Month: August 2015 (page 1 of 2)
Linda, Bob, and I hiked nine miles today on the Long Loop in the Competitive Track Area. The Long Loop is actually only eight miles long, but we began and ended across the road in the Horse Staging Area.
Slightly before sunrise…
Views from the Long Loop…
Linda and Bob hiking down one of the steeper hills on the Long Loop:
We saw these quail towards the end of the Long Loop:
When we got back to the parking lot, we were slightly shy of nine miles for the day. We hiked across the lot to add the distance necessary for nine miles. We saw this skull fragment as we were walking back to our vehicles.
I did a short photography hike on Wednesday morning…
Bob and I hiked about 4.5 miles starting from the Tom’s Thumb Trailhead. We explored the Sven Towers area. We discovered that the descents for Sven Tower II and III don’t go that far down the mountain; they lead to the starts of some of the climbs, which are still fairly high up the mountain.
Sunrise:
A view from the Feldspar Trail, shortly after sunrise.
Two shots of Bob combined into one photo. He’s hiking up one of the low angle slabs which (eventually) leads to the top of Sven Tower I.
Morrell’s Wall and Tom’s Thumb:
Rock Knob:
Getting closer to the top of Sven Tower I…
Bob scrambles up to the next section of granite slab.
Another view of Morrell’s Wall and Tom’s Thumb:
We hiked to the top of that slab (below), but didn’t go much higher. (Bob noticed some bees on the trail leading to the summit.)
A view of the Thumbnail Pinnacle. We didn’t go there this time. (It was quite hot – I drank about 3L of water on our hike.)
Yet another view of Morrell’s Wall and Tom’s Thumb.
I took this shot at the start of the descent for Sven Tower II.
A cool looking rock that we saw much later in the hike. (Route finding occupied much of my attention in the interim.)
We saw this rabbit early in the hike.
We saw this lizard late in the hike.
Marilyn took this photo during our visit to Zion National Park.
Bob and I hiked about 10.5 miles on Friday. Perhaps six miles of our hike was in washes. The rest was on the Pemberton.
Just before sunrise; I took this from the side of the road just after driving into the park.
We had some interesting clouds at the start of the hike. This shot is was taken from the Pemberton, prior to entering Stoneman Wash.
A similar shot, taken from within Stoneman Wash.
This is one of the clay pits off of the Pemberton.
More wash photos. This is one of the larger washes which feeds into Stoneman Wash.
Large Saguaros in front of the McDowells:
We hit the Pemberton again, and then returned via another wash.
This is another view of the clay pit on the way back.
We saw several deer and several owls on our hike. This is the only wildlife photo that I managed to get on Friday:
