feet and a mile or so from our other vehicle, we got our clothes wet with water, since we had plenty for camping the previous night.
However, by the time we had hiked up to 6000 feet, probably with our top-out point a mile or so away and in view, our party of five was in various degrees of feeling awful—from just wanting to escape the sun to looking ashen and feeling light-headed. We considered continuing on to get to the water in the canyon, but the reasonable people pointed out that we shouldn’t be starting a long, hard canyon, which would probably be open to the sun much of the time, with people already depleted.
So we did the HOT, shade-less, HOT, mostly downhill, scorching HOT hike back to the car and headed home. It’s a good thing we did, because one person was showing signs of heat exhaustion by the time we finished the hike—feeling faint, nauseous, looking ashen, and later having heat cramps. Fortunately, by the time we got back to Phoenix, he was feeling much better.
Oh, I almost forgot! Here’s one more tip.
4. Wear thin sock liners and thick neoprene booties on a HOT, dry, HOT, long, HOT, shade-less, scorching HOT hike.
I bought my Five Ten Canyoneers a half size too big so I could wear my neoprene booties in them. I have to wear sock liners and two very thick pairs of socks if I am not wearing the booties. My wetsuit (tip #5?) took up so much space that I didn’t want to carry my booties. I had brought my full wetsuit because my legs were stinging cold when I wore my shorty in the canyon we’d done the previous weekend, and I’d heard the water in Black Canyon could be really cold, too. Sigh.
I think I’ve covered the top tips now. Feel free to add on.
Kathy
Live in Gallup, NM right now - definitely the middle of nowhere, but it works!
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