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| Hiking | 11.12 Miles |
4,462 AEG |
| | Hiking | 11.12 Miles | 6 Hrs 59 Mns | | 1.96 mph |
| 4,462 ft AEG | 1 Hour 18 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | Joe, Linda, and I met at 5AM and headed south to meet Matt at Finger Rock Trailhead at 6:30AM. Quite a few cars in the lot as we started up toward Kimball. It had been 6+ years since I'd hiked in this part of the Catalinas, and it was nice to be back--I'd forgotten a lot of the details but remembered that it was steep. Sure enough, it was still steep.
The trail was fairly busy on the way up, but the crowds thinned out after ~ two miles. We took a few breaks along the way, and Matt shared the finer points of smoked pork and put the rest of our meager snacks to shame with his enviable bag of ribs  . He hung back at the saddle near Linda Vista while the three of us continued on to Kimball. It started to sprinkle as we closed in on the peak, we thought for a few minutes that we might end up caught in a downpour, but Route Scout Radar indicated (correctly) that it might not be so bad after all.
I was surprised again at how little I remembered about the upper portions of the trail, but I remembered turning around short of the actual peak with my friend in 2018. Looking back later at notes from that hike, she wasn't feeling well that day, so I'll chalk it up to courtesy, not ignorance, for not reaching the actual peak that day . When we got up there today, the views were much better than the turnaround spot last time...Lemmon, Picacho, Cathedral Rock, Ventana, and more. Someone had left a register in a Ziploc bag in the summit cairn about a week before. The bag already had holes, so that'll last about 20 minutes up there.
Areas to the N/NE appeared to be getting hit hard with rain, but we ate lunch at the summit with a few more raindrops and even a couple of stray snowflakes. Before Joe froze, we headed back down through more sprinkles and regrouped with Matt near Linda's Vista to hike down the new Pontotoc Trail. There wasn't much vegetation along the upper portions of Pontotoc, and the constant switchbacks were a bit gratuitous at times (Matt said they add 1.2 miles to the old trail), but the gentler grade and less rocky tread made the descent very pleasant, and the views and clouds were nice. Farther down, we hiked past a lot of healthy ocotillo and prickly pear blooms, then closed out the loop as another round of dark clouds and some thunder rolled through.
I enjoyed being back here and hope to get down to Tucson more often. Fun conversations with the group, and it was great to meet @Mountain_Rat, hike with Joe and Linda again, see some new trails, and finally reach the real Kimball. We drove through a few brief downpours on the way home but never got more than those limited sprinkles on the hike, so it worked out nicely. |
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