HikeArizona.COM

Not sure if I'll be moving to Tucson in January, but I am going down to there this coming weekend to visit a friend that moved there in July. We're planning on hiking Mt Wrightson on Saturday the 6th via the Old Baldy Trail. It looks pretty cool and doesn't seem to have suffered too much from the Florida or any other fires in the last decade. I tell you, if I do move to Tucson permanently or temporarily, I could get used to those sky islands and things like Wrightson.

You will like that. There are other ways to hike into the Santa Ritas, too, such as Gardner Canyon to Mt. Wrightson, etc.

There are some really long remote steep hikes you would like, such as Happy Valley, Miller Creek to Rincon Peak. And climbing Mt. Lemmon from Catalina State Park, which isn't all that remote, but it is a really neat long hike with a ton of elevation gain.

I almost moved there, but circumstances are such that I decided on Flag for now. Tucson maybe in a couple years, for grad school?? Who knows??

I'm really excited about it. I still like the Grand Canyon, but I need to get out of Flag (before I move away) and do something new and exciting for a change. Wrightson looks cool and I like the elevation gain. I ought to be over 250,000 vertical feet for 2010 by the middle of November.

Old Baldy should be in good shape.

Tucson is certainly worth a few years of day hiking... trail and off trail potentials are numerous. I don't miss the traffic nor the growing number of people out on the trails, but still, I plan to go back for a month this winter.