An Interesting Hike to Hackberry Springs

Curt took the new camera along on Wednesday's hike to Hackberry Springs. It turned out to an interesting and somewhat exciting hike.

 It was a rather large group who left CV for the desert hike, thirty-eight in fact.

 Hackberry Springs is part of the Superstitions Mountains.

 It is a very pretty hike with a spring, Indian ruins & artifacts and a cholla forest.

 The group 'picked up' another hiker as they were leaving the parking area. The lady with the blue coat tied around her waist, the middle of the three, was left behind when her group from another community took off on their hike.

 She tagged along with our hikers because she wasn't sure which trail their group was hiking, and just maybe they were on the same trail.

The group took a snack break at the halfway mark.

On the final leg of the hike, the group noticed a helicopter following the CV hikers, flying over the group several times and at one point, dropping lower and lower.

 When the CV group arrived at the parking lot, three sheriff vehicles and a very worried husband greeted them. There was no cell phone service so no way for the woman or husband to contact each other. Our group has two-way radios to keep in contact, but her group did not, so that wasn't an option.

The helicopter was also there. It was a happy ending as no one was hurt and the missing hiker was not really lost, just not with her hiking group. It was a good lesson for our group: What will we do so that doesn't happen to us? Count bodies when we head down the trail. Make sure everyone knows the name of the trail we are hiking that day.

The woman got left behind, accidentally, because she went to the bathroom. Her group started out on another trail, but she did not know the name of the trail. (Three hikes are possible from that parking lot.) She told her friends she was going to the bathroom, but I am guessing when the CV group of thirty plus people arrived, her group decided to head out as there were only sixteen of them.

A happy ending to an interesting, exciting hike to Hackberry Spring in the Superstition Mountains.