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| Hiking | 10.90 Miles |
1,312 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.90 Miles | 3 Hrs 24 Mns | | 3.21 mph |
| 1,312 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Not quite what I had planned today. Talked it over with the wife and decided to do a short section of the passage 8. She dropped me off at Ranch Rd X9 and hiked south towards the Gabe Zimmerman TH. I didn’t check my Garmin until I reached Pistol Hill Rd, where I discovered that I had inadvertently paused my Garmin. ](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall") I feel a lost about a mile in stats. It had me reaching Pistol Hill Rd in .69 miles. I’m thinking it should have been closer to 1.69. Annoyingly, this throws off all my mileage marks for the rest of the hike.
The first 3ish miles of the hike were very nice. Rolling hills with only mild elevation changes as the trail twisted through the undulations. The trail was very smooth with minimal rocks. Around 3 miles the trail starts to work its way around a series of hills. It does a nice job of avoiding and serious elevation changes. The trail does become quite a bit rockier as it plays on the slopes and gains a modest amount of elevation. Around 4.9 I reached La Selvilla picnic area. There were bathrooms and picnic tables there, as well as some odd stone structures. This was also the beginning of the Colossal Cave Mountain Park trail system. For the next couple miles, there were multiple trail crossings with an occasional trail map posted at the junctures. It was kind of annoying because many of these trail crossings were unsigned and you had to use the maps to figure out what trail you were intersecting. All these junctures were well marked with AZ Trail signage so there was never any question which was the AZ Trail. Around 5.44 I hit road crossing (to the La Sevilla picnic area) and briefly met up with my wife. Shortly after that I came to a turn off for the El Bosquecito picnic area. Both picnic areas looked like ideal places to rest your feet and find shelter from the sun. This stretch was some of the rockier portions for this passage.
It’s always fun trying to figure out how a trail is going play with the surrounding hills. There was one mild climb as the trail finally chose a hill and headed away from La Posta Quemada Ranch. Once the trail chose a hill it was pretty obvious how it was going to tackle it…..slowly. Ideally designed for bikers or runners. Reaching the top was somewhat anticlimatic. The east side drops down noticeably to Quemada Ranch, but the west is an unimpressive slope. This saddle does afford you your first distant views of the tracks and I-10. It a very gradual and mainly unimpressive decline towards the Gabe Zimmerman TH. It did start to get nice as you approached the tracks as the trail wound along and through some washes that fed into Cienega Creek. My wife was angel and met me about .5 miles before the train tracks with an ice cold Mountain Dew.  That’s the way to finish a trail.  Since I had done the first mile of passage 8 on my last visit, we ended the hike at Frontage Road.
Nice hike, though to be honest my legs and feet were very happy that we had decided to make this an abbreviated hike. The weather was nice, but you can tell it’s warming up. Temps were in the mid 80’s with blue skies. (In three months we’ll be begging for temps like this. ). Busy day on the trail. Encountered 11 thru hikers (I think this is as many as I’ve seen in all the other passages combined). Also encountered 3 bikers and a horse rider. I forgot to mention on my hike of passage 13, there were a number of ribbons throughout the trail for an upcoming run. I was surprised to see the same ribbons on the southwest side of Mica Mountain.  Turns out there is a major running event coming up in early April. If anyone feels like doing a casual jaunt of 309 miles, (from Picketpost to Patagonia), Destination Trails is having sign ups for next years race. (This years is sold out. Yes, people actually line up and pay for this. ). Wildlife was minimal, but awesome. Saw one Gila Monster! |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
I wasn’t overly enthused with the idea 
, but it is hard to pass up a hike with the wife, so off we went. 
Route 
