For todays winter hike, I headed southwest of Spokane to the BLM’s Fishtrap Lake Recreation Area. A hour drive brought me to the trailhead for this hike. I had hiked the north loop a couple of years ago and there is some overlap.
The trail starts out going through what looks like an endless expanse of semi-desert steppe. You can measure the sight line in miles, not feet. Beneath the thin grasses the ground is pretty much basalt rocks. Not much else can grow out here.
After a mile I was able to turn around and see my car in the distance. I imagine some folks give up on this hike after half an hour due to lack of scenery.
On the way to the lake I passed several small iced over ponds. When I hiked this site in the spring of 2022 there was a lot of swampy ground and it was hard to keep my feet dry.
After half an hour you start passing by walls of basalt.
The trail descends through an area of scattered pines and rock outcroppings as you get closer to the lake.
When I made it to the shore near the southwest end of the lake, I wasn’t all that surprised to find it covered in a thick layer of ice. A lot of the ice was black (clear) ice that forms when it’s calm and the lake freezes in a hurry. It is the safest ice to walk on.
Next I followed the western shore to the northeast. I thought this basalt monolith looked a lot like a pill box.
I came across this kolk crater. I had to look up what that is and found out these features are the holes left over from vortex’s caused by gigantic flood events. Apparently they are found throughout the Channeled Scablands.
After detouring around the crater I was back to following the shoreline on rocky bluffs about thirty feet above the ice. Fishtrap Lake is about two miles long but only about one to two hundred feet wide and less than thirty feet deep.
At a gully the trail descended down to lake level and I enjoyed the view to the far shore. I got a good look at the ice and it looked to be over four inches thick. The entire basin reverberated with the distinctive sound of the ice cracking under the immense pressure.
Where the trail deviated inland, it passed beneath another wall of basalt through pines and dense stands of aspen trees. It looked like a wildfire had burned through the area a few years ago. There were a lot of surviving pines which means it wasn’t as hot as some others in the area.
Here I stopped to enjoy the view as it was time to call it good. The lake goes another half mile before it ends at a small resort and is fed from a creek that connects to Hog Lake.
On the way back, I took this photo of a very pretty headland. You can see the shadows are starting to lengthen. This looks like a fun lake to kayak as well.
After finishing a four hour hike, I made a quick detour to the Folsom Farm interpretive site.
On my previous trip to the Fishtrap Lake Recreation Area, I hiked out to the waterfall on the northeast end of Hog Lake. There are lots of places to explore out here. FYI, if you want to see a waterfall don’t wait for summer, the creek will be dry by then.
Fishtrap Lake is just off Interstate 90 about 30 miles west of Spokane. The 9000 acre site has miles of trails, two boat ramps on two lakes, a waterfall and several trailheads. I’ve read mixed reviews on the hiking here, but I highly recommend it, especially for winter and cool early season hiking.
For todays winter hike(s), I visited the Lake Creek Coulee north of Odessa and southwest of Davenport, in other words in the middle of nowhere. The Bureau of Land Management (the real BLM) is responsible for thousands of acres of semi-desert steppe in the area around the coulee including a couple of recreation areas on striking scabland lakes.
To get to this hidden gem I had to drive over two hours west through farmland that looks a lot like Kansas. The areas of central Washington that were not scoured to bedrock by the ice age floods are some of the most productive agricultural lands in the country. Out here you can drive for hours without hardly ever seeing a car or another human.
My first stop was Coffee Pot Lake, a large scabland lake with a small campground and boat ramp just off of the paved road.
From the parking lot I was able to take a short walk over a small headland for a view of the main body of the lake. There were thousands of wild geese all along the shore and in the middle of the open water. I was surprised that most of the lake was ice free. It turned out the lake is deep, eighty feet in some spots and wider than most scabland lakes.
After checking out the day use area, I drove back up the entrance road to a small parking area that accessed the trail above the bluffs on the north side of the lake.
The unmarked trail started out as a double track that looked like it was used for cattle operations. It stayed away from the shear cliffs that bordered the lake at first. Mostly it meandered through sage brush and the tall grass.
A small basalt ridge covered in green lichen paralleled the trail to the north screening the trail from the paved road north of the site.
About half a mile in a short spur brought me to the edge of the cliffs above the lake. It was about two hundred feet straight down from this point. The surface of the lake was covered by thousands of geese all making a thunderous racket with their incessant honking.
To the west down the coulee another lake was separated from Coffee Pot by a low isthmus of dry land. The lower lake is actually seasonally part of Coffee Pot and much sallower.
I continued west off trail along the cliffs using cattle paths and finding openings in the sage brush.
A mile in I came to my turn around point above the isthmus from here I could see the lower lake was indeed frozen as was the far west end of the main lake. I got to watch a coyote hunting below me. He was too far away to get a decent photo of.
On the way back I came across this skull of some unfortunate animal. It is the circle of life.
On the way back I took the spur to the cliff again to soak in the views. Some of these basalt cliffs are beyond vertical. Coffee Pot Lake is listed at over 800 acres making it one of the bigger lakes in the scablands.
Looking back to the west the scene looked like it could have been from the high Artic summer with the dramatic cliffs, patches of ice, little vegetation and thousands of screaming birds.
So after walking maybe three miles along the cliffs, I returned to the parking area and drove a few miles to another BLM recreational site, this time on Twin Lakes.
A long gravel road eventually descended back in to Lake Creek Coulee to a site with a small camp ground, fishing dock and day use parking between two smaller but beautiful lakes.
Time was getting short so I parked and checked out both lakes. Both of them were frozen solid.
A small creek connected the lakes right at the day use area. It was the only open water around.
I checked out the lower lake first. According to topo maps it is very shallow maxing out at about ten feet deep. It was still very pretty. I tossed a couple of small rocks out on the smooth black ice to see how far they would slide.
Some day soon I would like to come back with my kayaks. Both of these lakes looked well worth exploring.
By now I only had a hour or so in my time budget to explore so I crossed a makeshift foot bridge over the connecting creek and followed a trail on the south side of the upper lake. Across the way was a small waterfall that created its own small area of open water. I could hear the sound of the falling water as it hit the lake.
The trail looked like it could have been a little better maintained as it skirted a small ice covered pond.Fortunately it is easy to go off trail in the scablands as long as it’s cold enough to keep the rattlers in their dens.
According to my research the upper lake is quite a bit deeper with a hole around sixty feet deep. At the northeast end of the lake they’re a couple of mature ponderosa pines to break up the grasslands.
Before I called it a day I stopped for one last photo of the upper lake. This is when I saw the first other people in my entire trip. I man and his son set up camp and then set up an ice fishing tent on the ice. They say black ice is the safest to walk on but still sixty feet is a long way down.
I spent more time driving to and from the lakes than i did hiking today. It was still well worth the effort. I had no idea these lakes existed until I researched locations for winter hikes in the Inland Northwest. When I make it back a camping trip and kayaking will be on the agenda. If you want to go shoot for early spring when its still cool and the snakes aren’t active.
For todays hike, I headed an hour or so through and past Spokane to check out the Columbia Plateau Trail, specifically the section from the Amber Lake trailhead towards the north.
Last year I took a short hike on the Columbia Plateau Trail from the end of the pavement outside of Cheney Washington into the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge. At the time I felt like I didn’t have enough photos or information on this trail to make a post. The unpaved part of the trail started at a trailhead off of Cheney Spangle Road.
The first mile of the trail passes through farm and ranch land before crossing under Cheney Plaza Road and entering the wildlife refuge.
Turnbull Wildlife Refuge is about 23,000 acres and covers a portion of the channeled scablands, a geological area in Eastern Washington created by ice age floods that stripped the soil away and left numerous narrow lakes in coulees. The section I hiked passed by several small lakes and through low cuts blasted through the basalt.
In the area excavated I notice this striking radial design around a small hole. Once you see one of these, you can’t un-see them. These were created by blasting the rocks so the basalt could be more easily removed. Once I saw it, I noticed dozens more through out the cuts.
This line, The Spokane Portland and Seattle was built in 1905 and operated for eighty plus years. The 130 miles between Spokane and Pasco are now owned by the State of Washington and maintained as a public trail.
That was last summer. Today I was looking for a place for a winter hike with limited or no snow and open scenery so I could stay in the sunshine, so I decided to check out another section of this trail.
It took me over a hour to drive to the Amber Lake Trailhead. All of the trailheads require the Discover Pass to use so I used mine. In addition to providing access to the trail there is also a place to launch kayaks or canoes on this pretty little lake.
Like most lakes in the Channeled Scablands, Amber Lake is long and narrow and oriented from the northeast to the southwest in the direction the ancient flood waters presumably flowed. Being late January the lake as to be expected was iced over.
Near the northeast end of the lake, the old railroad bed ran through a cut right next to it.
Soil and rock from the cut was used to create an embankment along part of the lake shore.
Beyond Amber Lake the rail bed curved towards another of these cuts through the basalt. Scattered Ponderosa Pines were the dominate tree species along the trail.
That and birch trees. What looked like frost was actually the last of Decembers snow that had not yet melted in the shade of the rock walls.
Around a bend was a tunnel, kind of. This is a recent addition to avoid crossing one of the only paved roadways in the area, Mullinex Road.
Even in a newer and very remote tunnel, the lowlife vandals have been hard at work degrading the experience for everyone. Thanks scumbags! Even though it wasn’t an original railroad tunnel it was still kind of neat to walk through.
Past the tunnel the cuts through the basalt got a little bigger. You have to be impressed with the work it took to make this railroad a hundred and twenty years ago.
This rock wall shows how the cooling lava created basalt columns. A patch of ice at the bottom is a seepage of ground water.
Between the cuts through the basalt the trail passed by numerous small ponds all frozen.
Beyond the trials crossing with Stirling Road the old railbed ran on top of a small embankment between wetlands. This is were I called it good and turned around.
Once back at the parking lot I took a short walk to get a good look at the part of the lake southwest of the trailhead. I decided to make one more detour before I made the drive home.
Just seven miles or so southeast the Columbia Plateau Trail kind of ends at Williams Lake Road just inside Lincoln County. I’ve always found the correlation between trees and the Spokane County line kind of interesting. Spokane County gets drier the further east you head but has Ponderosa Pines right up to the county line. As soon as you cross into Lincoln or Adams counties there are almost no trees.
South of Lake Williams Road the trail reverts to a rough surface of old railroad ballast and isn’t really suitable for even fat tired bikes. In fact its kind of hard to walk on. Only real adventures explore the eighty mile long section from here to Franklin County. Also I understand that several road crossings and high trestle bridges are closed and their are no practical detours around them.
However just across the road from the trailhead there was this epic piece of early twentieth century engineering. This was the largest railroad embankment I’ve ever came across and I couldn’t resist checking it out.
It was well over a mile across a coulee I couldn’t find the name of on this massive earthen berm. It is difficult to impart the scale of this marvel. Quick math gave me a ball park guess that upwards of half a million cubic yards of rock and dirt were used to create it.
Halfway across I could see the barren terraces were I’m guessing all of this fill came from over a hundred and twenty years ago. I’m guessing this embankment was over seventy feet above the coulee floor and tapered from thirty feet wide at the top to well over a hundred feet wide at the bottom.
Looking up the coulee I could see Down Lake with Mica Peak Washington in the far distance almost forty miles away.
After forty five minutes I made it to the other side of the coulee. Now there was nothing left to do but return to the trailhead. The sun was getting pretty low on the horizon and the scablands are lonely country.
I took a last look at this giant causeway and called it a day. I would call both the section of the trail southeast of Amber Lake and the massive embankment hidden gems in the Inland Northwest. It is an epic landscape indeed.
Exploring old abandoned railroads is one of my favorite things to do. This rail trail eventually crosses over the Palouse Cascade Trail anther thirty miles or so to the southwest. I guess I have more places to check out next spring.
For my first post since my return to the Inland Northwest I headed fifteen minutes down the road to Spokane County’s Saltese Uplands Conservation Area.
I chose this hike because partially due to our mild winter, the site is mostly snow free and is open to the sun. When the wind is still and the sun is out thirty degrees isn’t too bad. Down at the valley floor at two thousand feet we’ve had les snow so far this year than Pensacola or New Orleans. The mountains are another story and I would have to trudge through several feet on the mountains that border Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.
The hike starts at a trailhead on Henry Street between the towns of Liberty Lake and Spokane Valley. As always Spokane County offers free access for day users and maintains an excellent trail system on their properties. This is the first sign I’ve seen telling people not to leave their used dog poop bags on the trail. I see them all the time and am amazed at the mentality that thinks someone else should pick up after them.
They’re about seven miles of trails winding around the six hundred plus acres of native semi arid steep. Not all of the Inland Northwest is covered in farmland or evergreen forests. as I climbed a series of gentle switchbacks up Turtle Gulch, I had a view of the Saltese Flats Restoration Area, another Spokane County conservation site.
Only a few scattered Ponderosa Pines are found mostly in sheltered draws. The rest of the site is covered in grasslands with a few rock outcroppings.
The trail climbs to the sites highpoint next to a water storage tank. It is a leisurely walk. The total elevation gain around five hundred feet.
The Saltese Uplands are known for being a place to view bird life. I saw a couple of hawks, magpies and this little guy who let me take a photo.
Across the wetlands of Saltese Flats are the Dishman Hills with its excellent hiking including the Rocks of Sharon.
After climbing out of the gulch you are treated to nice views of the surrounding mountains. This is the view of Mica Peak Idaho, AKA “Signal Point” and Shasta Butte, “AKA Big Rock” along with smaller Cable Peak on the right side of the photo.
At the top there is a nice view of Liberty Lake with the mountains behind it. I could see ice forming on the lake. The marshland on the far right side of the picture is in Liberty Lake Park, another excellent hiking site owned and managed by Spokane County.
At the top there was a couple of inches of old snow from a few weeks ago. Due to the cold dry air and the effects of evaporation what was left looked like tiny shards of white glass.
Looking towards Idaho and Post Falls from the high point I enjoyed the view of Mt. Rathdrum center left and Chilco Mountain on the far right horizon. It was kind of neat seeing so many of my favorite hiking places. Now I can’t wait for the snow to melt.
I had to walk around the water storage tank on the top to get a view of Mount Spokane across the valley. They are definitely skiing up there.
After the high point, it was an easy three mile walk back to the trailhead. On the way I checked out Mica Peak Washington with its distinctive FAA radar dome. So you might ask why are they’re two Mica Peaks within six miles of each other. Well its because at some point the one in Idaho was renamed on topo maps. Most everyone who grew up here still calls it Signal Point. There is a town of Mica on the west side of Mica Peak Washington too.
Near the end I crossed the gully’s again and walked through this little tree tunnel where a seasonal creek runs in the early spring.
It’s not the most exciting hike in the area but it is different and more importantly a good place to stretch your legs in the winter. I ended up covering about five and a half miles which provided a much needed excuse to get outside this time of the year.
Hopefully I’ll get in a couple of more winter hikes while we are enjoying the break in the weather. I’m looking for low elevation sites that are mostly snow free and they’ll all be west of Spokane in the scablands.
For my last post on my Great American Southwest tour, I would like to share my impression of traversing Nevada from south to north. My return trip from Tucson to Post Falls Idaho took three days with overnight stops in Las Vegas and Twin Falls so essentially the entire second day was spent in Nevada. I expected to be treated to endless views of sage brush and not much else. I was pleasantly surprised.
Almost as soon as I left Las Vegas, I also left the interstate and turned off on US-93. Las Vegas is in my opinion one of the last places I would ever like to visit in the United States and yes I don’t gamble. It was surprisingly difficult to find a hotel off of the highway and extremely expensive. As soon as I hit the two lane the scenery improved dramatically.
I wish I had time to stop and explore. Nevada is a big state and I needed to make time. There were a lot of signs pointing the way on side roads to small towns and state parks.
The towns I drove through were very nice and some had amazing historical buildings right along the highway. The few people I dealt with were extremely pleasant as well. Like in much of the United States there is a big difference in the attitudes between urban America and it’s hinterlands. I’ll take the latter every time.
It was a big country with big scenery. Much of the trip was in higher elevation areas with dwarf juniper and pine forest. There was a lot less real desert than Arizona and New Mexico. At the south end of the trip I drove through miles of Joshua tree forest but didn’t think to stop for a photo or two.
About a third of the way through, I crossed over a pass and enjoyed the distant views of Wheeler Peak, a 13,000 foot mountain in the middle of Great Basin National Park. It looked like the mother ship was floating above it.
Unfortunately this was as close as I got to the national park. I’m making a list for next summer and Great Basin suddenly is on my radar. Too bad it’s a two day drive for me to get there.
After the turn off for the national park, I headed west and hit clear blue skies again. It seemed like Nevada had one beautiful mountain range after another, all of which begged to be explored.
Some of the passes I drove over were above seven thousand feet above sea level. That’s higher than the mountain tops in my neck of the woods.
In the distance I saw the Ruby Mountains which are crowned by an awesome wilderness area and on the other side of which is the Lamoille Canyon Scenic Byway, another place that needs to be explored in the future.
And in the valleys I did get to see sage brush, lots of sage brush.
As I was on a time limit I didn’t get to explore or hike on my way through Nevada. To be honest I had no idea how beautiful the drive was before I made it. Sometimes when your expectations aren’t super high, you come across a place that exceeds them in every way. I would really like to make it back here next fall for a multiday adventure.
And so ended my six week long Great American Southwest trip.
I got a chance to return to the Bug Springs Trailhead off of the General Hitchcock Highway to explore a little further as I ran out of time when I hiked this spot a month ago. I didn’t know what to expect but was pleasantly surprised at how awesome the hike turned out to be.
The first part of the hike was a repeat of my trip before, but the scenery was still just as pretty. Open grasslands with desert plants and rock outcroppings along a well defined ridge made for a great walk.
Once past my turn around point from my last trip here, I soaked in the views towards Bear Canyon and Thimble Peak to the southwest.
As I gained elevation from 5000′ to about 6000′, I enjoyed the commanding views back in to the Tucson Basin behind me.
The first part of the hike passed through an area with a lot of burned over small trees. The area must have been the site of a wildfire a few years back. That’s Tanque Verde Ridge in the distance.
The further I got, the more interesting the rock formations became. I guess you would call these stacks “hoodoos”, tall, thin spire of rock formed by erosion. .
Up a couple of switchbacks and around a corner, I came to this wilderness of rocks. The hike kept getting better and better.
I didn’t ignore the small views either. This striking plant with reddish smooth bark is desert mahogany.
And these are agaves. Agave plants are used in the production of tequila and are found through out the desert southwest as well as in the Caribbean.
After rounding one more bend, I came to an exposed ridge with the most amazing rock formations.
I got to see these hoodoos up close with their typical cap stones and fantastic shapes.
The ridge ended at this pile of rocks and from there the trail descended in to a ravine not too far from where I had turned around when I hiked out of the Lower Green Mountain Trailhead back in November.
I made this my turn around point but stopped to enjoy the views for a half hour of so. From this exposed ridge I could see the Santa Rita Mountains and Mount Wrightson maybe forty miles to the south.
As always, the views on the way back are a little different. I didn’t pay too much attention to this impressive wall of rock on the way in.
This massive hoodoo looked like it belonged on Easter Island.
As high as I got, there’s still three thousand feet of mountain above me. Mount Lemmon an impressive natural feature that dominated the north side of metro Tucson.
This turned out to be one of the best hikes I took during my stay in the Tucson area. The trail was really made for mountain bikers, but supports hiking nicely. You just need to be aware of the possibility of bikes coming down the grade. They are concentrating on the trail and since we can hear and see them first, it would be considerate to step a few paces off of the trail to make things a little easier on them.
My hike turned out to be about six or seven miles long with a thousand feet of elevation gain. Not too strenuous and not to easy, like Goldilocks porridge it was just right.
About an hour south of Tucson are the Santa Rita Mountains, one of Southern Arizona’s Sky Islands. Madera Canyon on the north side of this small mountain range is a popular starting point for some high altitude hiking adventures.
An eleven mile long paved road brings you from Green Valley, an exurb of Tucson, to Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains unit of Coronado National Forest.
At the entrance to the canyon you can purchase a day pass for $8 or a week pass for $10. Or you can like me use your America the Beautiful Pass. On weekends the entrance is staffed by folks from the Friends of Madera Canyon, a non-profit that helps maintain and improve the area for recreational use.
Most of the Santa Rita Mountains are above five thousand feet in elevation with the highest peak at almost nine and a half thousand feet allowing the area to support a temperate forest surrounded by desert basins.
I began my hike at the Mount Wrightson Trailhead at the end of the road. As soon as I got out of my rig I encountered a raft of wild turkeys.
My plan was to hike a little over six miles with 2100 feet of elevation gain by completing a loop using the Vault Mine Trail, the Aqua Caliente Trail and the Old Baldy Trail. Almost as soon as I started, I ran into a Forest Service Ranger who asked about my plans. He warned me that the Vault Mine Trail was really steep and that it would hurt. He also wanted to make sure I had enough water and some heavier cloths in case it got cold. I appreciated the concern.
He was right. The trail soon climbed steeply out of the dried creek bed on a series of switchbacks. It wasn’t the the hardest hike I’ve done in the last year, but it did get my attention.
As I climbed out of the canyon, I was treated to views of the high points to the east including the summit of Mount Wrightson.
The trail climbed through a forest dominated by hardwood trees with scattered stands of junipers and pines. It looked a lot different than most of Arizona.
A lot of it looked more like something from the East Coast. Except for the topography, I could have pictured this as some scrubby oak forest from Central Florida.
The vegetation was so thick that when I came to openings with views of the nearby peaks, the scene looked almost tropical.
The going was slow but eventually I came across the site of Vault Mine. It looked like they gave up looking for treasure pretty quickly. The tunnel only went in twenty feet or so.
The view looking back out was pretty impressive.
I ended up gaining almost all of the 2100 feet in elevation on the first mile and a half of the hike. I took my time and it took almost two hours to reach this point. The rest of the trip was level or down hill.
Although most of the vegetation on this hike didn’t have thorns, they’re were some exceptions. I was able to grab branches to assist my climb if I was careful and I only got poked in the ankle once by a hostile.
Looking back down the canyon from the junction with the Aqua Caliente Trail, I could see the basin Tucson is in thirty or forty miles to the north. The distant ridges are the Santa Catalina Mountains and Tanque Verde Ridge which is more to the right side of this photo.
The next two miles of the trail followed the north face of a ridge through mostly hardwood forest that had already dropped its leaves. It was actually very chilly up here and even through I didn’t use it, I was glad I brought a light jacket in case it got any worse.
This part of my hike could easily pass for Appalachia during the brief period between the trees shedding their leaves and the snow hitting the ground.
As the trail headed east along the north side of the ridge that divided the Santa Rita Mountains, the big mountains on the east side became much closer.The top of the ridge seemed only a few feet above the trail, but there was no view looking south.
Finally I found an unofficial trail that lead to the top of the ridge. Sure enough in just a hundred feet or so I crested the ridge and had this amazing view looking towards Mexico.
As soon as I crossed over, the temperature was at least fifteen degrees warmer. It would have been comfortable to sunbath in. Back on the northside I had goose bumps on my bare arms.
I continued towards Josephine Saddle and was treated to better and better views of Mount Wrightson. At my highest point on the hike I was still over two thousand feet below the summit.
Looking back towards the northwest I could see one of the large open pit mines near Green Valley. It would have been kind of pretty if you didn’t know just how toxic the waste water from these sites is.
Just before I got to the saddle I caught this image of a high flying jet over the mountain.
At the saddle I took a quick detour down the Josephine Canyon Trail to see if the views to the south opened up. That’s when I saw the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on one of the peaks to the west.
I made it down a few hundred feet and got a couple of fleeting views looking south but turned back to avoid getting sidetracked. I still had a long way to go to get back to the trailhead.
When I got back to Josephine Saddle I came across a memorial sign for a tragic incident from over half a century ago. When I got back I did a little research and would recommend others do so as well. Six Boy Scouts attempted to summit what was called Mount Baldy back then on a clear November day. A freak blizzard struck the area and three of them never made it home.
After the saddle I headed back down towards the trailhead on the Old Baldy Trail. It wasn’t as steep as the Vault Mine Trail but it did lose a couple thousand feet over a little more than two miles.
Not too far down I ran across this little fella. Coatimundi’s are native to Southern Arizona. This was the first one I’ve seen and this was the best shot I could get of him. They’re a little shy.
I enjoyed walking down hill through the hardwood forest. By now I was in for over five hours. I know that’s a long time for a six and a half mile hike, but I took my time, after all what’s the hurry.
Looking back towards the mountains I was treated to a view of a half moon rising above them. Not a bad way to finish up a long hike.
Just before I made it back to the trailhead I passed by this sign that let me know I had been in a wilderness area. That wasn’t really a surprise.
Near the trailhead I was back down in the bed of the dry creek with it’s variety of trees. Also I ran across all those darn turkeys again.
It was one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve been on and I only scratched the surface as far as exploring this gem of a hiking place.
If I get a chance I will go back. There is a trail called the Super Loop that’s a little longer with more elevation gain. If I feel frisky, I’d like to try and make it to Baldy Saddle at 8700 feet.
A few days ago I rode the Chuck Huckleberry Loop from Valencia Road to Tanque Verde Road. A couple of days ago I picked up where I left off and rode along the Rillito River Parkway a few miles west and back.
I accessed the Loop Trail via a short spur along Sabino Canyon Road from Udall Park, a large park named after a former congressman and presidential candidate. Near the entrance to the park and over the connector trail is this most awesome piece of public art. It is wasted on a terrible site framing a nice view of a stop light.
Like most of the Loop Trail, this section follows one of the dry wash beds through the urban and semi rural area. This makes for a mostly level ride with generous buffer zones along the way. That’s Tanque Verde Ridge, a place I have hiked, in the background.
The trail crosses small side washes and drainage ditches on numerous and mostly unique bridges. Some of the route of the trail is surprisingly rural.
For much of the ride, the trail is bordered by small horse farms and desert preserves. I even had an encounter with a coyote near this spot. He refused to sit still for a portrait.
There was a lot of public art along the trail including this mural on a retaining wall. It looked a lot nicer than the graffiti I saw on some other blank walls.
Along most of the twelve miles or so I covered, there were bike trails on both sides of the Rillito River bed. At the two exceptions the route was well signed and either dedicated trail bridges or wide sidewalks on the roadway bridges connected the rider to the side they needed to be on.
I used both banks on my round trip where I could for the variety of scenery. Generally the south bank was the more developed side and the north more rural and suburban.
About half way on my out bound ride I passed by this old racetrack that is now a Pima County Park. It’s always nice to see a glimpse of the past. To the north behind the grandstands is Mount Lemmon, the highest point in the area.
There was more public art at this park.
The desert landscaping for the most part is really well done along the trail.
At about twelve miles in I called it good and repeated the ride this time mostly on the other side of the wash.
Bicycling on the Chuck Huckleberry Loop is mostly a pleasant experience, at least on the sections I have ridden on so far. There was only two at grade crossings with roads on the entire ride and both were lightly traveled.
Even through the scenery along the dry washes is alright, after a while it does all start to look the same. The only other downsides to the ride is the overabundance of spandex clad baby boomers all apparently practicing for the Olympics and an excessive amount of homeless encampments in the scrublands on the wash bottoms.
Dodging abandoned shopping carts is kind of a pain in the ass. If most grocery store chains required a deposit for using shopping carts the problem would be solved.
The bicycle loop around Tucson is well used and a great amenity for the community.
The trail connects many parks along the way and provides access to them for the people who live and visit here.
I hope to ride additional sections of the Chuck Huckleberry Loop during my stay in the area. If I do, look forward to more bicycling posts. It’s not going to be cycling weather in the Inland Northwest when I return.
For the second time during my stay in the Tucson Area, I hiked on the Tanque Verde Ridge Trail. This time I pushed it as far as I could with the goal of making it up to the transition zone from all desert plants to the dwarf juniper forest at five to six thousand feet in elevation. The trailhead is in Saguaro National Park at about three thousand feet.
From the park visitor center there is an open view of Tanque Verde Ridge. In the photo you can see where the ridge top transitions from pure desert habitat to a mixed juniper scrubland. I used my America the Beautiful pass to pay for the admission.
At the trailhead the first couple of hundred yards of the trail is relatively level as it crosses a couple of small washes before it really starts climbing the ridge.
The desert is a harsh environment. Most of the vegetation consists of various species of cacti.
Known sometimes as Jumping Cactus, these Cholla Cactus plants don’t actually “jump”. It’s just if you accidently brush against it the lobes break off easily, hook to you or your clothes and hitch a ride. Not being a moron I haven’t had a problem with them yet.
This is the dried out skeleton of a dead prickly pear cactus. Sometimes it’s nice to appreciate the small views.
The tail soon gets a lot steeper as it climbs up the ridge. I’m guessing I made it about six miles in before I turned around and the grade reminded me a lot of Scotchman Peak in Idaho.
About an hour of steady climbing got me to here. In places the trail crosses bare slabs of rock. The views back toward Tucson became more expansive.
On the way up I set my short term goals to reach the top of the small knolls ahead so I could see what the next view would bring. I was under no illusions about making it to the summit. The trail is fifteen miles one way and the elevation gain is almost four thousand feet.
From the ridge looking south is a view of Mount Lemmon, the highest point in the area at over nine thousand feet above sea level. You can drive up very nice road to close to the summit.
A couple of miles in I went off trail to check a view point and stumbled on this stash of water. I’m not sure of the purpose but assume it had something to do with a trail maintenance crew.
The views towards Tucson are very nice. The light colored patch in the distance at the center top, is the “Boneyard” at Davis Monthan Airforce Base. Downtown is on the far right side of the photo almost at the base of the far mountains about twelve miles away.
As I climbed the ridge I had views back towards the knolls that had been my goals on the hike. The one in the background with it’s bare rock dome, was pretty impressive.
The trail was well made even though it was very steep in places and despite the appearance in this photo, the thorny plant life was fairly easy to avoid if you use common sense.
About three hours in I came to my first juniper tree. This turned out to be a loner. There weren’t anymore for over a half mile.
The habitat was slowly changing with more grasses and less prickly pears in the under story. The stunted desert trees were a little larger this high up the ridge.
So after three and a half hours it was time to call it good. I made it to about 5800 feet and beyond the trail dropped sharply towards the Juniper Basin Camping Area. As you can see I was still in the semi-desert steppe area and didn’t make it to a juniper forest.
On the way down I had more time to enjoy the views. Tanque Verde Ridge is a nice convenient place to hike. You can pretty much hike as far as you want. I made it to my limit and that was fine.
I missed this gem on the way up. The imagination ran wild with ideas of what lived in there and if it watched me on the way up. It’s always a good idea to watch your six when you’re this far out there.
Six hours after I set out, I was back at my rig. I had to share a photo of my Free State America gear.
Tanque Verde Ridge is about a twenty minute drive from my temporary base camp. I may go back again before my time here is done. We’ll see. I’d like to see more wildlife next time.
The Greater Tucson area has a comprehensive bike route network of trails that encircle and connect the city to it’s suburbs and rural areas. Most of this 137 mile long network is managed by Pima County. A loop of about fifty four miles in length is the core of this network.
I started todays ride at the Valencia Road Trailhead. Valencia Road is currently being widened at this location and I assume the project will impact the trailhead soon. The trail continues south and connects to the Julian Wash Trail about five miles away. Today I headed north on the Harrison Greenway.
The first three miles of the Harrison Greenway follow the unrealized route of a section road between a desert preserve and Davis Monthan Airforce Base.
To the west, the trail is bordered by the security fence for the base. To the east there are expansive views across the desert to the mountains. The land east of the trail has been developed in to a mountain bike park with over sixteen miles of dirt trails mostly aimed at beginners and provides well made trails right in town.
After crossing Irvington Road at a signalized intersection, the trail continues to the north paralleling Harrison Road.
For most of the next mile and a quarter, the trail maintains excellent separation from the busy road as it travels downhill to Pantano Wash.
The route then turns in to one of the few on street sections utilizing lightly traveled Stellarole Street to make the half mile connection to the Pantano River Park. Here the trail passes through a semi-rural area with small ranches and horse farms.
At the Pantano River, the trail turns in to a greenway following the dry wash bed towards the northwest. There are numerous parks and trailheads along the route. At this point across the wash is one of the larger stands of palm trees I’ve seen in the area. They seem to mostly be found in older developments.
To the west is the dry river bed and to the east for a mile of so you are still in an area dominated by small ranches and horse farms.
This greenway portion of the bike loop is well maintained, well used and has lots of amenities along it as it enters a more urban area of Tucson.
The view from one of the parks along the way. The Pantano River Park section of the trail has no at grade crossings with roadways.
A particularly nice section of the bike trail is sandwiched between the Pantano River and the Pantano Parkway as it cuts through a very nice residential area.
The reason there are no at grade crossings is because at the major roads that cross the wash, the trail is routed under them with spurs leading up to street level. This is the road I take to one of the best hiking spots around, Sabino Canyon.
Many spur trails provide access for local residents.
There are a few bridges over ditches and small washes that feed in to the Pantano River.
Beyond 22nd Street the area becomes more urbanized. From Broadway to Tanque Verde, the Pantano River had bike trails on both sides which partially explains the discrepancy between the total mileage of the trail system and the length of the loop.
The trail passed under Golflinks, 22nd, Broadway, Speedway, Sabino Canyon and Tanque Verde Roads. I called it good at Tanque Verde. and made my way back to Valencia. At all of the underpasses signage warned the bicyclist to not proceed during flash flood events.
I ended up riding about a ten mile section of the loop out and back for a total of twenty miles. I spent a lot of time stopping and taking pictures. I covered all of the Harrison Greenway and most of the Pantano River Park sections of the trail. I can’t wait to explore more of this wonderful bicycle loop.
One of my pet peeves with bicycle trails is how little use they get for the money the taxpayers invest in them. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the Chuck Huckleberry Loop. It was hard to get photos without lots of other bicyclist and pedestrians in them. In general the trail surfaces were excellent and access was easy. This is definitely one of the best urban trail systems in the nation.
