Last December when hiking through the Gila River Canyons section of the Arizona trail with my friend Craig, we got to talking about backpacking all of the Black Canyon Trail or, as we call it, the BCT. It seemed like a fun adventure.
We've both spent a lot of time hiking and biking on the BCT, especially around Black Canyon City. I wonder if anyone has hiked all of the BCT? I imagine someone has walked or ridden every part of the trail. I know I've hiked and ridden most of it over the past several years chasing after the many geocaches that have been hidden on or near it, many by Craig.
Since that December hike, I've been thinking a lot about thru-hiking the BCT, especially since I completed section hiking the Arizona Trail last October. Actually, I don't just want to thru-hike the BCT southbound, but I want to continue hiking from the south end of the BCT to my front door as it's not too much farther and it's all dirt except for the last third of a mile or so.
Interestingly enough, in order to thru-hike a trail, you need to know where the trail goes, from end to end. Yep, that's pretty obvious. Like I mentioned, I'd been on most of the trail, but I hadn't been on the two ends of it. With my preliminary research, I wasn't finding much any information on the two ends of the trail. I found a GPS map set for most of the trail on Hike Arizona (HAZ) but both ends were missing. I found map images of the trail, including the south end on the Black Canyon Trail Coalition web site but none for the north end.
What to do? Well, since I wasn't finding the information on the internet, I decided to take my research to the field. I did find some GPS tracks that went a few miles north of the HAZ tracks off of Old Sycamore Rd near highway 69 so I started there. I was hoping to make it to the trail's northern terminus but didn't make it on that trip. I was able to map the trail to where it crossed a road but turned around as I was running out of daylight. The next week, I was able to continue where I left off and followed the trail to another road where there were no more trail signs. I followed the road for a while into the Prescott National Forest before turning around. I since found out that the trail ends where the road enters Prescott National Forest. I now have the north end of the BCT.
My next step was to map the last mile and a half or so of the BCT and from there to my home. I got on the BCT a bit north of the end, where the Maricopa Trail merges with the BCT off of Pioneer Rd. When I got to where the BCT and Maricopa Trail diverge, I was unable to pick the BCT back up. I ended up going cross country towards where the BCT ends. When I got near the end, I found what appeared to be a trail and followed it a short ways before I lost it. I looked around for a bit, then continued towards home. Several days later, I went back out and followed that path as best I could northward towards where the BCT and Maricopa Trail diverge, then I followed it back. I didn't spot any trail signage or trail cairns but I did follow some old flagging and what appears to be a faint trail for most of the distance. My tracks look similar to the image I found on the BCT Coalition web site, so I feel I now have the south end of the BCT too.
Since the field work is complete, I have been putting together GPS tracks of the trail along with a set of waypoints of distances and landmarks all along the trail similar to what is available for the Arizona Trail and other trails. That work is mostly complete.
Now I have most of the planning complete, and most of the logistics figured out. I have the hike dates set and have invited Craig and another friend, Jeremy along. Will we be the first people to thru-hike the Black Canyon Trail? I haven't heard of anybody else attempting to. With the dearth of available information on the two ends of the trail, I like to think nobody has. It is fun to think that we may be the first.
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