Bob, Linda, Janet, Amy, and I started our Friday hike at the Wagner Trailhead. We hiked a 9.35 mile route utilizing the Wagner, Granite, Delsie, Pemberton, and Stoneman Wash trails.
It had rained Thursday night into Friday Morning. The trails were damp, but no rain fell on us during the hike. The sky was full of interesting clouds and I think those clouds made for some interesting photos.
Amy is holding the rib of a dead saguaro in both of the group pictures. The McDowells are visible behind us.
Below, Amy is taking her own photo of the McDowells and the highly textured clouds above. Red Mountain is visible off in the distance.
Textured clouds:
The edges of the two cloud layers direct the viewer’s attention to the McDowells in this photo.
A pair of saguaros.
A view from the Pemberton. This shot was taken near the Granite Tank as we were ascending the nearby hill. At the top of the hill is a crested saguaro off to the right. (It’s not shown in this photo.)
The damp conditions made sand in the washes firmer than usual. I noticed, however, that the Wagner and Granite Trails felt somewhat soft and squishy when we first started hiking. It’s interesting that the rain can make a normally firm trail soft and a normally soft trail firm.
We saw this tree just as we entered Stoneman Wash.
Boulders in Stoneman Wash:
A large multi-armed saguaro visible from Stoneman Wash:
Another edit of the above photo. The sky has somewhat less contrast in this one. Marie likes this one better, but Joe likes the original edit, above, better.
Yellow flowers. Anyone know what kind of plant this is?
We heard helicopters flying overhead around the time when I was trying to photograph the yellow flowers. (My camera didn’t want to focus for close-up shots.)
I’m hoping that Amy will be able to tell me the name of this reddish plant. There’s a lot of it growing in the washes. Several weeks ago, we saw similar plants that were light pink in color at the bottom of the Tonto Tank Trail.
