We have six persons for this hike into Fish Creek. This is the taste of Fish Creek hike, with just a few boulder hoppings, stream crossings, cave crossings and other fun. We stop at the vista point at the top of Fish Creek Hill and take a look at the canyons that make up this part of the Superstitions.

We start at the Fish Creek bridge and hike up into Hacksaw Tom’s cave.

It is a nice cave with a good view of the Apache trail. That allowed him to plan his attacks on the travelers.

This hike is in the shade most of the time, with Fish Creek being a slot canyon. The sun does get to the bottom enough to support willow, sycamores and cottonwoods. The trees were just starting to change colors. The sun lights up the canyon wall as we walk up the canyon.

The creek was mostly dry, with just the deep pools having water. In one of the pools were frogs and fish. On the map as the crow flies we only did 3 miles, but by GPS we did 7 miles. You get to cross the canyon many times.

That’s some cliff towering above us.

The bedrock wins and we have an easy walk past a major boulder field. We get to cross the canyon a couple of more times. In front of us is a cliff and to our right is a boulder field. Where do we go? With a short hop up the cliff is a path running up the cliff to a large flat area that people have used as a camping spot. This spot could hold many tents. Across from us is a cliff that has some faces in it, how many do you see?

It is time to walk down to find our way though some house sized boulders.

The tunnel is dry today, but has a few rocks in it. We almost have to get on all fours to get though, but we make it.

This spot has many stories in our hiking reports, but it is time to find the hidden trail that lead past the deep pools and to the upper reaches of Fish Creek. You can see the Hidden Trail in the group picture; it is made by the white and red rock interface. This trail was cut by Fish Creek long ago when it was at this higher level. This makes it very easy to get by the house size boulder and deep pools of water left when Fisk Creek last flow during the monsoon. This is our turn around point and we go back over the hidden trail. There is a nice spot for lunch here, so we have an early lunch.

When we head back you can see the moon setting into Fish Creek Canyon. We head back, but instead of going up to Tom’s cave we continue under the bridge.

We follow the creek on down and spot a family of coati coming down to the creek. They spot us and scamper back up the hill. A little after this we scamper up the hill ourselves to the road and return to the cars.

This was a fun hike, with just the right amount of cliffs and boulder hopping. Total hike was 7 miles and 150 feet of elevation change.