We had a nice leisurely breakfast, packed up camp and were ready to go by a little after 730. We rested a little longer in the shade down by the creek and did not end up starting to hike until around 800. Everything started off good and we seemed to be right on track according to the GPS. Shortly after leaving camp as we were climbing we came across an area that was littered with potsherds. It was very cool and Janice and I ended up taking lots of photos. I think that distraction caused a slight problem though. I thought I knew where we needed to go from there and never checked the GPS.

We ended up resting higher up around 930, near the crest of the promontory we were climbing over, next to a tree that seemed somewhat familiar. From there it just seemed that we needed to climb along the ridge and then down the other side. We started out doing that but when we got to the top of the ridge there didn't seem to be a way down the other side, it was just all way too steep. It would have been possible but it would not be fun. I thought we must have been too high so I started looking for another way down back along the way we had come up. I ended up finding one but that route ended up taking us too low and we had to navigate across a few side drainages that I had been hoping to avoid.

It wasn't until I got home and downloaded the track to my laptop that I realized we had not been too high but still too low and we should have been higher up on the ridge. From up there it was a more gradual descent to the creek on the other side.

It was around 130 when we finally got down to the creek on the other side and we took a long rest there before continuing up the creek to camp. The hike to camp also took longer since we ended up hitting the creek further down than I had wanted. In the end what should have been about a 2.5 mile hike ended up being closer to 4. Oh, well. At least we had good weather for it. We rested at the creek until around 200 and then started the hike up to camp.

It was slow going up the creek as there was a lot of water coming down and the closer we got to camp the more clogged the creek became with brush forcing us to be constantly switching from side to side again. It was a little before 500 when we arrived in the general area I knew the campsite was supposed to be and after hunting around for a little while I eventually found it, the same site I had used for the trips in 2006 and 2012.

I had already given up on the idea of day hiking to the ruins further up the creek. That was still another 1.5 miles or so up the creek and with all of the water and all of the brush that was going to take way too long. We could probably have got up there before dark but we would have been coming back in the dark for sure. It seemed like a much better to enjoy the last couple of hours of daylight at camp and relax. We all ended up taking a nice dunk in the creek and rinsing out some clothes before having dinner. It was nice to have dinner without the need for headlamps.

Max had brought along a pint of bourbon and I had a pint of rum so we had ourselves a little fun after dinner. We were drinking the bourbon straight up but I mixed some of the rum with water flavored with an orange electrolyte replacement. That was pretty tasty.