Harry's Hike, Jasper North and Boulder's Loop

On the 2nd, Randy and I joined our hiking club for a hike, north of Strawberry on Rt 260, that the club calls Harry's Hike. Harry is for H of the 9587?? forest road. The various side roads off of it are lettered and we took side road H. It's about 1 mile past the intersection of 260 and 87 heading toward Cottonwood.

Anyway, the air was crisp and the sun was shining and we had a pretty good number of hikers out with us that day. Again, open woodland, primarily ponderosa pine. The dirt road we were following didn't have any remarkable views or historic sites to look at, just a nice walk in the woods. At the end of the road, we took a quick break, then headed back.

On the way back, we stopped at a pretty stock pond (we had passed on the way in), to have our main break and snack. Too bad none of Randy's pictures came out well for this site. This is our main chat time, not that we're aren't chatting the whole way in and out again. Martin and Mary had invited their son, also Martin, to join the hike and Randy and I had a nice talk with him.

The hike out was uneventful except that the front of the group was hiking along pretty fast and separated from the rest of the group. When we got to the cars, we waited for the 2nd half of the group. After what seemed like a long wait, Mary went to see where they were. Turns out, they were chatting away and took the left instead of the right fork in the road and went a little astray. They returned shortly after Mary did so all's well that ends well.

On the 9th, the hiking club went to what they call Jasper north trail. This is an atv trail off of the entryway road to the Tonto Natural Bridge. (Rt 87N, turn onto the Tonto Natural Bridge access road and turn in at the 1st left, about 1/2 mile from the highway.)

This hike is popular because the roadbed is strewn with red and yellow jasper
rocks. This is open country, some juniper and low growing oak and manzanita. This was an end to end hike and our hike leader's husband spotted his truck at the end to take the drivers back to the cars.


The hike itself was thru rolling open country, again a sunny day but a little cool. There were lots of side atv trails. We hiked up to a hilltop, next to a barbed wire fence where we had our break. Nice views from up there.
When we left, we got about 1/4 mile when I realized I had left my hiking poles at the break spot. So, I told the group I was going back for them and went up the hill as quickly as I could so I wouldn't delay everyone too long.

Unfortunately, the trail I went charging up wasn't the right trail. The correct one veered off to the right somewhat. So, I was casting around at the top of the hill, realizing that I didn't recognize anything here when Jan, the woman I had been hiking with, called up from the bottom of the hill that she thought we were more to the right. Sure enough, when I cut over, there was the spot I recognized and there were my poles.

We hiked back down together and found Randy waiting for us at a turn, and the 3 of us hiked down the last of the hike together. We met the rest of the group at the end of the trail. We all crossed the highway at the same time and got to the pull off to wait for the truck to take the drivers back to the cars and come and get us. All in all, a good hike day, about 5 miles.

On Thursday the 11th, I felt like getting outside so Randy and I decided to check
out the Boulder's Loop trail. This is one of the Payson Area Trail System (PATS) trails that the town's parks and recreation dept. maintains. We went all the way out to the end of Phoenix St and there was the trailhead. Very easy to find.


We had a good time, going thru the ponderosa pine woods at the end of Phoenix Street, then entering the more desert-like area of boulders just a little farther out. Also interesting was that the hike went thru a small canyon area with a small stream running thru it and then, coming out to a valley area where there was a ranch and some grassland. Then back around the southern part of the loop and back to the car. Again, about a 5 mile hike but with great views of massive boulders and spires and cliffs.
A really good morning out.