Tag: Arizona (page 56 of 74)

Ranger Amy had scheduled two consecutive Friday hikes at the North Trail.  She suggested that I and those wanting to do a longer hike take a look at the newly opened Escondido Trail.  We started our hike from the Lousely Trailhead while Ranger Amy lead the scheduled hike on the North Trail.

Bob, Sarge, Janet, Doug, and I did a 9.2 mile loop.  We started at Lousely Trailhead and made a left on the Escondido trail which now crosses the Lousely trail perhaps 200 yards from the Trailhead.  We followed Escondido to Cinch, took Cinch to Scenic, Scenic to Pemberton, Pemberton to Escondido, and Escondido back to the Lousely.  The Cinch Trail has been around for a while, but I didn’t know the name until recently.

The map below shows our route.  If you look at the top (north) part of the map, you’ll make out a short spur coming off the loop; this is where we started.  The Escondido Trail zigs and zags a lot, but the first leg of our journey lead us generally southward.  The Cinch Trail heads northwest to join the Scenic Trail.  If you zoom the map, and you know what you’re looking for, it’s possible to see where Cinch intersects the Scenic.

View hike-131213-track-only.kml in a larger map

This is a view from the Escondido Trail, shortly after turning off of Lousely:

A view to the west (I think) while traveling south on Escondido:

Bob, Sarge (the dog), and Janet on Escondido.  The trail is set in from the road somewhat, but has minimal elevation gain or loss.  In order to achieve this, the trail builders cut the trail into the sides of the many hills in the area.  There was an old road nearby which used to follow a much straighter path.  It, however, went fairly close to the McDowell Mountain Road.  Satellite photos show that this old road briefly crossing McDowell Mountain Road.   Janet, Doug, and Bob, at the intersection of the Cinch and Scenic Trails.

A view of the newly cut Escondido Trail near Pemberton.

This area was ravaged by the Tonto Fire of the mid-90’s.

We encountered two cyclists on the Escondido Trail.

A glimpse of a saguaro with lots of arms:

A closer view of this same saguaro:

Thirteen of us started from the Wagner Trailhead for Friday’s hike, but over the course of the hike, we broke up into three groups.  Janet, Michelle, Nick, and Bob accompanied me through the Bluff Trail Wash to Pemberton and then down Stoneman Wash to Granite at which point we returned on Wagner and Granite.  (We took Wagner and Granite on the way out too.)

Group photo; unfortunately, I could not remember the names of everyone who joined the hike this week.

Troon Mountain is lit up off in the distance.

A view of Four Peaks through vegetation along the trail.

This is where Janet, Michelle, Bob, Nick, and I turned off the Granite Trail.

We wait for a time for Robert to catch up with us.  While we waited I took this photo of the Granite Trail.  The rest of the group that was hiking with us went this way and perhaps those who followed later on did too.

We scramble up these boulders to hike up the wash.  (I’ve posted similar photos in the past, but I processed all of this week’s photos with Adobe Lightroom 5 and wanted to see what it was like to edit this photo using LR5.)

A dead tree in the wash…

Janet and Michelle scramble over boulders on their way up the wash.

A narrow passageway through some rocks:

Flowers…

This rock pile is visible from the Pemberton Trail somewhat north of the Bluff Trail intersection with Pemberton.

I saw this small cholla as we hiked the Pemberton over to Stoneman Wash.

A large saguaro just off of the Pemberton Trail.  Michelle noticed that there were three buds on one of the arms that sort of looked like eyes and a nose.

A rock formation in Stoneman Wash:

Bob, Janet, Nick, and Michelle hiking Stoneman Wash:

Views of Stoneman Wash…