Full Moon 🌝 Easy, beginner trip to Arnett Canyon (Superior) 6 "ish" miles R/T

Let’s start the first full weekend of the year on a short and easy backpack close to the Phoenix area. The night of this trip will have a full moon so we can practice our howling. This trip is passenger car friendly and has a water source nearby so no need to haul in water, just the essentials like food and a warm sleeping bag, its going to get chilly at night 🥶

Arnett Canyon is located near Bryce Thompson Arboretum and on the east side of Picketpost Mountain by Superior. This will only be a 3 mile "ish" one way backpack to a beautiful Sonoran desert campsite surrounded by neat rock formations. This area reminds me of what the western Superstitions looked like vegetation wise before the somewhat recent fires. There's only 200'-300' of accumulated elevation gain (AEG) on each day of this trip with most of it at the beginning and end of the trip.

Silver🥈 was mined in this area long ago, maybe we'll find a piece that went undiscovered. There's an assortment of wilderness characters that live in this riparian area such as mountain lions, ring tail cats, coatamundi and the ever so elusive chupacabra 👹 Perhaps we'll get lucky and see one of them.

We''ll meet at noon on Saturday since this is a short hike and head off to the Picketpost/AZT TH that is off of US60. Its about a half of an hour drive from the best town in the Phoenix sprawl, Apache Junction 🤗 We'll hike in at a leisurely pace then setup camp ⛺️ gather firewood 🔥and go look for neat rocks. In the morning we'll take our time to warm up, clean up and break camp. We should be on trail around 10:00AM "ish".

A $1 or $2 cash donation would be appreciated to help pay the yearly meetup extortion fee.

I'm by no means a professional guide but have spent hundreds of nights out on backpacking trips. I lead trips not for financial gain but instead to meet other backpackers and enjoy bringing people together. Most of the places that I venture to are remote with help usually being many hours and sometimes days away. When you participate on a trip of mine you must accept that you are ultimately responsible for yourself and bad things can happen. I do intend on using good judgement when leading but will not be with you at all times. In case of something bad happening, I intend on getting help and/or help getting the injured person out as soon as its safely possible. I expect the same in return, I watch your back and you watch mine,