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Welcome to another edition of mysteries of the Superstition Mountains Arizona is a very
interesting State a lot of people don't re realize how interesting it really is most people think
of it as the major desert that you see in the southwest that's where Tucson and Phoenix is and
so a lot of the videos you see are from that area but as you go uh North you'll get into some really
high mountains up around Flagstaff and heading along the ridge line going east and then you get
into the high desert as you go up towards the four corners and so we have a lot of diversity that
goes on here because of the unique geography of Arizona we get Monsoon Seasons which is a shift in
the wind technically that's what Monsoon means is a shift in the wind directions when that happens
we get a lot of rain and the rain is something that uh is very important to the desert and is
really valuable for the flora and fauna and the trees and everything else however in the desert
Southwest part of it when monsoons hit you'll get a lot of local flooding and a lot of the
low washes will flood out so Arizona after a while got real tired of people trying to drive through
these washes and they would have police cars with their lights showing they they'd have barricades
put up they'd have signs put up and people would still drive into the washes so Arizona created
a a law I'm not sure the technical name of the law but everybody including the news media and
the newspaper referred to it as the stupid driver law so if you drive into one of those those washes
and get stuck and there was notification that you should not be in that wash you have to pay
for your rescue and it's not cheap and that's why they call it the stupid driver law now one of the
things that happens a lot in Arizona is you get a lot of people that think they can go out and hike
in the desert and in the mountains and that it's like hiking back east or up in the Northwest and
it's not it's very different and so year in and year out we have an off lot of hikers and campers
that have to be rescued so I'm going to tell two stories of some people that we helped rescue and
I wish we had what is known as a stupid hiker law here in Arizona for the cost of rescuing and
taking care of people who uh go out into the desert and get themselves stuck so the first
episode or the first part of this episode that I'm going to talk about uh happens in the super
mountains as you go out Apache Trail you'll uh come into a spot where you can turn off going to
the uh uh Northeast and it goes to a place called first water second water or Dutchman's pass now
most people refer to it as First water second water most of the maps have it as either first
water or first water second water or they have it as Dutchman's pass and you'll see that on the Maps
as we go through here so it was very common for me to take Scout Troops out there on the first water
second water hike it's a fun hike it's not too challenging and it's one that you know is kind
of fun and interesting to go on there's a turnoff as you get up to Garden Valley uh just as you're
heading out towards second water after you've passed the Dutchman and the First water Trail
heads and it's called the Black Canyon uh Trail uh some people refer to it as black Mesa uh Trail but
it's should be referred to as a Black Canyon Trail so we had we decided we were going to do the Black
Canyon Trail on this particular outing because you know we' done the second water so often so
we started heading down the Black Canyon Trail so the interesting part is that we were out there in
the fall and so it's starting to cool off but it's still fairly hot and so we were heading down black
ma uh our Black Canyon and we were having a good time we were hiking long you know we were looking
for a cave that's up on the side of the Hill you know we wanted to go visit before we went to the
bottom of the trail and started hiking back and we ran into our stupid hikers so it was uh a guy two
girls all out of ASU students probably just well in fact I I know they just came into the valley
from I'm not sure where but they were all talking about how excited they were to be in Arizona and
be able to take these hikes they had a black Labrador Retriever with them so and they only
had little half liter uh bottles of water so this is a warm day they're out probably uh 2 and 1/2 3
miles from the trail head uh maybe a little bit longer than that and they didn't bring anything
for the dog and we stumble on to these people and they're panicking because a dog has given
up he just can't handle it anymore it's crawled over un into some shade and just will not budge
now whenever I took scouts out on these type of outings the scouts always whined and complained
because I always made sure that we took extra gear extra water extra snacks you know we were
prepared for adverse situations but often that also includes that it helps us rescue someone so
here these uh new bees to Arizona are from ASU and they're run out of they've run out of water they
have nothing for their dog when we get there so the first thing we do is we start splitting up we
uh take a uh inventory of all of our supplies and our water we get uh some water to the uh students
and then we go over and we start uh dumping water on the dog to start cooling the dog down a black
laborador Retriever in 80 90 degree weather in Arizona like it gets to be in uh late August is
just not a um good situation for the dog they just don't handle it well and especially if you don't
bring water for the dog so we start cooling the dog down get him some water he starts recuperating
a little bit but he still can't walk he's still wobbly he's he's not able to move very well so
we create a uh a sling with some uh of the tarps that we had with us and put the dog in the tarps
and get kids on the four corners and start hauling the dog out of there some of the other ones start
helping the students out of there and you know eventually we get them out one of the uh the
guy that was with the two girls he eventually recovered pretty well and for the last quarter
mile or so he put the dog up on his shoulders and finish walking out now the other thing that
I always do is I always have a cooler in the car full of Gatoraides and Waters and other things
like that so that you know if we do get low on water on the last part of the trail we know that
we've got some that's real close at hand so we get them all taken care of get them all refreshed and
they take off and go back to school so we get them off on their way and then of course we get
our Scouts all taken care of get them all Gatorade and watered and everything but that's a classic
example of a stupid hiker someone that's new to an area doesn't really understand what they're
up against doesn't go get information and they end up having to be rescued fortunately we didn't have
to call out the Rangers or anything to rescue them although at one point it looked like we might have
to because the dog just was not moving and you know we're dealing with 12-year-old Scouts that's
a heavy dog to be high out of there with but we managed after you know stopping periodically to
get them out so that's Story number one about a stupid hiker number two is kind of a unique
one that kind of tells you a little bit about people in general this happened in Usery park
now Usery park is a uh uh County Park you have to pay a fee to go into it it's well-liked they have
lots of people that go there they have great Trails all over the place it's it's a good
place to get yourself acclimatized for hiking you know in other areas around the state especially
you know maybe going out in the superstitions um they've got benches you know they've got places
for picnics they've got watering stations they've got bathrooms so it's a really nice place one of
the areas that people like to hike is called Wind Cave now Wind Cave is a bit deceptive you can see
it easily from the parking lots and even from out on the road going in front of where you turn off
to go into um Usery Park but it actually is a very difficult hike to get to it's very steep
they've got a lot of switchbacks and it can be a little bit hard to get to now the interesting
thing of it is is it kind of sets a bad precedent for new bees there because there's people that go
out there for their daily exercise and they'll run up the trail I they'll run from the parking
lot clear up to Wind Cave and back down again um often you know depending upon the time of the year
they may or may not take some water with them because they goes so fast you know they're only
on the trail for maybe 45 minutes or an hour at the most and they've been doing this day in and
day out so a lot of people look at those people and go oh this isn't a hard hike I can knock this
off easily so we were going up to Wind Cave and we got to one of the major switchbacks and people
were you know we were stopped there waiting and a bunch of people were going by and there's this
lady that was looking really really rough and she just didn't look well at all and so as my
usual I talk to people on the trail to make sure everybody's okay and so I get talking to her and
she's run out of water nobody has stopped to help her and she doesn't know what to do she's
getting a little bit disoriented so again we break out the water and the uh snacks we kind
of help her get herself reoriented now in the part of this is yes she was a stupid hiker in
that she didn't really prepare and maybe she was misled a little bit but also tells you something
about other people on the trail I mean why wasn't other people stopping to help this lady you know
why wasn't people taking care of people and that happens often when you get out into these areas
where you're hiking you get so focused on your goal that you don't pay attention to what's going
on around you and so there she was stuck with people going by not paying attention to her at
all so we took the time and got her taken care of and got her back down the trail so you know
that's another example of not only a stupid hiker but of stupid stupid hikers that are around that
could have helped her but didn't so those are my stories about some of the situations we've
run into as we've been out on Scout outings where needed to help people so in one instance I'm very
definitely interested in a stupid hiker law for young kids that uh go out with their dogs without
any water provisions and in the other situation you know you're in a fairly populated hiking area
and people just aren't stopping to help people out you'd think that we'd have a stupid hiker
law for that as well so that's another episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains hope
you have enjoyed it thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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