Dream Beneath A Desert Sky - The Sonoran Desert Part 2 of 3, Sabino Canyon, 2.24.19
"There were plants and birds and rocks and things" - A Horse With No Name/America
After our first sampling of the Sonoran Desert at Catalina State Park, I was really stoked for our next day’s adventures. We started out by driving south down the length of the Catalinas and then headed east to the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. This is a very popular attraction and rightly so. With rugged hills and mountains, waterfalls, canyons, cacti and all kinds of wildlife along with numerous trails of various length and difficulty, there is something for everyone to see and do.
We opted for a three mile loop hike which would take us through rugged terrain of rocky hillsides forested with giant saguaros to a ridge and then down and around back to the trailhead. Once again, the cooler temperatures (upper 50’s to lower 60’s) had kept the snow from melting away and the reddish brown peaks of the Catalina Mountains looked even more beautiful laced with brilliant white snow from the earlier storm.
A forest of saguaros under snowy Catalina Mountains
Our hike began on a road but soon cut off onto the Esperero Trail. We gently gained elevation as we hiked through thick stands of saguaros. Climbing higher, we eventually came to the top of a ridge with wonderful views into the upper reaches of Sabino Canyon.
Along the Esperero Trail
Saguaro forest along the Esperero Trail
When we arrived at the ridge top, one fork of the trail headed up higher on the ridge for several more miles and into an area where there had been many recent mountain lion sightings. After considering that for about a second, we opted for the safer bet called the Rattlesnake Trail which led down the other side of the ridge to a creek.
On the ridge top looking towards upper Sabino Canyon
After descending several hundred feet of elevation we came to a flowing creek that feeds the larger Sabino Creek. I got the impression that this creek runs dry pretty early in the spring but with the recent storms and being only February, it still had a good flow of water.
Rattlesnake Creek
The vast majority of the people that were in the park had stuck to the main road that ascends Sabino Canyon so even though it was a Sunday, we felt like it wasn’t very congested up on the Rattlesnake Trail. Once we reached the creek, we followed it down to where it joined Sabino Creek and then we hiked the road back down to the main trailhead.
Beautiful saguaro specimens
Saguaro covered bluff along Rattlesnake Creek
View from the main road up into Sabino Canyon
It was lunchtime when we got back to the car so with the entire afternoon ahead of us, it was time to head to Saguaro National Park. Saguaro has two units, the eastern unit which is called the Rincon Mountain District and the west unit which is named the Tucson Mountain District. Since we were much closer to the eastern unit, that is where we headed to after lunch. Being a Sunday, it was quite crowded near the entrance but we found a parking spot and headed into the visitor center to get our National Park passport stamp. I was really happy to have a new park on my list of National Parks visited.
The Rincon Mountain District has 67,000 acres but there is only one short eight mile loop road along its western boundary, leaving much of the park as pristine wilderness, with a network of trails and several back country campsites as the only real means to explore it. We drove the loop road called the Cactus Forest Drive. Our first stop was the Mica View Picnic area where we took a short hike through stands of cacti of every shape and size. Here there were many saguaros over 150 years old. As we continued on, the saguaros stretched as far as the eye could see. We soon came to a cluster of rock formations called Javelina Rocks. This was the most prominent feature along the entire loop road so it was crawling with kids and adults alike. I had been told that this would be a good spot to shoot the sunset but with all the people there I decided to try my luck at sunset photos the following night in a different area. Overall, I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the Rincon Mountain District as I was with Sabino Canyon. With that said, there are some trails within this side of the park that climb up out of the saguaros into the oak/juniper forest along the Tanque Verde ridge so I can’t judge the entire park based on the loop road.
The happy couple on Javelina Rocks
We still had one more day and I still really wanted to find a great spot to shoot sunset photos so we went back to the house and I continued my research...
Continued in Part 3 of 3