This was a great little hike, pieced together by our fearless leader, Stan, from the Milagrosa trail, and a 7-mile stretch of the 800-mile Arizona Trail. We ended up at the Prison Camp (actually, the nearby Gordon Hirabayshi Campground where we parked), which was also the destination of a previous Stan-led hike on the Soldier Trail. Stan also led the Agua Client Hill hike earlier in December in these same parts of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Stan is a master at figuring out new combinations of trails, and has the technical wherewithal to make it happen. His estimations of elevation gain and distance were right on per my AllTrails map (below). Beautiful day, with 70º temps and cotton-tinged cerulean skies.
We hiked this a little too fast for my taste, not because I don't hike fast—I do on long hikes because of necessity—but because I like to spend more time taking pics and taking in the vistas. So, in order to take pics and linger, I offered to play “sweep” and bring up the rear, occasionally jogging to catch up. No real stragglers with this strong group, but I did get my pics and was able also to fiddle with my PeakFinder app without delaying the rest of the hikers. I learned there was a time for speed and a time to slow down a bit when I hiked the Grand Canyon in speed mode with my pal Ira, only to be filled with regrets I didn't stop more and even take a few side trips.
The hike started out with a half-mile trip down a road through a gated community, the kind that are becoming more frequent in the most beautiful and fragile places on the planet as income inequality becomes a disease around the world, but especially here. These are often places where no development should take place, but these privileged, entitled people have the money to pay off politicians to make it happen. So nice of them to let us serfs walk through their gates to the trailhead.
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| Looking east. Piety Hill, famous for the mass execution of many non-believers (just kidding, but certainly not beyond believable); and, what the hell is a Muskhog? |
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| Lots of water flowing this winter everywhere. |
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| Mica Mountain in the Rincons to the southeast. |
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