Phoneline Hike - the season ending trek

The climb was in the shade

It was a little bitter sweet this morning as I headed off for my last Tucson hike of 2013. There are enough hiking trails in and around Tucson that I am sure if you did a different hike every day you could go a year without repeating one – unless you are an old guy like me who simply forgets what he has already done.

But I was up at 6:15 a.m. so that I could get an early start on the Phoneline Trail that starts at the visitor’s center at the Sabino National Recreation Area. This hike started in almost the identical place that the Bear Canyon/Seven Falls hike does, but within a mile you take a spur trail off the Bear Canyon Trail to start your ascent into the Catalina Mountains.

The tram is 300-feet below (this with a 10X zoom)

When Things 1,2,3 and 4 were here a week or so ago we took the tram up Sabino Canyon, but we really didn’t hike the canyon. So today was my day to do that. The trail follows an old access trail used by engineers when they were planning for the building of a dam many years ago. Fortunately, the dam was never built but they left behind a pretty nice trail with great views.

The trail is available in two ways. First you can catch the tram, the same one that we took with the kids, and follow it to the last stop (Tram Stop 9) which is 3.7-miles from the visitor’s center. Or you can do what I did and that is to take the trail up from the visitor’s center and hike 5.5 miles to the Tram 9 stop and then walk back down the tram road.

Same photo without the zoom - see how high I was?

When you do it my way it is a 9.2-mile hike, but except for the first two miles which is about a 600-foot climb, the rest is fairly level and you walk about 300-feet above the canyon floor.

By starting early much of the early climbing was done in the shade and by the time the sun was at its zenith I was starting the easy hike down the paved tram road.

This time I brought plenty of water and food and the hike and I spared myself a fall this Saturday. As you will recall it was last Saturday that I climbed to the top of Mt. Wrightson but left myself short of water and food on that 12-mile trek. Compared to that hike this week’s was a piece of pie.

Narrow passage

There were plenty of hikers – and runners – on the trail this morning but no so many that it was a nuisance. Etiquette is that you give the right-of-way to runners and they were very appreciative of my getting out of their way. What they don’t know is that I think anyone who would run some of these narrow, stony trails are just a little crazy so I might be giving them a little extra room for that reason.

Once down off the trail the tram road was pretty full of families and hikers using the canyon floor as a playground in the fair weather today. By the time I got off the mountain the temperatures were in the 80s and almost 30-degree climb in just three and a half hours.

On the way back I stopped and took a picture of Mt. Wrightson looming over the Tucson landscape so I would remember where I was just a week ago. When I look up at that peak it is hard to believe I was up there.

That high peak in the center is where I was last Saturday

Back at home Joan was waiting for me – her mule – to haul the rest of our laundry for a last wash before we head out of here tomorrow evening. While she did the laundry I went to the office and settled up with management as we have to pay the balance of our electrical use and cable TV accounts.

Back at the trailer we spent the afternoon watching the Master’s Tournament (isn’t that an old person’s activity?) and then we had hamburgers for dinner.

We plan on going to church in the morning, finishing the packing and stowing of the trailer tomorrow afternoon and then after dinner heading north to Flagstaff so we can get the trailer winterized and stored on Monday morning.

The trip down was easier on a paved road

I’m planning on a post tomorrow before we leave and then short ones as we finish the drive home on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

To see more photos simply scroll down to the next post.