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Apr 18, 2022 — Nestled on the northeastern side of the Pinaleno Mountains, Frye Creek Canyon boasts an incredibly cool granite playground with gorgeous waterfalls and fun technical rappels. The drainage is also known as S'mores Canyon, probably because the canyon is smushed within Mount Graham's foothills (very cute, whoever named it). Reaching the trailhead at Frye Mesa Reservoir is likely doable by any non-sedan. We parked before the final descent to the reservoir because there were some firemen doing a training course, but more on that later. If you have two 4WD vehicles you could set up a shuttle and save a mile of hiking, but we just walked that extra little bit.
The canyon is split into two parts, so it can be done as the upper and/or lower portions, but I highly recommend doing the whole thing. This is a nice break-up of the canyon in case the first bit turns out to be too swift for comfort and you need a bail point. The two portions are separated by some creek walking with very cool features. There were bolted anchors where it mattered (slick granite doesn't make for great anchor-building opportunities), and natural anchors when possible. The canyon also seems to get a fair amount of non-canyoneer traffic, but the prettiest stuff definitely requires gear to reach. It's worth checking the flow of the canyon to ensure there's at least some water before driving way out here since the best part of this canyon is the natural waterpark-vibe. And of course if the flow is too high, it could be a much scarier endeavor.
We hiked south along the road, reaching its end and continuing along the Frye Canyon Trail #36. This took us up toward the head of S'mores Canyon. A social trail led down into the drainage, where we put on our wetsuits and continued through some light bushwhacking and slick polished granite that knocked us on our butts more than once. We reached the first series of pools, short rappels dropping between 30-60 feet, and then got to a 100-footer, which rapped directly down a waterfall. From the top of the fall we could see 15+ firefighters carrying on farther down the drainage (near the optional bail-point) but we couldn't make out what they were actually doing just yet. We felt like nerds in our wetsuits since the sun was out and there were a bunch of shirtless bros just ahead, but we certainly needed our wetsuits later. Stirred from our homoerotic fantasies, we did the 4th rappel and continued down the watercourse, passing a couple of slides (one of which we used a handline) and got to the top of a small rappel. We couldn't find an anchor, but did figure out what the firefighters were doing. A thick, fixed rope traversed the left side of the canyon above the waterfall, leading down to below the falls. Rather than fiddle around with building an anchor, we scurried along the traverse and got down to the end of the first portion of S'mores Canyon.
Some gorgeous polished granite features with cute obstacles, light bushwhacking, and bits of boulder-hopping took us down S'mores Canyon's middle portion. A unique section included alow-angle, slick cascade that had a fixed line for descending more safely. If this line isn't here on your visit, I'd definitely recommend setting up a rappel. Eventually we made it to the lower, longer technical portion of the canyon. There were a couple of short rappels as the canyon narrowed and became deeper, slowly progressing to the final featured series of rappels, characterized by gorgeous chambers with deep pools. The second to last rap was kind of like an assisted slide down a waterfall and emptied into a large and open chamber, and then the final rap took us down a lower-angle cascade.
From the bottom of the last rap, we took a social trail leading around the left side of Frye Mesa Reservoir and back to the dirt road.
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