Hellsgate Wilderness

This was a case where the easy-to-moderate trail was hard beyond belief, and the strenuous trail was mostly easy.

It shows that you can’t rely on even the best hiking books for trail descriptions, because the trails change over time due to flooding, fire and other conditions. Look at Havasupai, which has major floods about every ten years, and imagine the impact that has had on the trails.

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Our first goal was to hike the Mescal Ridge Trail in the Hellsgate Wilderness, which begins at the Bear Flat trailhead about 18 miles east of Payson. The trouble is I was using the Arizona Highways Hiking Guide edition from 2011. My suspicion is that there was once trail here. So my New Year resolution is to download the All Trails app, because it tells you where the trail is and when you’re off it.

This trail was rated moderate in the Arizona Highways book; it describes a bit of an uphill for the first half mile, and then it would even out. That may still be true, but we didn’t get that far. It does describe that half mile as “hellish.”

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The Bear Flat trailhead leads to the beginning of a trail, which starts uphill. Readers are told to follow the fenceline of a bordering private property, but not that the trail then disappears. Maybe it didn’t in 2011.

This was the hardest half mile I can remember. I’ve hiked Arizona’s three highest mountains, the San Francisco Peaks, Mount Baldy and Escudilla. I’ve hiked the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon. None has a tougher half mile, because they all have trails.

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Aside from not having a trail going from Bear Flat to Mescal Ridge, the terrain was straight up on extremely slippery soil, with catclaw and cactus on the side away from the fence, leaving no opportunity to hold onto a tree or pull yourself up.

Fellow hiker Larry and I decided the best way to make the ascent was to keep pulling ourselves up using the fence. Some of the fence wire was barbed, so we had to watch where we placed our hands. It was a grueling slog, but we made it most of the way up — then we decided to turn around because we didn’t want to descend that non-trail in the dark.

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The Arizona Highways book also states that the Bear Flat trailhead is 4.5 miles down Forest Service Road 405. That part is true, but it doesn’t describe the steep descent on one lane of gravel most of the way, making it hard for vehicles to pass.

So it was no wonder that when we reached the bottom, even though it was a Saturday, there were no other vehicles in the parking area, which offered an immediate, beautiful view of Tonto Creek.

The creek also crosses a concrete driveway to a private property on the other side. Water gushed over little waterfalls into the creek, and to get to the trailhead we walked through about an inch of water over that driveway, where the creek flow was as wide as parts of the Verde River. Keep this in mind if you’re going in the wet season.

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Once we gave up on Bear Flat Trail, we decided to do part of Hellsgate Trail #37. This is rated as strenuous because it’s 16.2 miles long, with some deep descents. A sign at the trailead warns of the tough terrain, that the trail is rocky, and if you need rescue no one may be coming for you, so have your own emergency plans.

It was now late in the day, so we only went two and a half miles in. This section of trail was great compared to Bear Flat, and the contrast felt like we were almost running. This section of Hellsgate Trail had quite a few minor ups and downs with a little scree, but it was an absolute joy compared to Bear Flat. Our turnaround was where the trail started to descend, and this was a great place for a snack, with marvelous views.

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Adding insult to the situation, on the way into Hellsgate we saw a sign saying Bear Flat was four miles away. This may lead to the top of Bear Flat, where we may have been able to walk into Mescal Ridge, bypassing that hellish half mile.

Come spring I’ll have to see whether that’s the case, and plan a longer hike on Hellsgate Trail.