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| Hiking | 5.30 Miles |
2,557 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.30 Miles | 5 Hrs | | 1.06 mph |
| 2,557 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | After a two week pause in hiking (skiing and work got in the way), I joined the Alt-Hiking Meet-up on one of my favorite winter Tucson hikes. The weather forecast called for rain - but we didn't care.
We summitted Safford Peak the usual way and then we were just aching for some more action. Safford is just never enough, right? Therefore, we decided to take the ridge from the top of Safford towards Panther Peak. Previously we had gone down the drainage to the desert floor and swung around over to Panther. This time, we followed the ridgeline pretty closely. It was a great rock scramble (I don't recommend that you attempt unless you loved the scramble up to the top of Safford and wanted to do a lot more of the same). At one point we even went through the mountain - well an arch. We were about to the last peak when we decided we might cliff-out so we headed off the ridge to the south and descended slightly to a spot where we could get contour around to the saddle between Safford and Panther. From there we went up to the top of Panther using a well defined route. This is the tamest part of the hike. It's a nice walk-up to the peak where we had a snack before heading back down.
Back at the saddle between Panther and Safford we headed down on the north side, opposite from where we came. It is steep descent on a well defined route. We followed that route until we came to the desert floor. Then we took a left turn at a junction with another route that typically would take you to White Stallion Ranch. When the trail turns to go into White Stallion Ranch we bushwhacked up to the first saddle that we hit when we left Sanctuary Cove. From there we returned down to the cars using the same trail we went up.
We had a "newbie" who typically ran and thought 5 miles would be easy. She didn't believe us when we said that it was probably going to take about 5 hours to complete the hike. She was dragging at the end and very shaky. I'm just glad she actually completed the hike (minus Panther Peak) without needing much assistance.
As we got back to Sanctuary Cove, it started to rain. Talk about timing! |
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