Once again we set out west for our annual continuing education, and we decided to take in the Superstition Mountains next to Apache Junction, just east of Phoenix, Arizona, as our way of escaping the overcast winter of Ohio. Little did we know, the joke was to be on us, as we arrived in Arizona just in time for one of their greatest snowfalls south of Flagstaff.
Jenn found a wonderful little casita for rent that backed up to the Tonto National Forest, and on the first evening we set out through the gate at the back of the yard and kept walking as straight as we could (without running into saguaros) to a trail that would wrap around the mountain that was our view to the east.
We dined at La Casita of Apache Junction, enjoyed some good margaritas and some local flavor.
The next morning, it rained. And rained and rained and rained. Two inches in the desert. We could outrun the rain, for the most part, if we’d head to Saguaro National Park to our southeast, and that’s exactly what we did.
We can’t call ourselves experts on the park as we only spent a half of a day, but we got a real neat look, and we got to experience rain on a hike in Saguaro NP. How many get to say that?!
So we were down to two full days to hike the Superstitions. The photo just above was taken from the same vantage point as the second on this post. The clouds had definitely moved in. Our efforts to get to our desired trailhead in Gold Canyon were thwarted by washed out roads and what are usually dry creek beads that had become legitimate river crossing the roads. So back to our casita for a near 2 mile hike to pick up the Siphon Draw trail.
Relatively good, albeit cloudy weather followed us until we got into the draw, and it started to lightly rain. As we gained some elevation and the temperature dropped, big, wet snowflakes descended upon us, important because the footing was slick by itself. As we made it further into the mountains we could see up ahead the folks exiting the draw, and they were sliding on their hands and feet, crab-style, down the slick, steep slope. It didn’t take us very long to decided the beginning of this slope would be our turnaround.
I stopped for photos, but it was hard to keep my camera gear dry. By the time we made it back to the fork in the trail, the snow had turned to sleet, and with about 3/4 mile to go to our casita, the sleet had turned to hail. You read this correctly, on an ~8 mile hike in the Tonto National Forest, we were rained on, sleeted on, snowed on and hailed on. Glad we chose the desert!
We busted out the miles on our last hike, given that we finally had good weather. We’d come to find out we’d have some great stream crossings, too. As the stream beds were full, and as the water was snow melt, our tootsies got pretty cold along the way!
A myriad of trails wiggle through the mountains around Lost Dutchman State Park and beyond in the National Forest. Driving our car through the washes and muddy roads was a bit treacherous, but the trails weren’t bad at all of us. The views… amazing, and because we hit the trail first thing in the morning, as is our style, we had much of it to ourselves for most of the day.
We passed a very nice man riding a horse and stopped to talk with him for a few minutes. He mentioned a nice extension to our trail and suggested following Hackberry Loop Trail, describing it as a short loop with pretty scenery. After traversing the worst mud I’ve ever walked through (it literally, not figuratively, wrecked my hiking shoes) we did, in fact, find beautiful scenery. It turned out the trail was much longer than we were led to believe, and we weren’t sure we were going to make it back to our car by sundown. While the trail wasn’t on Google Maps, we were able to use our GPS to choose the correct turns when we came to forks in the path. What an exhausting, but very worthwhile hike, and our dinner at The Keg Steakhouse & Bar was well-earned.
After this trip, Apache Junction is on our Retirement Short List.
#Gates50States 