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| partners | | Mother Nature 1, Jack and Randy 0
And so finished our camping adventure to Mt. Graham.... It all started when Randy (rwstorm) wanted to take Kelly (trekkin gecko) and myself on a hiking adventure to Mt. Graham down in Southeastern Arizona. Kelly and I had never hiked this area before, so when Randy came up with the idea, we both jumped at the chance to accompany Randy to this largest of the "Sky Islands".
At an altitude of 10,720 feet, Mt. Graham is the highest peak in the Southern half of Arizona and as Preston Sands admits, storms in the Monsoon season are a regular occurrence, so with this storm potential in mind, we kept a daily eye to the most recent weather forecast for the mountain. A day before the start of the hike, Kelly cancelled due to a 60 percent chance of bad weather occurring on more than one day of our planned 2-1/2 day outing.
Since I hadn't been tent camping in something like 50 years, and I had gone out and purchased enough equipment to kinda round out what I was going to need, I contacted Randy and told him that I was still game to go. Randy agreed, so Saturday morning, I headed down to Safford where Randy and I were to meet up at Swift Trail Junction. It was a beautiful start to the day and it didn't seem like there was a 60 percent of storms, so up the mountain we drove. We took a driving tour of many of the campgrounds along the way and noticed that there were very few campers on the mountain, but some of the more popular locations had the best spots already taken.
We finally arrived at the Riggs Lake campground (the last campground on the dead-end road) and found that there was still a good selection of camping spots available, so we selected one that offered us a view of the lake. We filled out the fee forms, inserted the fee amount and deposited the form so now we were registered. We quickly unloaded our gear and began setting up a formidable site that would be the envy of passersby.  Then, just as we got the portable canopy in place over the picnic table, it began a light rain/hail mixture, which we naturally assumed, would be a short duration inconvenience. Then the lightning/thunder accompanied the, by now, mostly hail, began booming (when you can only count to two-one-thousand between flash and boom..... it's time to seek safe shelter)  We beat feet to our trucks where we would sit out this noisy storm for about a half hour 
The storm quit, almost a fast as it started and by now there was a fog-like haze over the campground and the lake. Our camping site was flooded and water had penetrated both of our tents, leaving me with damp changes of clothing so Randy and I had a status discussion. By now, we were both wet and even sore from being hit by the marble size hail, our firewood was wet, the campsite was flooded and our camping gear was soaked. We still had time and daylight to break camp, load the equipment into the trucks and get off the mountain before darkness set in..... so we did just that ](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
It's too bad that my first experience with Mt. Graham ended the way that it did, but I guess that means that I'm going to have to try it again.... but this time I'm going to listen to Kelly
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Wildflowers Observation Moderate
Lots of assorted wildflowers were in abundance once you began gaining altitude. |
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Post Creek |
Heavy flow |
Heavy flow |
| | | The Host at the campground said that he's never seen this much water in the creek in all the years that he's been working on the mountain. |
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Riggs Lake |
76-100% full |
76-100% full |
| | | The lake appears to be at its full level, judging by the logs that line the shore. | | _____________________
| On every trip into the Superstitions, I find another Gold Mine. Today the mine was filled with Memories. I can not wait for the next trip. |
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