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| Hiking | 4.04 Miles |
824 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.04 Miles | 2 Hrs 7 Mns | | 2.35 mph |
| 824 ft AEG | 24 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | On Thursday I had the day off and wanted to get out but stay cool, and remembered that my CR-V is air conditioned. So I packed a picnic lunch and made up a loop through Redington Pass (never been real far that way) up to Summerhaven via the Control road (never been all the way up that road either). I found a shortcut from Redington to about two thirds up Control road, so I took that to make the loop shorter and less paved.
Both Redington and the Control road were pretty bumpy in places but, being a Thursday in August, traffic was virtually nonexistent so I could pick whatever line I liked. I’d heard that some people take those roads in passenger cars, but perhaps they don’t place much value in their undercarriages. A Gambler 500 car would be a good candidate. One with enough clearance might even survive the attempt.
Anyhoo, I passed the Crystal Spring trailhead in time for a late lunch, set up some shade and a chair, and thought, I’d never done Crystal Spring so why not come back for another picnic and hike on the weekend?
So I did, on Saturday. Only that time I took the paved shortcut. Wifey came along in the car but stayed at the campsite for hammock time while I did the hike.
I only went two miles out, and turned around a bit after the Crystal Spring area. Trail was in excellent shape, having been recently maintained. The first three drainages had slickrock pools (kinda stagnant but filterable in an emergency). After that there was more lush vegetation and much more organic material on the ground, so everything was just a bit damp.
Views were great into the San Pedro Valley and Galiuros. The variety of vegetation along the trail was the star of the show for me. While parts had been pretty well crispified in past fires, recovery is coming along and it isn’t all locust.
It was alternating clouds and sun, cool in the shade but a bit steamy in the sun. The clouds built as the day wore on so it got cooler, and it even sprinkled a bit on the way back.
This hike had about the best lizard-hiker ratio ever. Might have been a bazillion to one. Lizards about every 10-20 feet to one hiker (me). Pretty incredible on Mt Lemmon on a Saturday. Even saw one white tailed deer’s hindquarters (briefly).
At camp we hung out a bit longer before Wifey wanted to find a geocache hidden about 1/3 mile from the trailhead, but thunderstorms were brewing over Summerhaven and drifting northward. We packed up, went to find the cache, and as we made it back to the car it started raining. Perfect timing!
At the fire station I stopped to air up, and then it started pouring sideways, so I had to quickly don rain gear. I huddled low on the lee of the car while running the inflator, then spun the car around to do the other side. The whole process took about ten minutes, which was about how long it rained really hard. Guess I could have just waited it out. Oh well, I got to drive home wet and refreshed.
Overall the hike exceeded expectations. I’m looking forward to another go with time to do the whole trail, possibly starting at the butterfly end to save time. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
Surprisingly few considering how much sun and moisture there is. |
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