That Hiking Time of the Year

Tucson and the surrounding Sonoran Desert is reliably a hiker's paradise from November through March.  The sun softens a bit, even becoming a welcome friend at times.  The temperatures are near perfect most days, usually in the 60's or 70's.  The air is clear, wonderful for a little cleansing of the lungs on the ascents.

We struck out for our first real hike of 2010 to Pima Canyon, an opening on the south side of the Catalina Mountains below Pusch Ridge.  The trailhead has a good sized paved parking lot; a lot which is almost always full until early afternoon.  We lucked out with some early hikers' departure and snagged a spot.

The trail crosses private property for the first half mile or so, and causes you to wonder how Pima County Parks & Rec accomplished that.  Above you are a few mulit-million dollar estates snugged up against the base of the Catalinas, the high end of the exclusive foothills so to speak.  Their infinity pools' overflows and engineered waterfalls provide an unexpected sound track to this portion of the hike.  Soon you leave the burbs behind, rounding the mouth of the canyon and heading what would be upstream if there were water from a natural source to take over the audio portion of the trek.  Instead you hear birdsong -- the squeaky toy impersonation of the Gila woodpeckers, swooping across the broad expanse of the canyon, or the grinding old-car-that-won't-quite-start call of the cactus wren.  You also hear the chatter of hikers and cries of their excited kids from time to time as this is a heavily traveled, step-aside trail.  We spent a lot of time moving off the trail for others, or trying to hustle when they'd move aside for us.

It's a bouldery sort of place, on the trail too.  We were shooting for the dam, an apparently elusive feature in the canyon, but whose broad horizontal slabs of rock invited picnicking and a natural turn-around about three miles from the trail head.  According to hiking guides, the trail would make a 850 foot ascent by the time we reached this spot, not bad considering it took three miles to do that.  You only really noticed much of an uphill when you hit the frequent jumbo steps the boulders in the trail required.

Up the canyon, in the bottom where we saw the occasional water standing in a tenaja (a rock basin) or small pool (likely from a seep), there were mesquite bosques and looming cottonwood trees.  Saguaro stood sentinel on the canyon walls and care was required along the trail, often edged with prickly pear and cholla cactus.

We never saw the dam, which is apparently not much to see as far as dams go, and blew by the rock slabs.  It's that kind of canyon.  Despite feeling a bit whipped, you want to see what's around the next corner.  We stopped in the shade of some boulders and shrubs, had a snack, and headed back down.  On the way we registered those rock slabs, complete with the requisite picnickers.

The thing with an out and back hike is that when you turn around, you have a completely different view.  Framed by the sides of the canyon west Tucson lay at our feet, the Santa Ritas to the south and our own Tucson Mountains -- we live in the "other" foothills -- to the west.

It was a great first hike of the year.  Now that the sun is up, our only question is, where today?