We were up and on the trail by 8am, feeling the effects of two full days
of hard hiking. We hoped again to have left all the swimming behind us.
The canyon was generally wider in this portion, with large areas of
rock, and several places where flood waters piled dead brush into impressive
piles. I don't recall any real swims, but there were several pools that were
deep and still-- we either managed to just skirt their shore or wade through them-
I think one was deep enough I had my pack on my head. One of the pools was bypassed
via a ledge on the south side, and there were climbing anchors set at the bottom, evidently
for people coming upstream.
After several hours of what we thought was good progress, we didn't believe what my GPS was telling us-- that we were still several miles from the end. This was reinforced by the GPS showing us having hiked almost 1 mile East when we'd been going steadily west. However, despite occasionally getting bad data, the GPS was generally correct, and it was several more hours until we reached the trail worn by people coming up from Bull Pen campground to the swimming hole (or,I should say, the farthest upstream one. We passed several groups of people swimming at various places farther downstream, this spot was vacant. Just how much of a toll the hike had taken on us was illustrated a swimmer passed us as we hiked the section of the trail passing the old Bull Pen Ranch-- suddenly we realized how slowly we were traveling. We finally reached the campground around 1:30, rested for a bit, and changed clothes.
After our short break,we headed into Camp Verde for lunch, then went back to get my truck. It was late afternoon before we made it back to Phoenix.
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