Phoenix South Mountain Park and trip to Tuscon

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Sunday Leonard choose to spend the day at Phoenix South Mountain Park for a hike.  At its inception, the area of the park was greater than that of the city - not so today.  Phoenix appears to suffer from middle age spread, unable to control the weight gain, only on this case it's territory being consumed by continuous development.  Given the area is significantly down in precipitation (around 25% of normal) this year, causes me to wonder what will happen if the current drought reaches the stage encountered this year in South Africa where they are counting  days, not years, when the water will be shut off.  The water levels in the reservoirs looked somewhat low yesterday.

Black-throated sparrow

We stopped at the park office for a map and were told we could drive to the top and do a good hike along the ridge line, eliminating much of the 1000' elevation gain.  Sounded good to us, so after walking a short interpretive trail by the ranger station, we joined the parade of vehicles heading up.  It was Sunday and lots of folks planned to get some exercise - I suspect we took one of the more popular hikes, the National Trail to Fat Man's Pass (1.8 miles) with an elevation change(s) of 300'.  The trail wasn't packed, but we had other hikers and a number of mountain bikers sharing the trail with us.

Starting out on the trail

Fat Man's Pass was an accurate description - we had to shuffle through sideways sans back packs, and JUST fit!  We'd noticed rocks that looked like they were wet along the wash just below the trail, and learned they were dry, and slippery, as we watched some folks circumvent the pass by sliding down the boulders next to it - not sure that would be a viable solution for a truly 'fat' person since it was an 8-10' drop.

Fat Man's Pass - the shiny rock on the left was smooth
and slippery, some that didn't fit thru, slid down

Leonard squeezing through

Passing thru  the natural tunnel to Hidden Valley

We opted to include the Hidden Valley Loop (1.1 miles) which got a bit  interesting with some crawling through and/or sliding down rocks, and I can verify the wet looking rock was smooth and slippery!  I was hoping we wouldn't have to retrace our steps, since once down, I wasn't sure how I'd get back up!  Just before the end of the trail, we passed through a tunnel and rejoined the National Trail.  We added a short detour on the return hike for another overlook giving us views both toward Phoenix and to the valley to the south.

Lichen on the rocks - lichen very slowly breaks down and 
erodes the rocksand has been visible on most shady areas

Phoenix area from the top of South Mountain Park  (Link to High Resolution Photo - Zoom in to see the miles of subdivisions.)

Downtown Phoenix from the top of South Mountain Park

Back at the parking lot, we grabbed our lunch and walked down to a bench overlooking the valley for a very late lunch.  The air had cleared some since we'd began our hike when a haze of smog hovered over the city, almost obscuring the mountain ranges surrounding the city.  We discussed the possibility of visiting Phoenix proper to walk through the interesting parts, but both of us were ready to head back to our Airbnb - with stops for viewing and photos, we'd been hiking about 4 hours and were ready to call it a day.

I'm beginning to think we may be jinxed.  Every February when we've returned to Florida to continue south on the boat, we've had cold weather with frosts down as far south as Miami.  This trip was no exception. We've had rain, gray skies with little in the way of sunshine, and the forecast for Monday was for an approaching cold front with snow possibly down to 2000', with abnormally cold temperatures, plunging down to the border, with stiff winds and lows in the 30's.  While we had some sun Sunday afternoon with temperatures venturing into the low 70's, I was still comfortable with pants and long sleeves.  We're wondering why we brought shorts!

Monday, February 19, To Tucson

Monday we departed Phoenix taking the slow, scenic route down to Tucson.  Since we were on the east side of Phoenix, we weren't concerned about rush hour traffic.  Wrong!  It was President's Day and the Renaissance Fair was going strong and had 2 lanes of traffic backed up, slowly inching forward for miles. We'd seen warnings regarding traffic problems when we went up Apache Pass, but hadn't had any problems.  The Fair is a big deal here, running over several weekends and holidays.  It was a relief to inch past the entrance and have the traffic disappear.

Sun on the mountains as we head south toward Tucson

It was a scenic route, enhanced by the dramatic clouds ahead of the cold front.  Frequently it looked like it was raining in the mountains, but other than a gusty wind, was a pleasant drive.  We stopped briefly at the Arboretum, but continued on our way rather than rush through.

After passing a lookout, Leonard turned around to return to the viewing area for one of the huge open pit copper mines along our route.  It was impressive - the huge vehicles looked like toys at the bottom of the pit.  The array of colors, from yellows to reds and rusts with tinges of blue and green, was beautiful when lit by the sun.  I had to wonder what, if any, remediation of the landscape is done once the mine is  played out - I suspect none.

Panorama of Ray open pit copper mine  (Link to High Resolution Photo -
After zooming in you can see the 400 ton trucks in the bottom of the mine)

Myriad of colors looking down into the mine

Copper is a major industry in the south west where most of the copper in the US is mined.  Most are huge open pit affairs, a far cry from the under ground mines of the past.   Some of the open pit mines have closed and many of those still operating are run by huge corporations.

Outside the town of Oracle, we stopped briefly at a state park for lunch.  We thought about doing a short loop hike, but there had been no one at the gate, and we hadn't paid, so we continued on our way.