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| | | SuperLoop Windgate Bell Pass - MSP, AZ | | | |
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SuperLoop Windgate Bell Pass - MSP, AZ
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| Hiking | 12.65 Miles |
2,973 AEG |
| | Hiking | 12.65 Miles | 5 Hrs 57 Mns | | 2.32 mph |
| 2,973 ft AEG | 30 Mns Break | 20 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | For the third time in just a couple of weeks I'm hiking the "SuperLoop" in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale.
This trip I widened the loop a bit. The typical starting point, at least for me, is the ramada at Gateway Trailhead. From there either get on the NORTH portion of the Gateway loop and head toward Windgate Pass, or get on the SOUTH portion of the Gateway loop and head toward Bell Pass. Either one eventually leads you to the back side of the mountains on the EAST where you then turn and head back WEST and terminate at Gateway Trailhead.
So this morning (FRIDAY) I began in the usual place, Gateway. But instead of getting on the populated Gateway Loop, I got on Desert Park Trail and headed generally NORTH-NORTHEAST. This trail stays within the Sonoran Preserve for about one half mile then leaves the preserve and travels in and alongside washes that back up against a luxury home subdivision and golf course. The trail is little used and well "protected". You don't get the feeling that you're in somebody's back yard. All of the homes are huge, probably 4000 sq ft designer homes on a couple of acres each. Even when you can see the houses, you're a long way from them.
Because this trail is lesser used than the more popular trails in the preserve, it's a little more overgrown and there's more critters. A rattlesnake relaxing on a big, flat rock seemed just mildly annoyed that he had to move while I passed by. It's a little narrow on the first part of this trail. Plants on the edges of the trail are grown in toward the hikers path and don't suffer much physical trauma from use to keep them pruned like busier trails. Whenever that happens, I'm a little more attentive to where I walk. I figure some little creature may make his home on the part of the plant that I'm going to brush against. I don't want to anger the tiny natives nor evict them.
You travel through 1.5 miles of this "Backyards of the Rich and Famous", passing closely to a golf course lake, OVER one subdivision street and UNDER another, OVER two golf course mini-roads (where they drive golf cars) and then you're at trail marker DP3 (Desert Park 3). From there you have a choice. Turn RIGHT (SOUTH) and 0.2 miles re-enter the preserve and access the Windgate Pass Trail at WP3 trail marker. OR - As I did, you turn LEFT (NORTHEAST) onto what I call the "DP to TT Cutoff Trail". That trail re-enters the preserve in just about 0.2 miles then continues 0.8 miles to connect with Tom's Thumb Trail at marker TT15. This cutoff portion of trail is a fascinating spot in history, I think. It's clearly what used to be a two track ranch road. Ground is relatively level. An old 50's pickup truck would have been able to drive it easily to feed cattle, mend fences, check water supplies etc. You pass by one huge luxury home on your left. That house, on old topo maps, was a "tank". In the desert that's (typically) a mandmade watering hole with earthen berms surrounding it. It catches rainwater in cistern fashion or water is somehow pumped into it. Cattle (and wildlife) gather and drink from the tank. This area was a working cattle range just half a century ago. What was once an oasis for animals is now a suburban retreat for humans (the huge house). You can see at least TWO separate pipelines in this area leading toward the house that once was a tank. One comes down the wash from "Mountain Spring" up Tom's Thumb Trail, the other comes ACROSS the flatter part of the desert, generally from Horseshoe Mountain.
During this part of the trail, there's a lot more wildlife than other parts of the preserve. A pair of mule deer jumped up out of their wash and bounded a few yards off to my right. Mulies are some of the most incredible wild animals I've ever enjoyed watching. Three or four paces and they are gone. They are incredibly camouflaged, fast, nimble, and can hear/smell/see perceived threats coming LONG before we can see them. I've watched mule deer through binoculars who were over a mile away look up and toward me when I simply opened a velcro pouch or undid a snap. The rocks are equally as fascinating in this area. Huge, fractured slabs of edge-ended granite poke their layers up toward the sky as if placed there by some kind of seizmological event that rotated them out of their flat, parallel to the earth attitude.
Reaching Trail Marker TT15, you're now at another junction. You've completed the "cutoff" and are now back at Tom's Thumb Trail. Turn LEFT (NORTH) and you're one half mile from Mountain Spring. Continue up that part of Tom's Thumb Trail 2.5 to 3 miles and you make a grueling climb to either Tom's Thumb or to The Lookout, some of the highest points in the preserve. OR - From that junction at TT15, turn RIGHT and take Tom's Thumb Trail about 0.4 miles to join with Windgate Pass Trail at Trail Marker TT17. That's the route I took this trip. You're already relatively high in elevation. This piece of Tom's Thumb Trail stays somewhat level or mildly elevation gaining. The dropoff on the WEST side of this trail is dramatic. You're literally "on the edge" of the slope for a good portion of the hike. Not dangerous, but visually dramatic. TONS of Saguaro cactus are on this western slope. The birds' elevated safe houses (holes in the saguaros) are close to your eye level. And they seem to realize that even though you're fairly close visually, you're not a threat. So they go on building their nests, feeding their young, singing their songs, happy in knowing that snakes won't be climbing the cactus, and you won't be bothering them much either.
Now on Windgate Pass Trail at TT17, turn LEFT (EAST) and hike just a little over one mile to Windgate Pass. Just a couple hundred yards along the way you pass "Inspiration Viewpoint". This is a very short spur that leads to some OK views of the valley. The views aren't really any better than hundreds of other spots along the trail. And some complete idiot has PAINTED an inspirational quote on a rock at the entrance to the viewpoint. That kind of behavior pisses me off to no end. I'd like to find the buttinski that did that and spraypaint an inspiration on his Lexus.
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It's a little rocky (loose scree) on the way up to Windgate Pass but even an old, overweight geezer like me can make pretty good time. The volunteers have been out there the past week repairing the trail after the freak rain/hail storm we had two weeks ago.
Reach the summit (Windgate) and you have a spectacular view looking both EAST and WEST. Actually the view is just as spectacular looking NORTH and SOUTH, you just see farther the other directions. The remnant of a modern barbed wire fence with steel T poles runs NORTH/SOUTH along the ridgeline. I imagine that separated one rancher's claim from another's claim at some point in recent history. I stopped briefly to talk to an older couple who spoke Italian. I seem to run into a lot of older couples here at Windgate. I'm impressed that they are in such good shape, older than me. I picked up some broken glass and a cigarette butt, then continued EAST, down the trail toward the back side of the mountains.
It's just under one mile from the summit at Windgate to Trail Marker BP9 (Bell Pass 9). It's all downhill. Pretty rocky with loose granite, but you can make pretty good time bounding, run-walking, jumping. It's pretty lush on this side of the mountain. Lots of grasses, Mexican Poppies, low growing plants. Not as much of the more hardy mesquite, ocatilla, saguaro like are found on the WEST side of this mound of desert.
Reach the junction at BP9 and you can either turn LEFT (NORTHEAST) and get on East End Trail to head toward Tom's Thumb (a short but intense elevation gain) or, as I did, turn RIGHT (SOUTHWEST) and you're on Bell Pass Trail, headed toward Bell Pass.
Now on Bell Pass Trail between BP9 and BP5, the Bell Pass Summit, you have about 1.3 miles of trail, all in very good condition, in which you gain about 620 ft in elevation. The gain is all pretty constant, rarely any "ups then downs". It's all up and all pretty uniform in slope. About 0.4 miles from the summit you can turn off LEFT (SOUTH) onto Prospector Trail. I went down this trail just a hundred yards or so. You can see the trail in nearly all of it's entirety as it leads to Prospector Viewpoint. It travels through what appears as a lush oasis of green grass surrounded by a LOT of narrow game trails. If you continued along this trail you'd reach the Thompson Peak Road, the killer elevation gaining "ribbon to the antennas". I turned back after this short offshoot and got back on Bell Pass Trail and onward to the summit.
Now at Bell Pass, Trail Marker BP5. Like Windgate Pass, there's a tremendous view looking EAST and WEST. Bell Pass is about 200 ft higher than Windgate and the view angles are slightly different between the two summits, due to surrounding peaks. But it's gorgeous from either.
Rest a couple of minutes and rehydrate at Bell Pass and then it's on to "The most difficult part of our journey" (as I used to recite when I was a jungle cruise boat guide at Disneyland) DOWNhill from Bell Pass. You drop about 900 ft in the first one mile of descending WESTWARD from Bell Pass. It's all downhill, baby! Double check your boot laces, you're about to be jamming your feet FORWARD for a brief but intense couple of miles.
Get down off the steep and intense part of that section and you cross a couple of washes, do a couple "ups and downs" and you "return to civilization" at Trail Marker BP1, the junction of Gateway Loop Trail and Bell Pass Trail. Turn RIGHT at this point and you would be on the Gateway Loop Trail counterclockwise, headed toward Gateway Pass. Turn LEFT (WEST) as I did and you're on the Gateway Loop Trail clockwise, headed toward the Gateway Trailhead.
In just 0.2 miles, I turned OFF of the Gateway Loop Trail, LEFT (SOUTH) onto Paradise Trail at Trail Marker PT5. This gets you off the "freeway" and back to some lesser traveled trails. About 0.2 miles down this Paradise Trail and you come to a junction at or around Trail Marker PT3. I say "at or around" because the junctions are separated by just a few yards. Turn LEFT (EAST) and you're on an un-named trail that leads to the closed mine that's visible from a good part of the Gateway Loop and Bell Pass Trails. Continue SOUTH and you're still on Paradise Trail which eventually exits near Paradise Ln in the subdivision south of you or turn RIGHT (WEST) as I did and you're on Levee Trail. You actually have two options on Levee trail. One is on the flat top of the Levee itself. The other is just a few yards north of the levee, a more meandering, more narrow trail. Both lead to roughly the same destination(s). I chose the flat topped Levee Trail simply because I hadn't been on it much lately.
Now on Levee Trail, heading just about due WEST. On weekends this is a busy trail for families with kids, baby strollers, novice mtn bikers etc. It's nearly perfectly flat and an old two track road. For most of the above factors, there's a little more trash on this trail than on most of the others. Or perhaps the trash index is similar on all of them, there's just less people who pick it up on this trail than on others. In any case, I found myself stopping 3 or 4 times to pick up some "deliberate trash" and adding it to my trash bag. Deliberate trash, to me, is things like kleenex, cigarette butts, broken glass etc. As opposed to "Incidental trash" - that's things like broken pieces of shoes, nuts and bolts that fall off bicycles, rubber hiking staff tips etc. One is put there because the "putters" are disrespectiful baffoons. The other is left there becaue it falls off the user.
Levee Trail continues in this manner for just about one mile then joins 104th Street Trail at Trail Marker LT1. There are three options at this junction. Turn LEFT (SOUTH) and travel a short distance to the 104th Street Trailhead and parking area. Turn RIGHT (NORTH) and join the Gateway Loop Trail. Or, as I did, cross over and to STRAIGHT (WEST) and you're on an un-named trail that's sort of a continuance of Levee Trail but no longer on top of the Levee. This piece of trail is about 0.3 miles long and wanders through a generally level piece of desert terminating at the trail UNDERPASS at Thompson Peak Parkway. This old trail appears more used by youthful party animals. Freshly broken beer bottles in one area caused me to stop for several minutes and pick up hundreds of tiny pieces of brown glass. I use a water bottle carrier as my trash bag. It has a mesh bottom. Some of the tiniest glass fragments would slip through the mesh so I piled those up in someone's discarded kleenex. Sheesh. Glad I carry alcohol preps for all the human goo I end up touching out here in the wilderness.
This little piece of un-named trail joins the Equestrian Bypass Trail at Thompson Peak Parkway. You have to scramble down the steep slope of a wash for a tiny bit but then you're on the Equestrian trail. From that point you can turn LEFT (SOUTHWEST), go UNDER the overpass and end up in WestWorld, the huge equestrian fairground facility. Or, as I did, turn RIGHT (NORTHWEST) on Equestrian Bypass trail and head toward "home", the Gateway Trailhead.
From this point you can return to the trailhead by either staying LEFT (NORTH) and reaching the equestrian parking area of the trailhead, or you can continue STRAIGHT and reach the Gateway Loop Trail, then return to the trailhead via that last part of the loop. I did the latter option. It's always a cultural experiment, to me, to get on and off the Gateway Loop. On the loop I see people with Big Gulps, street clothes, heavy sweat suits in the heat, lots of perfume, cellphones. Off the loop, the users seem a little more experienced and sensible.
End result of today's hike, about six hours, about 12 miles, only on Gateway Loop for about 0.4 miles. LOTS of wildlife and flora. Great workout. Little bit of trash. Pretty good deliberate sunburn on my bald head.
Hike like you might have another gazillion miles ahead of you -
Sgt Lumpy - n0eq |
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Autumn Foliage Observation None
Tons of new green. Some Joshua's still in "Pineapple" mode. |
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Wildflowers Observation Extreme
Mexican Poppies Galore! |
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