Chiva Falls Hike

The gang of 11, gather 4 miles from the end of the pavement on Reddington Road.  Amy and I were a bit late....well....we arrived prior to our 9am start but not early enough to gear up and begin walking at 9am.  This makes me look stupid when I insist others be ready. I'll blame this on Amy, just because, ha, ha.

This is an unusual hike in that rather than follow trails, we mostly follow unmaintained, roads.  The off-road crowd loves this area but for hikers, the path is kind of rugged and in places.....

....steep!

Mica Mountain in the distance but is that mica glowing in the early morning sun or snow? Had to be snow to feed the streams/washes by which we hiked. 

At mile 2, we reached a pond and then took a short foot path to another road while passing under.....

....a huge juniper tree.  Upon reaching a junction or two, Mark and I checked our gpx routes, debated how to proceed and settled on the correct direction.  We crossed....

....Tanque Verde Canyon.  Nice flow of water.....

.....through here.  After about 4 miles of kind of boring dirt road walking, we round a turn and....

....whoa, ok, this makes the road hiking more than worthwhile.  Spectacular!  The final 100 yards of our hike is mostly....

....boulder hopping as I look back and see how the others are progressing. 

There is a shallow pool at the base of the falls and what a good place to luxuriate if only the temps were warmer.  In the shade at about 60 degrees, too cold for today. In the image above, right of center, a cave!

Most of us climbed to it and got a close-up of.....

....the top of the falls as it tumbled off a ledge.  Then, some of us found a nearby slope, scrambled up it and emerged....

....above the falls.  Poking around a bit, there was no place where you could stand directly above the falls and look down but....

....Lorna, aka, Spider Monkey, got about as close as anyone, along with Hilary.  We worked our way back down, took a quick snack and headed back.

A RAZAR passed us but it was the only vehicle of its type that we encountered today.  I understand the weekends are particularly busy with that traffic.  We finished with 9 miles and 1100' of climbing.