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| Hiking | 11.00 Miles |
731 AEG |
| | Hiking | 11.00 Miles | 4 Hrs 34 Mns | | 2.41 mph |
| 731 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | In my quest to get 300 miles in before the end of the year, I decided to go back up to the northern MSP and get a few more segments of trails that I hadn't done yet. The night before my hike, Jim Lyding sent me a message asking if I was hiking the next day since he saw that I "posted" my hike via the Wishlist. We arranged to meet off the 101 and hike together. We started at about 7am, just barely enough daylight to not need a headlamp. I decided to start at the Granite Mt. Trailhead only because it's the only TH that doesn't have the timed sliding gates that won't let you park until after sunrise.
From the Granite Mt. TH, we took the Bootlegger Trail to the Granite Mt. Loop Trail, then the Balanced Rock Trail over to the section of the Cholla Mt. Loop Trail that I had not yet done. Once I got that done, we headed up for small segment on the Divide Trail until we got to the one unmapped trail. We took that north, and then took a new segment of an unmapped trail to the south and east until it connected to the Coyote Canyon Trail. From there we took the Desperado Trail over to Soapberry Wash so I could finish yet another small segment I didn't hike. After that, we hiked the remainder of the Soapberry Wash Trail to Dove Valley and the 136th St. Express back to the TH. Just barely got 11 miles total. The clouds hung low throughout the day through the mountains, making for some not very typical scenery in the Sonoran desert. Also nice to hike while the ground was still wet as opposed to the ubiquitous dust normally around everywhere. Soapberry Wash even had a tiny trickle of water in some sections of it. We almost saw no one the entire time until we were within eyeshot of the trailhead, then 3 bikers whizzed by, 2 groups of hikers arrived at the TH at the same time we did, and as we left a group of equestrians were finishing their morning jaunt.
Afterwards we had a very good lunch at the Scottsdale Beer Co., kicking off the weekend of holiday food and drink. Nice to hike with Jim again, it's been about 4 to 5 years since our last Superstitions deathmarch with Joe and Wally. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
From here I took Coyote Canyon to the Granite Mountain Loop and took that back towards the TH. 
Route 
Saddlehorn
](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
. Anyhow, as we jumped onto the Granite Mountain Loop trail the hordes of bikers and hikers was on. Glad to get back to the car. Luckly we had a good 70% of the hike to ourselves before we started to run into folks.
Dove Valley 
