While in the area to buy stuff for the holidays we decided to also explore shortly the National Forest area near New River. We tried different ways to access the area until finally finding the correct access of New River Rd which is via Circle Mountain and then 12th Street.
The area is full of cholla cacti which makes for difficult hiking if you intend to go offtrail and there is some trash due to the proximity to the city. There are a lot of trails crisscrossing the area but we didn’t explore them in depth given our time constraints but we intend to come back and do a longer hike in the area. Still while finding a cache we find something unusual, a Western Banded Gecko, right next to it. Satisfied by this we return back to the trailhead with the plan to return some other time in the future to explore more.
