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It was weird to see sunlight on the hills around Peralta Trailhead. Chris and I had been to here several times before, using the trailhead as an access to the southern lands of the Superstition Wilderness, and each time had been hours before sunrise. Today I stood alone and gazed up the steep,…
This was the second time my parents were visiting us down in Arizona. The first time had been a few weeks after Thomas was born and we spent most of the time fawning over the newborn and getting things done around the house. We did fit in a quick hike over to the San Tan Regional Park, though it was…
Afternoon hikes in Phoenix are tricky things. On one hand I'm still working on Eastern time, which means that most days I'm done with work between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. That leaves me with several hours of daylight for a short hike during the work week. However, I'm in a desert. Hiking under the…
My topo map was an old one, dating back to the '80s. As I slowly walked along Cavalry Trail in the Superstitions I gazed over it. This trail headed southeast within a little valley for about a mile before turning sharp south over Red Hills and looping back west along Needle to Boulder Canyon. There…
No moon lit the dark night sky over the Superstition Wilderness trailhead. I stepped away from the parking lot alone with only a meager headlamp to guide me to Garden Valley. Hiking in the dark had become standard fare for long days in the desert, since both Chris and I were willing to wake up and…
Standing like a tall, lonely guard of the southwest Superstition Wilderness is the impressive Weaver's Needle. This old volcanic shaft rises over a thousand feet from the surrounding desert, the bottom half steep piles of rubble and the top sheer cliffs. Chris and I had seen the formation from…
Anticipation grew as we zipped along the old Apache Trail northeast of Phoenix. For the last few months Chris and I had hiked around the city and slowly started to venture into the Superstition Wilderness. So far we had only tackled the very westernmost sections of the wilderness, climbing up…
A few weeks had passed since Chris and I hiked the length of the Superstition Ridge. That had been a big milestone for both of us, a long all-day hike that introduced us to some of wild lands that the Arizona desert could offer. Something bugged me about it, though. We had previously climbed North…
Bleary-eyed we stumbled along the rocky path to Siphon Draw. Chris and I had agreed to an early start for this hike thinking that we'd be familiar enough with the trail to Flatiron to tackle it in the dark. Knowing the general landscape of the trail does not stop you from tripping over railroad ties…
Usually around this time I have a full list of hikes to tackle for the year, an ambitious list of mountain peaks and waterfalls and other remote areas. A list focused on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, that is. It has been hard to get as excited for Arizona hikes. I've mentioned several times that…