Dripping Spring via the Sutherland Trail

 

The last time I set foot on the Sutherland Trail, almost six years ago, what should have been an 18-mile hike turned into an epic 17-hour, 24-mile marathon ending at midnight. Today’s hike, by comparison, was literally a walk in the park, and an easy one at that. This hike was perfect for today however since I have a more serious outing Sunday in Huachuca Mountains southeast of tucson; a 12-miler climbing to 9,500 and summiting two peaks, Carr and Miller, a route I last hiked 10 years ago.

I love our current proximity to Catalina State Park, but all of the really challenging hikes I've already hiked numerous times, and what I will probably end up doing next is stringing together two or more of the shorter trails into something resembling a reason to spend the 30 minutes it takes to drive out and back from our place in Oro Valley. 

The first mile of this trail is mostly flat & sandy wadi with an occasional railroad-tie stair case thrown in for variation. The last mile it gets more interesting. The background views remain stunning, however, even if the trail itself can be rather ho-hum.

This trail is rated as easy by AllTrails, a rare concordance  

with my rating system which I roughly base on average 

speed on the trail. My rough (simplistic) calculus:

Easy—3.5 mph and above, regardless of distance

Moderate—2.5-3.5 if mileage is at least 6 miles

Hard—below 2.5 and mileage above 10 miles

Lots of codgers starting out one the sandy flats.

Not one drip (except me) at Dripping Spring.

I love this colorful cliff accentuated by a little fading fall color.

In case you are one of those readers who believes in science (since you read, we can assume), you might

be interested to know the some of the geology of the Catalinas, which basically started to form 30 million years ago. Hard to swallow if you are a young-Earth biblical-literalist nutter. I tried to make it more readable below.