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| Run/Jog | 9.59 Miles |
201 AEG |
| | Run/Jog | 9.59 Miles | 1 Hour 56 Mns | | 4.96 mph |
| 201 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Second hike of the day. After the McDowell Preserve (Shallmo) I drove over to Grantie Mountain TH to get a loop involving the Old Paint Wash Trail. TH is all complete. Beautiful. There are bathrooms, but I didn't see a drinking fountain (though I wasn't looking for one). I took the 136th Express out to Old Painf. Love 136th. It does a lot of twists and turns with some with a bunch of little ups and down along the way. I love, but my knee doesn't. Within a .5 mile of the TH it starting complaining to me. (There's not much worse than a "grumpy" knee). I think the quick up and down nature of the trail aggravated it. I was a little worried how I would handle the wash. But to my surprise the knee was happier with that terrain than with the 136th. I did take it slow and baby it, but that seemed to keep the knee happy. This was probably one of the best times to do the Old Paint Wash. With the rain and relatively cold weather the sandy soil was firmer than usual and it wasn't quite the slog that it probably would have been. This is a pretty major wash, (more in width than in depth. It never falls too much below the surrounding landscape), and there are a couple of threads (side washes) that my cause tour to get off trail. There is signage, though not quite as plentiful as I would have expected. Starting in the larger part of the wash should serve you well for the most part. The one exception is where the trail ends with the High Desert Trail. I was fortunate in that I saw some signage off to the side (along what I thought was a minor wash), I in investigated it and it turned out to be the Old Paint/High Desert juncture. To make matters more surprising, where the larger wash (in my opinion) crosses the High Desert Trail there is no signage. I can very easily see someone following this wash past it "defined" ending because there is no signage along this secondary wash. From the High Desert I took a medley of trails, all of them super sweet - among the best in the preserve - to get back to the TH. .......From High Desert, I took Renegade - Desperado - Coyote Canyon - Granite Mountain Loop - Saddlehorn - and Bootlegger Trails. Great trails (Old Paint). Decent run. Knee seemed a little happier after Old Paint (go figure) and allowed me to finish the run relatively pain free.
Side notes: When I did Old Paint I actually followed it .3 miles east to where it starts and then turned around and continued west. If I had studied the map more closely, I could have avoided this retracing of steps by taking the Cow Poke Trail east to where it connects to Old Paint. Also, at the end of Old Paint there is an Enviromental Monitoring Station. This was a nice "beacon". It caught my eye and and "encouraged" me to head in that direction to check it out. As it turned out, that was where Old Paint ended. Saw one chipmunk and that was it for wildlife. 15 bikers do 13 hikers.
Love these trails!  |
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Old Paint Wash 
