Written: September 23, 2023

Trip report: Cave/Gardner canyon loop - 11.8 miles

We did this hike on a warm day at the beginning of autumn. We camped at the trailhead, which allowed us to get an early (8 AM) start. We were back at the vehicle at 7PM, shortly after the sun set, but while there was still plenty of light.

The view east from Baldy Saddle

The above is a fairly extreme panorama from the Catalinas on the left to the Huachucas on the right.

We began hiking at the end of FSR-785. Our day began by descending the "link trail" to our low point of about 5700 feet. We hiked almost to the Cave Creek trailhead at the end of FSR-92. The actual Cave Creek trail takes off uphill to the left, with every appearance of a steep and rocky abandoned road. Our high point will be 8840 feet along the crest north of Baldy Saddle. This makes for a strenuous day with 12 miles of hiking and just over 3000 feet of elevation gain.

Cave Creek was an amazing spectacle of wildflowers along with some water in parts of the creek itself. The trail is fairly level all the way to the wilderness boundary. This is near what is marked as the "Rock Candy Mine" on the map. The mine is by no mean conspicuous. In other words the last time I hiked this trail over a year ago, I never saw anything that even remotely resenbled a mine. The trail to this point is clearly an old road bed, no doubt constructed to give access to the mine. On this visit, I looked around more carefully near where the road ends and found a dump and caved adit north of the trail. The USGS map calls a shaft on the south side of the trail (and not this far along) the "Rock Candy Mine." I will need to return and search that area on another trip. That would make for a pleasant day hike, especially if there is running water and wildflowers.

Beyond the mine, you enter the wilderness area, the trail becomes a single path and gets serious about making the ascent to Florida Saddle. The mine is at 6300, and the saddle is at 7800, so there is some work to do. This turned out to be the hottest part of the day for us. Up on the crest we had breezes and were up at 8000 feet, and on our descent of the Gardner trail it was late afternoon, the sun was west of the crest and we were in cool shade all the way down.

I am a champion of lazy morning starts (sometimes as late as 10 or 11 AM) and hiking into the evening. Carry a headlamp! Some of the nicest light is in the late afternoon and wildlife tends to be active right around evening. If you have been an early morning hiker all your life, I suggest that you give it a try.

Flowers at Florida Saddle
It was quite a chore climbing the switchbacks to Florida Saddle. Hikes like this almost convince me that I am now an old man and should consider choosing less strenuous activities. But we made it. I had some entirely mistaken idea that hiking the Crest trail would be a stroll, vitually level. This is not the case. The trail steadily climbs from 7800 feet at Florida Saddle to 8840 just before reaching Baldy Saddle. It does take a "leisurely" 3 miles to do this, but the 8000 foot altitude compensates for any gradual incline.

Baldy Saddle and Mount Wrightson, looking south from the Crest trail

Looking down upon Baldy Saddle from near 8800 elevation

We were cheered by endless flowers all the way. At Florida saddle, the slopes were covered by yellow Asteraceae with a wide variety of species. Most were Heliomeris longifolia as near as I can tell. We could see a wash of yellow up near Baldy Saddle and Mt. Wrightson from where our car was parked -- a straight line distance of over 2 miles!

We saw nobody the entire day (typical for hikes on the east side), with the exception of a group of three and a friendly dog camping at Baldy saddle. They were planning to head to the top of Mt. Wrightson and watch the sunset.

From elevation 8840 it was down to Baldy saddle and on down for the rest of the way and the rest of the day to our car. I used to say I prefered the uphills because the downhills pounded my knees. Now I definitely prefer the downhills and my knees seem to do just fine. I can think, enjoy oxygen, and even hold a conversationa and generally enjoy myself.

After our pleasant visit at Baldy Saddle, we turned shortly onto the Super trail and curved around the mountain to the junction with the Gardner Canyon trail at 8200 feet. From here it was down to the saddle and junction with the Walker Basin trail where we turned left and actually dropped into Gardner Canyon as per the trail name. We arrived at the spot where the trail used to end at 6100 feet. It is another mile of more or less level hiking to where the Forest Service has gated the road. We always speculate why the road is gated, but whatever the reason, it does preserve Gardner Canyon as a pristine spot these days, and that well may be the reason. We were back at the car at 6:42 PM, almost 11 hours after our start at 8:00 AM. Still with plenty of light and no regrets. High temperatures were in the 90's mid morning, but had droped into the 70's as we hiked down the Gardner Canyon trail.

The route - 12 miles in the loop

Mileage

When it was all over, my GPS declared we had walked 12.1 miles. The track from the same unit gives the total distance as 10.8, which seems fairly bogus. My tally from various maps and books (details below) says the mileage should be 11.8. So let's call the distance 12 miles.

The hike would start at the trailhead at the end of FSR-92. This is at 5600 feet. The high point in the hike would be up on the Crest, perhaps at Baldy Saddle - 8700 feet.

Tallying up the mileage is a challenge. The Green Trails map shows the trailheads all in the wrong places and omits critical mileages. By working from Tomasis book, and the Green Trails maps, the following looks about right. 

End of 92 (Cave Creek trailhead) - 5600 feet
Trailhead to Gardner trailhead (link trail) - 0.5 miles - 6000 feet
Gardner trailhead to old Gardner trailhead - 1.0 mile - 6200 feet
Old Gardner trailhead to Super trail - 2.5 miles - 8300 feet
Continue to Baldy saddle - 0.8 miles - 8700 feet
Baldy Saddle to Florida saddle - 3.2 miles - 7800 feet
Florida Saddle to Wilderness boundary - 2.0 miles - 6300 feet
Wilderness boundary to Cave Creek trailhead - 1.8 miles
An uncertainty in the above is the mileage from the Old Gardner trailhead to Baldy Saddle. The Green trails map gives only one figure. Is this the total mileage or just to the super trail. Sloppy work. Tomasi seems to answer the question. He gives mileages from the actual Cave Creek trailhead as follows: 
Cave creek trailhead - 0 miles
Walker basin trail junction - 2.2 miles (not noted in the above)
Super trail - 4.0 miles
Baldy Saddle - 4.8 miles
I used these distances to adjust the mileages above, the missing detail is the 0.8 distance from the Super trail junction to Baldy Saddle. With this all pieced together, the total mileage is 11.8 miles. This compares nicely to the 12 mile figure quoted for this hike in Bob and Dotty Martin's guidebook. I heard statements of the distance as being 15 miles, but I would call these just wild guesses. In any case, given the elevation gain involved this makes for a long day of hiking, but all on good trails.

Plants

Heuchera Sanguinea (Saxigragaceae) "Coral Bells"
Heuchera is one of my favorite plants. It is somewhat uncommon. For some reason, it always loves to grow upon rocks, and not only in wet places, but generally in shaded nooks. We only saw a few of these. Much of our hike was on wide open sunny mountainsides.

In general wildflowers enjoy full sun. So areas that have been fire burned tend to teem with wildflowers after the burn when sun is blasting the mountainside.

A resident near Baldy Saddle
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's hiking pages / tom@mmto.org