Out of Our Rut: Spending Time in Tucson

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We will be heading back to Tucson. Last year we spent a total of 25 nights there from January to March but it was at 4 different locations around town. This time the plan is to stay put for the full month of March. We only have a 60 mile drive so it should be a reasonably easy drive. Of course, in our prep for the drive, we discover the exit we should take from the expressway is closed. It wasn't a big deal to come up with an alternate route and is less stressful than discovering the closure during the drive.

We picked Justin's Diamond J RV Park on the southwest side of town, adjacent to Tucson Mountain Park and not far from Saguaro National Park West. When Chris had called a few months ago to reserve a spot, she could tell their system for reserving a spot seemed iffy. So she called back a day or so before heading there to confirm they were expecting us. After multiple confusing phone calls, including one while we were just 15 minutes out, we were told they are expecting us. The site they put us in is a nice one with just a slight side slope but nothing we can't handle. In chatting with some of our neighbors, I suspect that the majority are here for multiple weeks or months with only a few transients coming thru for a night or two.

As I mentioned, this place is just south of Tucson Mountain Park. In fact, there are paths out of the campground that leads to the miles of desert trails. They are great for hiking and mountain biking. At night, we can hear the coyotes howling in the distance but for the most part the campground is nice and quiet. We take advantage of being in a real town at a private campground to pickup a lot of provisions or have Amazon packages delivered. Nothing too exciting: new camp chairs, new sewer hoses to replace the ones that "on paper" seemed like an excellent choice a few years ago but had become nothing but a pain.

My favorite item is a RAM mount for holding my Garmin Oregon GPS to the mountain bike. I often take the GPS with me on bike rides whether for geocaching or simply to know where I am. But normally it was just attached with its clip to some part of the bike only to bounce around and is challenging to see while riding. I have a nine mile loop that I like to ride the bike, but there are so many trails and all of the desert cacti, trees and shrubs all look the same, I had found keeping on my planned route challenging. Now with the mount, I can see my track from previous rides and make all the required turns. I wish I had bought this things years ago.

Since we are only 15 minutes from Saguaro National Park, we have found ourselves there a couple times already. We can look at the scheduled ranger talks or walks and drive up if they sound interesting. One day we headed there to do a couple of hikes we hadn't gotten to last year during our visits. Valley View Trail is a short (<1 mile) trail up a hill to, guess what?, a view of the valley! Of course, we couldn't keep the hike simple, so we parked at the Sus Picnic area and found a connector path mainly up a wash that eventually ran into the Valley View Trail. This turned the hike into 3 or 4 miles but it was pleasant and the views of the park from up top were quite nice.

Heading Up the Wash

View at Valley View

After taking advantage of the picnic spot, we continued on the Bajada Scenic Loop drive and stopped at Signal Hill. There is a short walk up the hill to an area with petroglyphs. We have seen quite a few petroglyph sites in our travels and this one was definitely underwhelming. We decided we had more hiking energy left so we decided to try the Cactus Wren Trail. It heads north from Signal Hill through the desert. It didn't take us long to realize that although many people stop to check out the petroglyphs, few venture further along the trails. It is a pretty walk and good trail and we have it all to ourselves. The ocotillo were just starting to bloom giving splashes of bright red. After about a mile along Cactus Wren, we take Encinas Trail over to the Manville Trail which heads back along a wash towards Signal Hill. This was another 3+ mile hike and was a good way to end the day.

Petroglyphs at Signal Hill

Odd Barrel Cactus Cluster

Along Cactus Wren Trail

Jack's Search for Young Saguaro Cactus - Smallest Yet!

Our Arizona State Park annual pass was just about to expire but we really wanted to get back to Catalina State Park for some more hiking. It's a bit of a drive being on the opposite side of town, but we waited for most of rush hour traffic to over before heading up. We headed to the equestrian center and started up the hike from there. Several horses were being readied for a ride and before we headed out, they went got out on the trail. We followed the 50 Year Trail up the hill in search of geocaches. After a couple miles on this trail, we followed another trail back down to a wash which led us back to the parking area. It was a beautiful day for a hike and the trail we picked was not very busy seeing only 3 other people for the full seven plus miles. We ended up finding 31 caches. All in all, a successful day.

Horse Wants to Go for a Ride

Start of 50 Year Trail

This Saguaro has Pucker Face

Nice Views Along Trail at Catalina SP

Dusty Trail

The next day we headed a little south to the town of Sahuarita. Our destination was the Asarco Mineral Discovery Center for a copper mine tour. We had checked out the visitor center of a closed copper mine in Ajo Arizona last year but figured seeing one in operation would be much more impressive. We had done a little bit of "homework" in advance by watching a couple videos they provide online to show how copper is mined. They offer tours several times a day for $10 per person. We had called a few days in advance to reserve a spot. Although our tour was not full, we were surprised how many people come for this attraction. The visitor center for the mine had a large number of displays and a couple other videos to watch. The tour starts in the center with the tour guide talking through some of the process and pulling out show and tell items to pass around. Next, we hop on the tour bus which wasn't just a decommissioned school bus as I was expecting.

Even Larger Barrel Cactus Cluster at Asarco

Once we cross into the actual working mine, we are on the lookout for equipment. Namely the huge trucks that haul the mined rock from the open pit to the processing facility. They drive on the left side of the road (as do we and all other vehicles) to improve the truck driver's visibility with the edge of the mining roads. We notice a sign at the gate reminding employees to drive on the right side after leaving their shift for the day. We see a couple large water tanker trucks spraying water on the roads in an attempt to keep the dust to a minimum.

Decent Picture Out of Bouncing Bus Window!

Our first stop is at a viewing area overlooking the massive open pit mine. There is an old tire from one of the trucks anchored to the ground. At 11 foot diameter, I can understand why they didn't turn it into a tire swing. The view of the pit is impressive but the scale of what we are seeing is nearly lost until you realize that the tiny things down in the pit are actually large bulldozers. The pit is about 2.5 miles wide, nearly 2 miles across and about 1500 feet deep. The huge shovels that are used to load the trucks are actually electric. Not diesel electric like a locomotive might be, but electric with a rather massive power cord attaching it to the power pedestal.

Chris Does Obligatory Pose

Huge Electric Shovel with Bulldozer Next to It

Open Pit Mine

Another Shovel Just in View in Pit

From there, we head to one of the large buildings in the plant. There is a pedestrian walkway into a visitor viewing area so none of us need to wear hard hats or safety glasses. One side of the plant shows off a few of the large crushers and grinders that are used to break the mined rock from big to small. Each rotating crusher has hundreds of 8" steel balls to help break the rock. The grinders are used to crush the rock into a fine powder. To achieve this, they contain hundreds of thousands of 3" diameter steel balls. The powder is next mixed with water and other chemicals which makes the copper and other precious metals adhere to air bubbles blown into the vats. The bubbles float to the top and run over the edge. After a couple iterations of this, the resulting copper is 28% pure. After it is dried, it is shipped to another plant in Arizona to be smelted into a higher grade copper - about 98%. The final stage is completed at a plant in Texas that refines it to the required 99.99% purity.

One of the Large Holding Tanks

Crushers and Grinders

Conveyor Discharges Tailings from Process

View from Parking Lot of Tour

After we return from the tour, we wander around the outside display area. They have numerous pieces of equipment and trucks placed around the discovery center. The most obvious thing is that everything is big, really big. But all this equipment is old and no longer in use, so we realize everything being used today is even bigger. One of the trucks had some significance to Chris. For her senior project in college, she worked on an inventory control system for Wabco, a company that made big trucks for this type of industry. I remember being a bit jealous at the time that she got to visit the Wabco facility and see some of these monster trucks being built. This was a fun stop for a couple of former engineers.

Chris' Wabco Truck

Fear of Heights?

Backend of Truck

Pretty Day at the Mineral Discovery Center

We do find a lot of good hikes as we travel but not all of them go as planned. On the south end of Tucson Mountain Park is a prominent mountain beside the Ajo Expressway at Robles Pass. Cat Mountain rises nearly 1200 feet over the surrounding terrain. We drive past it often since it is along the main road into most of Tucson. There is a trailhead just off the expressway that starts out on the Explorer Trail. Technically, there isn't a sanctioned hiking trail to the top of Cat Mountain, but from the description Chris found online, it sounded like we could figure it out. Heck, there are two geocaches up there so it isn't impossible to get there. The initial part of the hike isn't bad since we are on the trail that works around the backside of Cat Mountain. We keep looking for any indication of a trail on our left that will lead us up instead of around.

It seemed the further we went, the more willing we were to accept anything that remotely resembles a trail. We eventually break off the main trail and bushwhack. It's not clear that bushwhack is the proper term for desert areas since there are very limited bushes. Cacti are the biggest problem. I suppose rattlesnakes would be worse, but we saw nor heard any of them. Saguaros are big enough to easily avoid. Fishhook barrel cacti are a bit tougher since they are smaller and have very sharp, fish hook shaped spines that look as if they would really hurt and cause some damage. Hedgehog and prickly pear cacti are fairly easy to avoid as well. The real problem in these parts are cholla cacti.

Close Up of Fishhook Barrel Cactus

There are several varieties but the "jumping" cholla has to be the most troublesome. They are made up of lots of segmented body parts covered in hundreds of sharp spines. The newest body segments are prone to breaking off the rest of the plant with only the slightest disturbance. If you brush up against a jumping cholla with an arm or leg, you will find the segment firmly attached to you with several spines gripping your boot, pants or worse - flesh! Since the thing had spines all around, one cannot easily grab it to remove it. Plus as you attempt to remove one side of the thing, it will rotate and stick you with new ones. How do we know so much about jumping cholla? Let's just say that bushwhacking up the side of a steep mountain presents plenty of opportunity to practice your extraction skills.

The climb is steep and rocky and the further we go up, the more we realize how challenging it will be to come back down. It's one thing to brush into a cholla, but sliding into one would be disastrous. Every now and then we convince ourselves we are on a trail, only to have it disappear. But the time we get within a couple hundred feet of the first geocache, we are compelled to at least get there. The cache is at a bit of a clearing with great views of the surrounding area. In the distance we can see thick black smoke. At first we were concerned a wildfire had broken out but then we remembered that they were doing a prescribed burn at Sweetwater Preserve that we hope to visit while we are here - just not today!

Heading Towards Cat Mountain

Partway Up Cat Mountain

Pretty View with Smoke from Fire

We take a break and have a snack. We still have nearly 1/2 mile more to the peak with it all uphill. It doesn't take long before our presumed trail disappears. We make it maybe another tenth mile before we give up. I guess we weren't up for that last cache. The hike back down was tough, but we were cautious and went slow. We ended up taking a different path back down although it wasn't clear this was the trail either. Maybe we should stick to established trails at least when a major climb is involved.

Our Snack Spot

A Long Way Down

Cat Mountain

Track from Cat Mountain Hike Stopping Short of Summit

The next day we made up for our failure with a hike to Wasson Peak in nearby Saguaro National Park. There are a couple different options to get there. One is to go to the national park and do an out and back hike with a distance of just under 8 miles and just over 1700 feet in elevation. The other option is to start at the King Canyon trailhead on Kinney Road and follow this plus two other trails making a loop just over 7 miles with 1800 feet of elevation. We generally prefer loops since they give the ability to see more sights. We got a fairly early start to try to avoid the heat. The initial portion of the hike along King Canyon Trail is a constant but gradual climb overlooking the wash below. The ocotillo were starting to bloom along the trail. The trail surface itself wasn't great consisting of fist sized rocks that were challenging to walk on. After just over 2 miles, we have climbed 1000 feet to the saddle point where Sweetwater Trail intersects. We take a breather and enjoy the views both to the south from whence we came and to the north from this saddle point.

At the Start of King Canyon Trail

Ocotillo in Bloom

Getting Higher Along Trail

Still Have a Ways to Go!

View at Saddle Point

We need to turn left (northwest) and follow Sweetwater Trail up. This section of the trail looks steep. The numerous switchbacks definitely help but it is still quite a climb. So much for beating the heat. It's hot up here with all this climbing. Definitely a good call to come with the Camelbacks versus water bottles. We're using a lot of water. In the next nine tenths mile we pick up another 600 feet. That might explain why the one woman waiting at the saddle point for her husband and son to return was waiting. It was a good workout. By this point we can easily see our destination - Wasson Peak. It's another third of a mile and only 100 feet up but it is across a bit of a ridge. Fortunately it is plenty wide so even Chris doesn't seem to mind. We can see lots of people sitting at the top. There isn't a physical geocache up there, but there is a virtual cache. We take the required photos to log this cache and feel it is worthy of its 4 (of 5) star terrain rating.

Wasson Peak is in Sight

Impressive View from Wasson Peak

Looking at Our Trail Back from Peak

The plan had been to eat the lunch we brought along, but we made it here before we were hungry so after relaxing a bit we head back across the ridge. One option would be to backtrack the way we came up but we decided to try out the Hugh Norris trail that heads generally west as it starts to descend. This section of trail is nice. Unlike the King Canyon trail that is a former Jeep trail, this is a foot trail with better trail surface. That section of trail was just under 2 miles before we intersected the Sendero Esperanza trail which would take us to the Gould Mine trail. We did a brief search for the mine itself and did see remnants of an old mine shaft that is now securely screened to prevent idiots from heading in. By the time we got back to the parking area, we were worn out but feeling very accomplished. This is quite the hike and one of our favorites. It ended up being 8.2 miles with 2000 feet of total ascent.