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| Hiking | 8.50 Miles |
2,303 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.50 Miles | 5 Hrs 47 Mns | | 1.78 mph |
| 2,303 ft AEG | 1 Hour Break | | | |
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| partners | | Fun day out in the Santa Teresa Mountains. These mountains are beautiful, rugged and bone dry right now.
The road to the trailhead is definitely 4WD and high clearance, but is very doable up to the 3rd gate with any offroad experience. Going past the 3rd gate is inadvisable and really unnecessary.
We made our way up the creek bed which has some interesting geology and some decent sized sycamores. Once the trail pulls away from the dry creek, it heads straight up the mountain at a fairly moderate grade. There are baseball sized rocks making up the tread that are about average for Arizona, but the trail itself is very easy to follow and we didn't lose the trail proper one time.
There are decent switchbacks of primarily oaks with some pine that make up most of the AEG of the hike. Once up to the saddle finding our way to the highpoint of Cottonwood Mountain required some off trail travel that really only had us pushing through manzanita for a short stretch. The final push up to the ridgeline was not too hard to figure out with cairns that show a light path requiring only common sense in its orientation.
Once up to the highpoint we took some time to eat a little and figure out where we were relative to the surrounding mountains. There is some really interesting geology and 360 degree views of the rest of the Santa Teresa's, Pinaleño's, Galiuro's, Pinal's, Mt. Lemon and points further. This is a great area that deserves further exploration and attention. We didn't see anyone on the road to the trailhead or on the trail. |
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Wildflower seed in the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again |
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