Thruhiking the Amazing Arizona Trail – Spectacular Mazatzal Divide, Part 5

Welcome back to Aspen’s Tracks, thruhiking the Arizona Trail southbound from Utah to Mexico. Today’s backpacking route takes me from the high ridge that I camped near last night through the end of the Mazatzal wilderness and on to the Mount Peeley Trailhead, the southern end of passage 23, the Mazatzal Divide. You can find today’s hiking logistics below the photo documentation and trail journal of the route.

If you missed my last entry covering the prior portion of the Mazatzal Divide passage, that can be found here. The next entry covers the northern portion of the Saddle Mountain passage, from Mt Peeley Trailhead through to McFarland Canyon. If you enjoy these accounts, please do subscribe to follow along to make sure that you don’t miss out on here or any future accounts to come!

In the land of Arizona
Through desert heat or snow
Winds a trail for folks to follow
From Utah to Old Mexico

It’s the Arizona Trail
A pathway through the great Southwest
A diverse track through wood and stone
Your spirit it will test

Oh, sure you’ll sweat and blister
You’ll feel the miles every day
You’ll shiver at the loneliness
Your feet and seat will pay

But you’ll see moonlight on the borderlands
You’ll see stars on the Mogollon
You’ll feel the warmth of winter sun
And be thrilled straight through to bone

The aches and pains will fade away
You’ll feel renewed and whole
You’ll never be the same again
With Arizona in your soul

Along the Arizona Trail
A reverence and peace you’ll know
Through deserts, canyons, and mountains
From Utah to Old Mexico
-“The Arizona Trail,” Dale R. Shewalter

Arizona Trail: Divide Highpoint-Mount Peeley Trailhead

This stretch of the Divide was clearly less impacted than the areas farther north when it came to the Willow and Sunflower fires; it’s a noticeable difference here on the south side of the ridge. Mount Peeley and several other unnamed adjoining peaks tower over most of the passage, with framed views of Mazatzal Peak as well as views into the Verde Valley to the west.

Arizona Trail: Mt Peeley-Mt Peeley Trailhead

From the east slope of Mt Peeley, the view stretches clear down the Mazatzal spine to the Four Peaks and Superstition Mountains behind. While the trail briefly leaves designated wilderness for the first time in over 20 miles toward the end of the passage, the solitude does not diminish and it will shortly pass through another stretch of wilderness thereafter, the Saddle Mountain Wilderness en route to Sunflower and the AZ-87 crossing to the southern Mazatzals. (If you missed my description of the Mazatzal Mountains, you can find that as well as logistics and ecology reports for the passage after the photos.)

The Mazatzal Mountains

This stretch of the Arizona Trail lies within the Mazatzal Wilderness in the Tonto National Forest. The origin of the name “Mazatzal” is unclear, though one possible meaning is a Nahuatl term meaning “place of the deer.” The Wilderness, which the trail will remain within now until just shy of Sunflower in the central Mazatzals, is about 390 square miles in size and surrounds the Mazatzal Mountains. It was one of the original Wilderness Areas designated upon the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964.

The Mazatzal Mountains themselves are an incredible place. Formed during an orogeny (a term referring to the process that creates mountains) when Arizona was a coastal region on the margin of what became North America, the Mazatzals gained their rugged nature as tectonic collisions compressed rock, lifting it and thrusting it above other rocks (overthrust). We’ll see the resulting folding in the entry of a short side hike on the Barnhardt Trail. Mazatzal Peak, the highest point of the Northern Mazatzals, towers 1700 ft above the trail with a jagged west face that makes it appear as though half the mountain was simply cut away. This passage passes through the northern half of the full range.

Unfortunately the area was greatly impacted by the Willow & Sunflower Fires, which burned much (though not all, as we will see) of the old ponderosa forest that had made the mountains one of the most popular long-distance stretches of the Arizona Trail.

Yet the incredible geology, solitude, sunsets, and views remain for the hardy and prepared souls who venture into this special place. Bagworms spin magnificent webs here, and temperatures are relatively tolerable outside of winter, when snow can make stretches impassable for those without adequate preparation.

Trail Logistics and Ecology