TL;DR
Do some off-trail exploration through the northern Zone 2 Black Forest backcountry of Petrified Forest National Park. Seriously, there aren’t any trails. Be sure to bring plenty of water and take into account the weather forecast. Walk through desert washes and explore the various Petrified Forest Members, layered mounds of reddish mudstone and brown sandstone layers. Its sort of a choose-your-own adventure, the requirement being you need to be at least 1 mile from the trailhead. Parking and trailhead are at the Painted Desert Inn. Permits can be picked up from the Painted Desert Visitor’s Center for free. We did this in September as a weekend trip.
Thoughts
This was another one of those trips where a Backpacker Magazine article was incepted into my mind. And once that happens you know I have to do it. We ended up not really following the route from the magazine but went to the same general area. Petrified Forest NP isn’t exactly known for its backcountry. In our brief time there, most of the visitors we saw were in cars or motorhomes on a roadtrip, only stopping at the vistas and short walks outlined on the visitor map. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed the backcountry so much. There was no one there. We had an entire vastness of desert to explore unencumbered. No restrictions on where we could hike or where we could camp. It was a nice reprieve from the constant reminders I have for various permit lotteries.
Our day started early with a flight into Phoenix and then a long drive straight up and over the mountains to Petrified Forest. By the time we rolled into Petrified Forest it was already 3:30. This worked a bit to our advantage considering it was still around 90F outside. We took our time getting the permit and checking out the visitor’s center before doing the short drive over to the Painted Desert Inn. Once there, we packed up our stuff, topped off our water at the fountain and set off on the Wilderness Access Trail to the left of the inn.
The inn and parking lot sit on a plateau that offers some wonderful views of the aptly named painted desert. This also functioned as a safety net for our first off-trail adventure since you can see the inn from miles away. The Wilderness Access Trail drops down quickly and continue for roughly a mile. Once the trail faded to nothing we looked around and asked ourselves, “Well….what do we want to see?”. Its freeing to not have a designated trail to follow yet I get that FOMO anxiety that I could choose incorrectly. We decided that we wanted our camp to be somewhere with a nice sunset so that meant traversing up on to of the colorful mounds that pepper the landscape.
We got a permit for Zone 2 which is a section of the Black Forest (named due to the color of the petrified wood). The zones are kind of vague and there’s no way to tell if you’re in or another unless you somehow plotted a boundary out in a GPS tracker. It didn’t sound like they cared which zone we ended up in, just that we were more than a mile from the trailhead. Zone 2 was roughly directly north from the inn so that’s which way we went. We crossed some grassland, saw a few giant anthills, crossed a large wash before getting close enough to the colorful mounds or members as they’re called.
To my surprise, the members weren’t very solid at all. It took kind of a running start to get up them, each step crumbling away beneath you. Once on top, they were much more stable. We traversed across the little plateau we had found. It was littered with fragments of petrified wood and smooth rocks balancing on what only looked like dried mud. The petrified wood is intriguing. Its surface looks exactly like wood but the gloss and shininess is all wrong. They glitter in the sunlight.
With another ridge in front of us, we set about trying to find a way over. It took a few attempts before we were able to find a route that wouldn’t involve us sliding 20 feet down. The sun was beginning to set and we wanted to have camp setup so we could take some photos. We found a nice little spot on some loose dirt in front of some picturesque pieces of petrified wood. With our tent all set, we enjoyed dinner and the desert sunset.
The night was mild so we didn’t have the rainfly on, hoping to see some stars. I had forgotten there was a full moon that night. If you’ve never camped during a full moon, there’s pros and cons. Its nice being able to see pretty well. But its also like sleeping with headlights pointed right at your face.
The next morning we packed up, ate some sad cold oatmeal (didn’t feel like dealing with a stove), and started our way back down. I wanted to check out the Onyx Bridge since it was a notable feature on the map. I had downloaded the google map for the area on my phone so I just lead us around while keeping the arrow pointed to that spot. The Onyx Bridge might have been a bit anticlimactic. It was cool I guess, but the Members were much more beautiful to see.
We hiked out and then took the rest of the afternoon to see the other spots in the park and check out some petroglyphs. All in all a great weekend trip in Petrified Forest National Park.
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