Craig and I bikepacked most of the Gila River Ramble route (more info here). It’s a ~100-mile route incorporating some of my favorite parts of the Arizona Trail from Passages 15, 16, and 17, including the “Ripsey Hill” from this ride. We cut off part of the route, the northernmost loop, but still did about 80 miles and 9000 of climbing over three days.
The route crosses the Gila River twice, once on the Kelvin Bridge that’s the standard AZ Trail crossing, and again downstream from that. When the river is running high, there’s a bridge crossing downstream of a diversion dam, which is shown on the route descriptions above. At low flow, it’s possible to wade across the river upstream from the diversion dam, although it involves hacking through thick tamarisk that’s overgrown the riverbanks. In November when we did this ride, the river flow was pretty low and we were able to wade across it, although the tamarisk was very thick! You can check the USGS stream flow data for the Gila River at Kelvin, AZ, to see if crossing the river might be feasible.
Stating out in the parking area along the Florence-Kelvin Highway