Nancy, Eva, Linda, Doug, and I hiked the Black Ridge Loop on Friday. Starting from the Cross F Trailhead, this loop utilizes FR 393, a short portion (several hundred yards) of the Sunflower Trail, an old rancher trail to Brunson Tank and more of the same to the Little Saddle Mountain Trail. From there, the Little Saddle Mountain Trail (which is also the Arizona Trail) leads back to the trailhead. We hiked eight miles in about six hours with just over 1900 feet of total ascent. Route finding was somewhat challenging on this route; we wouldn’t have figured it out without the GPS track posted at the hikearizona.com.
A view of the old Beeline Highway from FR 393:
A view of the power lines from FR 393. The horse trailer and truck are parked at in the clearing at the end of FR 3460. (I inadvertently hiked up 3460 on one of my scouting hikes.)
Another early morning view from FR 393:
A view from the trail leading up to the ridge:
Linda, Eva, Doug, and Nancy:
We saw a lot of flowers on our hike. I think this is Lupine.
A view from the ridge:
This might be Jimson Weed / Thorn Apple.
Poppies and Lupine:
I don’t know what these are:
Linda identified this as Indian Paintbrush:
A nice looking tree at the top o fthe ridge:
I nearly stepped on these small cacti while walking back to the trail after photographing the tree. There were a lot of them in the area.
Another view from the ridge:
We saw this dead tree as we neared Brunson Tank:
Two views of Brunson Tank…
An outcrop near the intersection of the Arizona Trail and the rancher trail:
Old rusty barbed wire hanging from a tree:
A view from the Little Saddle Mountain Trail:
Nancy, Eva, Linda, Doug, and Kevin at the Arizona Trail sign. It’s 393 miles (along the Arizona Trail) to Mexico and 407 miles to Utah.
We saw some of these horses earlier in the hike too.
This one was friendly – it was curious about my camera.
Nancy with the horse:
Several other horses wanted attention too…
