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The first weekend in November, Dad & Barbara planned to come down to our house and then we were all to head out to the Guillero mountains north of Wilcox. Along the Basset Peak trail lies a B-24 wrecked near the peak. Our plan was to have Barbara watch Rachel and Landen while the rest of us hiked up to find the plane remnants. |
| As luck would have it, Barbara was not feeling well, but Dad was determined to pursue nonetheless. He showed up in time, and we grabbed the kids and headed out. The base of the trail lies about 2 hours from our house. |  |
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The trail has not been used in a while, and as such was quite overgrown with vegetation. The up side to this growth was the time of year. The leaves had all begun to change and fall from the trees. We enjoyed walking though the different colors of yellows, pinks, reds, oranges, and greens. Here Ethen and Kyle are on the trail just a few feet in front of us. These leaves were all yellow, but Terra's new phone lacks much in the camera department. |
| Here were are at the spring and about half way through the trail. This is where the elevation begins and the trail turns up. This is also where the grove of aspen trees is. There is only one small patch of aspen trees on the trail, and as you keep going you can always see where you have been by the location of the aspen trees. |  |
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Ethen and Kyle were long on complaints where we started the trek. Actually Ethen was long on complaints. For some reason he has really taken a liking to his free time. He really gets grumpy when activities take to much of his Saturday time. This was one of those activities, and he all but stopped at about the 1 mile mark into the hike. The hike was about 6 miles up to the top of the peak, so we put in 12 miles that day. Once we got Ethen going again, he did just fine, and was able to complete the hike. |
| Kyle did remarkably well. They both enjoyed the hike and the different leaves and colors that we were walking through. I am ever more convinced that kids can accomplish tasks that they think are beyond their abilities. I think that peoples minds are a hold back to their abilities to accomplish any given task. |  |
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When we reached the top (or close to it) we found this little tomb stone marker with a cross. I have yet to try to find out who these people are, but it was right across the valley from the wrecked plane, and I wonder if they were somehow related to the wreck. |
| Here is a view from about the cross (and stone marker). You can see the grove of aspen trees at the bottom of the canyon and the tail as it zigzags up the other side of the mountain. The last time we attempted this hike in search of the plane, Dad made it up this face and we stopped as time was short and we didn't want to be hiking out after dark. Well this trip was similar, but we did find the plane and made it up close to approaching it. The plane was perched on the edge of a cliff with the wings down in the valley. We didn't go over to it, as it looked about 1-2 hours of cross-country hiking to reach it and then get back to the trail. |  |
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This means that we will need to attempt this hike yet again.
Here is a tree that is dangling from some other trees. It looks like this one fell down from a greater height and was caught by the branches of the trees around. This tree was in this same position about 1.5 years ago when we attempted this hike before. I thought for sure that it would have fallen by now, but all the same, we didn't stand under the tree and attempt fate. |
| Here we are on the way back down the trail, almost to the grove of aspen trees. This is a real neat hike as there are many different seasons you get to walk through and different types of vegetation to admire. I wish that Dad was able to come on this hike. He as been wanting to re-visit this trail and find the plane ever since our first attempt, but with Barbara's illness this didn't happen this time around. I think that he was even training for this hike and was up to making the journey when we arrived for camp. Terra tried to talk him into going, but he didn't bring the correct clothing for hiking so was unable to attempt it.
Maybe next time... |
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