Tortolita Superloop

Today's hike in the Tortolita Mountains was nearly four times as long as  Thursday's hike at over 16 miles, but lucky for me, only twice the elevation gain. This is my second time hiking the superloop; I also did it in January of 2020, with some very fit 30-40 something hikers from a local Meetup group. What it also had in common with the last hike is herds of aggressive animals on the trail (well, last time there was just a warning sign, no actual animals). I also saw a rare crested saguaro (more on that later).

Beautiful day. Highs got up to in the 50s, up from 32º starting out. Kept a pretty decent pace throughout. Started out mostly climbing, but after four or five miles, the hike leveled out on ridge trails. [Click the pic to continue on the blog]

This clumsy hike name is AllTrail's concoction. Those of us who know 
this hike call it simply the Tortolita Superloop. Tortolita means little turtle
dove in Spanish.

The Superloop is composed of all the perimeter trails on this map: Wild Burro, Alamo Springs, Ridgeline, Loop, Wild Mustang, and the Upper Javalina trails.

One starts out with a 1,000 foot rocky climb up, just to get the heart going, and the ankles potentially twisted.

The afore-mentioned aggressive animals I encountered: a 15k trail racing primate on the left (one of 20 or so), and a bicycling biped on the right (maybe a dozen all told). 

A cristate or crested saguaro. These are quite rare mutations, and  acanthochronologists (cactologists, if you will) disagree on what causes them; some say freezing and lightening strikes, others say a hormone causes the pleats to grow out of control. 

This wind-driven mill was retrofitted with a solar panel and the
blades removed. It's used to pump water into a tank for a horse trough.

The Wild Mustang Trail portion was devoid of bikers, and almost devoid of hikers save one I ran into.