On Sunday, Marilyn, Joe, Bob, Nick, and I hiked through Rough-N-Ready Canyon. We started on the Javelina Mine Trail which connects to a wash that eventually turns into a good sized canyon. My feet and ankles didn’t much like the numerous loose and rounded stones on the hike, so, on the way back, we bushwhacked over to and returned via the Javelina Mine Trail. Total distance, according to my GPS, was about 9.3 miles. Bob’s phone, on the other hand, showed that we had hiked nearly twelve miles. (Clearly, one of them is wrong.)
Here are the GPS tracks for the day. The light blue track is the track out to the cave. The dark blue track is the track back from the cave to the parking area.
View hike-130106-rough-n-ready.kml in a larger map
Early in the hike, on a narrow, but good trail:
One (of many) rock formations:
Marilyn and Nick in the wash, fairly early on in the hike. It abruptly descended twelve to fifteen feet at this point.
We saw many interesting rock formations along the way. The desert scenery was somewhat different than that to which we are accustomed.
Marilyn with her camera:
The sky became more interesting later in our hike. The rock formations got bigger and even more interesting too.
One of my favorite photos from this hike:
The canyon walls became very steep and very tall.
I had fallen far behind, but I eventually caught up with the others.
They were waiting by a cave which has two openings.
The interior of the cave:
Marilyn, hiking ahead of me on the way back:
A view after we exited the canyon:
Taking a break on lichen covered rock:
Views from the Javelina Mine Trail as evening approaches:
Bonus photos from Marilyn!
Tony (Nick's brother) says:
Very interesting geology! I see from the ‘sat’ image and the photographs that the rocks are moderately steeply dipping to the north-east and comprise mainly thick and massively bedded strata. Some are pinkish, some weathering white and one seems to favour the growth of a greenish lichen. Without knowledge of the area or close examination it’s difficult to say what the rocks are but the lack of internal sedimentary features and the rubbly character of some suggest that they may be volcanic (ash?) in origin – I wouldn’t swear to that though. The presence of natural caves may indicate that the rocks are calcareous. If you can add to or correct that please let me know. By the way, every time I type ‘f’ in this comment box Buettners annoyingly goes to full screen!
January 9, 2013 — 9:59 am
Kevin says:
Thanks for your geological observations, Tony.
Thanks too for the bug report regarding the ‘f’ key causing the blog to go full screen. It may be that a wordpress update will fix this problem. A newer version is available, but I haven’t updated yet.
January 9, 2013 — 11:01 am