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| Hiking | 4.97 Miles |
1,497 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.97 Miles | 4 Hrs 3 Mns | | 1.44 mph |
| 1,497 ft AEG | 36 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was the third of 3 hikes that I did in the Tucson area this weekend. This one has some legitimate class 3 climbs, so there was more to the hike than I envisioned.
I started and ended the hike at the Sarasota TH. I ascended from the NW, and descended along a ridgeline to the east before dropping down to the north to get back on a trail.
Once you leave the trail and start climbing, route finding can be a challenge. There is no social trail, next to no cairns, and no real obvious way to go. I had some GPX tracks that I mostly followed, but in some places I took a path up that looked good. There were several class 3 climbs, but handholds/footholds were good, the rock was good, and there was minimal exposure.
It was a fun climb actually -- I had to stay focused on what I was doing. I was going slow, but the time went by fast. Before I knew it I was near the summit -- the last few hundred feet to the summit were an easy class 1 walk.
Before the hike, I figured that I would just go back the way that I came. However, I didn't really want to downclimb some of the upclimbs that I had done, so I decided to follow the ridgeline to the east and head down from there. It was tempting to leave the ridgeline shortly after the summit and drop down to the north; while that would shorten the descent, it seemed like you might get cliffed out. Thus, I kept going eastward, following a social trail much of the way. Eventually I got to a point where it was fairly easy to drop down to the desert floor; once on the desert floor it was a short walk back to a trail.
If I was to do the hike again I think that I would use the same route that I used this time -- it worked pretty well I thought.
This was a fun and interesting hike, but those not comfortable with this type of rock climbing should pick another hike. |
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| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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Route Editor
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Route 
I downloaded Nick's track, but needless to say, we didn't quite follow it. It's kinda PYOR on that trek. Luckily we found some cairns on the way back down, because there was one section that I did NOT want to downclimb that we climbed up at some cliffs. It was quite warm when we got to the top, so we didn't stay too long. As we were pondering our route down, a bee that had been stalking me for quite a ways up stung me for no reason. And people wonder why I hate bees. 
Have a huge welt on the shoulder blade now. Also rolled my ankle pretty stinking hard at the top just starting down. Thank God for ankles of steel!!!! 
