Pine creek gorge - Day Two

Lucky for us we woke up to blue skies! We decided to cook breakfast at Bradley Wales and got an early start back on the trail, which continued down a gravel road for a short time. We crossed the half way point and turned back onto a trail. The path is very well marked, by the way – the entire trail is marked with red paint dots on trees. I don’t remember any section where we didn’t have red dots in view except when we took an unintentionally long loop which I will explain later.

At the Bradley Wales Picnic Area we found a real bathroom and an ancient looking water pump! A sign told us to filter or treat the water from the pump and we started getting a little nervous when it took over a dozen pumps to finally get some water moving. The 6L gravity filter was the ideal piece of gear for this situation, and we even filled up the bag and carried it to our next campsite just in case water was scarce.

The next section of the trail followed almost entirely along the rim of the gorge so we had tons of epic vistas. The creek runs on the north side of the trail had a decent amount of water compared to our experience on the south side. I was trying to keep track of the runs because we weren’t sure if we would hike an extra loop section that was approaching. Instead there’s a shortcut along the Seimons Trail to bypass the loop.

But before we realized what was happening we were on the long loop after the junction! The hike was really nice though, in a dense forest losing its leaves with partial views of the Grand Canyon. I was surprised at how long it was taking us to get to the Seimons Trail, and a little worried that we were running out of time, when we popped out at Leetonia Road! We got our bearings thanks to cell service and recognizing some waypoints on the map, and made our way back to the West Rim Trail. I was relieved that we made it so far while actually hiking the full trail!

We were ready to setup camp after that so we made it through some trail detours near the road and found a secluded site off the O’Connor Branch. Our campsite had plenty of water for dinner and the remainder of the trip.