A new hike, this time in the snow above Tucson

Me at the upper trail head

Well, I thought all the snow in Tucson was gone, but the hike I went on today put me right back in the middle of the snow.

Tuesday is the challenging hike day and today’s trek had several interesting difficulties, not the least of which was some ice and snow along the trail.

The hiking group meets at 8 a.m. in one of the meeting rooms here at the resort and we form up carpools (I was one of the drivers today) and we get maps to our trail head destination and then head out.

Today’s Bug Spring trailhead was about 7 miles up the Catalina Highway on the road that leads to Mt. Lemmon. To do the one-way hike and still be able to get back to our cars we left one vehicle large enough to carry all the drivers at one end of the trail and then drove to the upper trail head which was at about 6,000 feet elevation.

Through the looking rock

As the crow flies (OK, it would be a very drunk and erratic crow) the two trailheads are about 4 miles apart. The trail between them (clickon this link to see the trail) is, depending on which GPS you believe, about 5 to as many as 6 miles in length.

The biggest feature of this trail is that the opening park was a pretty steep climb on very icy and snowy trails. Keeping the group together was a challenge as some of the shorter legged people were having difficulty navigating the fairly steep stairs that are built into the mountain on part of the trail.

The lower trail head sign

So the first mile was probably about a 10-13 percent grade, which is pretty steep. When we left the park in the morning the temperature was 48 on the valley floor. When we arrived at the upper trail head my Tahoe outside temperature gauge was 30 degrees.

I was about one layer short of actually being comfortable, but after hiking a little bit I warmed myself up quite nicely. Fortunately, I remember to bring my hiking gloves which were very welcome this morning.

Once at the top of the mountain the hike was relatively easy, except for a few very steep down grades, which I actually have come to dislike more than the up grades.

We started hiking just a little after 9 a.m. and finished the hike about 12:45 p.m. At the bottom trail head all of the drivers climbed into the remaining car and drove back up the mountain, retrieved our vehicles and then returned to the parking area and picked up our tired passengers.

Potluck dinner at the resort

While I was off conquering the Catalina Mountains, Joan was home using our trailer oven for the first time in the five years we have owned the RV. She made a berry cobbler from a recipe she got from our niece Jessica and it was a huge hit at tonight’s potluck supper in the resort ballroom

Potlucks are appropriately named as tonight about half the dishes brought were desserts. You’ll get no complaints from me, especially after a long and strenuous hike. I love a six course meal that includes five courses of desserts.

As I write this at 7:20 p.m. my calves are still burning from today’s hike. But the views were outstanding and if you would like to see more photos from today’s hike just scroll down.