Backpacking in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix, Arizona! (Dutchman + Peralta Canyon Trail)

In case you missed our last couple of videos we spent some time exploring Tucson and we've since driven two hours to the Phoenix area which fun fact is where I was born and lived for eight years so it's always fun to come back. And for this trip to the area we decided to visit a brand new spot for us the Superstition Mountains. These mountains are located about an hour east of Phoenix and instead of doing a day hike we're backpacking so we can see more of the area. We decided to make our own route for this backpacking trip and combine a couple popular trails into one 12-mile loop. We're starting on the Dutchman Trail and then we'll connect with the Bluff Springs Trail, Terrapin Trail, and then come down the Peralta Canyon Trail for about 12 miles total. So today our plan is to hike nine and a half of the 12 miles and camp on the Fremont Saddle which should have an epic campsite view. But looking at the elevation gain for our route today it's going to be straight uphill and these packs already feel pretty heavy. The scenery out here this morning is really surprising me. I just love the contrast between the orange rocks and all the green shrubbery out here. It's really beautiful. Another interesting contrast is we're walking through an area where we read that there was a wildfire here years ago and so it's interesting to see you have dead dying cacti and then also alive and thriving cacti. We're about 3.7 miles in and the trail's been so beautiful so far. It's also been pretty challenging. This is our second time ever backpacking in the desert and backpacking in the desert has its own unique set of challenges. One, the sun. It's not even that warm out but the sun just beating on you makes you feel so hot. The air is dry which can make it just kind of harder to breathe. There's pokey sharp things everywhere so you have to be really careful where you step and what you're brushing up against and there's really no water in the desert. It looks like there could be water down there at some points of the year but everything so far has been pretty dry and we knew this going into it so we brought two of our three liter camelbacks, two one and a half liter big water bottles so we're carrying nine liters of water between the two of us. We're hoping that's good. We're hoping we do find water but if not we think we'll be set but I think we have to head up to that and we're hoping when we get up there we can have some lunch. I always think it's so rewarding when hiking and backpacking when you can look back down the big incline you just came up and actually see the trail too. You just feel good and rewarded and strong. My butt is so sore. Yes that is true. Mine too. For lunch today we have one of our go-to's Wild Zora. We've had these on every single backpacking vlog that we've ever made but this is a brand new item. These are their quinoa bowls and this is the harvest beef one. We haven't tried this flavor yet but we've loved all the others we've tried and then we just have one of our classic meat and veggie meals that they have too. This one's the summit savory chicken. When I was the first one to get attacked by a cactus. Ow! That does not feel good. If you've heard of the Superstition Mountains you've probably heard of the Lost Dutchman's gold mine. It's maybe the most famous lost gold mine in the American Southwest. A German immigrant named Jacob Walz discovered a large gold mine in the Superstition Mountains and he kept the location of the mine a secret to his death. According to legend the shadow of the thousand foot weaver's needle which is right here behind me points to the location of the mine and over the years thousands of people have come out every year in search of the mine but no luck so far. So we probably won't find the Lost Dutchman's mine but we are getting a little lost on this trail. This part we had read was a little confusing not super well marked and we're following the offline map on all trails but we're still kind of straying from the path a bit. It's just not very clear where to go so hopefully we don't become the lost A plus K that people search for for thousands of years. My mom's gonna love that one. Don't worry mom we won't get lost. We're really close to the Peralta trail which is the trail that our campsite will be off of but we're in this area and we have no idea where to go. We're looking at all trails nothing seems to match up with any routes. Adam just took his pack off and went searching. What'd you find? This is the way all trails tell you to go. It's just bushwhacking and there's no way to get through that but this seems more clear and we can run into the other trail that comes around this way and meets up to the direction we need to go. We are at that point of the hike though that we're feeling just so exhausted and miserable and all I want is just to lay down in the tent. We made it. Oh man. Oh that was rough. Now we have to go find a campsite and hope that there's a good one available. Check out this sick camp spot we got with Weaver's Needle right behind us. This spot's just a little bit off of the main Fremont Saddle Overlook. It had a fire ring here so we assume people have camped here before and this view is what we hiked 10.4 miles for although you could technically just hike 2.5 in to get here. You don't have to do the whole thing that we did. Kind of regretting going that far. It was a little more intense than we thought it would be but that's okay. We're here. This makes it worth it and now it's time for like a very quick nap before dinner. We've got dinner with a view. We've got our new favorite chicken pad thai from Backpacker Pantry. Mine's in an extra little ziploc bag because I punctured the hole in the bottom. He was too aggressively trying to stir and mix it all together. I could seriously eat this not even backpacking. I love it so much and what I'm super excited about is since we're not in bear country we can actually eat in our tent. We haven't been able to do this in so long because we're always camping where bears are present. Oh it's so nice to just sit in here on my comfy pad sleeping pad and have a nice view. After a long fun but mostly fun mostly fun but challenging day on the trail and an amazing sunset that was so gorgeous. It is time to maybe listen to a podcast maybe watch a movie we haven't decided yet and then get some z's get up bright and early and hit the trail. So we had a very rough night it was super windy out and the tent was just all night long. I think we woke up every 30 minutes or so or maybe even less because the tent was just like hitting us in the face so we made some coffee so we can have energy to hike back down to the van and I know we're kind of complaining a lot it's just been a very hard experience we want to be honest but just look at this view we woke up with this outside of our tent and we can take one sleepless night to have views like this. At the end of the day when we look back on this backpacking experience we won't remember how our feet and legs were tired or how we didn't sleep at all we're gonna remember this view and that makes it all worth it. All right we're starting our two and a half ish mile trek back down to the van on the Peralta Canyon Trail and this trail is said to be the most popular trail in all the Superstition Mountains so it takes you from the van to where we slept last night and so if you're looking for a good day hike this is one of your best options. This hike down so far has been absolutely stunning if you come hiking the Superstition Mountains definitely get here really early in the morning just the way that the light hits all of the peaks and the valleys and it's lighting up the saguaros you can see all the mountains off in the distance there's all these beautiful layers of light it is jaw-droppingly beautiful. So the hike ended up being 12.9 miles and as we've said many many times it was definitely harder than expected our goal with this whole trip was to see as much scenery in the Superstition Mountains as possible so we feel like we accomplished that and we are still glad we did it. But if we were to do it again or recommend someone out there to do this trail we would either backpack the Peralta Canyon Trail or the Dutchman Trail because that section going between them while very scenic it was very challenging not very well marked and it was just tough overall through the whole trip to conserve our water because it just it just got hot yeah we would do something shorter i think in the future we wanted to do a lot and and we did and we did it was tough but yeah desert backpacking is like a whole other beast but now it's time to feast for our post backpacking feast we came to the number one spot i've been wanting to try for years in the phoenix area Little Miss Barbecue they have two locations we're at the sunny slope location mostly because they uh they have a bigger parking lot here for the van so so we got a pound of fatty brisket it looks so delicious and then a pound of pork ribs oh man look at look at those and this tub you see here is cheesy jalapeno grits that's a pint because the uh the single just looked too small but this kind of looks kind of big but i've heard good things about it so it'll probably get eaten all of it right now so we made sure to get here early because i saw on some videos on youtube and things online that they run out of the moist brisket so we got here in plenty of time there were only a few people in front of us so no worries today look at this fatty brisket got the nice pink smoke ring oh nice all kinds of marbling in there that was worth the wait all those miles we hiked yesterday oh man how meaty these pork ribs are nice little juicy glaze on there you can see all the the pink smoke ring in there almost all the way through juicy tender nice and moist tons of flavor on the outside there and then what i always like on pork ribs is when there's a little bit of give or a little bit of bite left on there so it doesn't just like completely come off so these are perfect in my eyes i wasn't sure if adam was going to share with me but thankfully he is and i get to have a little too oh that's good oh those smell so cheesy oh that's so good recently learned that i like grits so anytime we get cheesy grits at a barbecue place or any place that's what i'm getting oh this is so good oh i'm in heaven loving this i truly did not think we would finish all of that especially the grits but adam the garbage disposal is finishing it up right now you're a machine well if we haven't sweat enough on the hike we now have the meat sweats but good thing look what's right next door planet fitness aka our shower so we'll leave you here because it would be pretty weird to take you in there but that's going to do it for a time in arizona this time we're gonna spend the next couple of days getting a little bit of work done hanging out with friends that live in the area and then we also just found out that we're going to be going to the waste management phoenix open which is a golf tournament i've been wanting to go to forever so pumped about that but then california here we come oh god this is embarrassing okay bye check out this sick camp spot with what is it called weavers weavers not wheeler check out this sick camp spot with what is it again weaver's needle okay the not glamorous side of backpacking or hiking with a dog is carrying tons of dog poop with you i'm not super stitious just a little stitious 10 points if you know what that quote is from and if you do not know we're gonna assign you a homework assignment and you have to go watch all of it i'm sure people are tired of seeing our dance moves but i'm not tired of doing them