Passage 19: Superstition Wilderness (29.4 miles) Bonus: You're just down the road from the mountain hamlet of Summerhaven, where you can treat yourself to a meal, a beverage and a cookie the size of a manhole cover. Turn onto Wilderness of Rocks Trail and again onto Marshall Gulch Trail, onward through pine forest to the trailhead. Leave the pool behind-no easy task-and make the climb toward Romero Pass, steep at times but with level stretches intermixed. With sheer rock sides and a small sandy beach, this is a popular swimming hole almost year-round. Past the junction with the Sabino Canyon Trail, continue uphill along the west fork to Hutch's Pool. Streams wind through canyon bottoms and around granite boulders, shielded by a slender forest of sycamore, cottonwood, willow, ash and walnut trees-and steep slopes above bristle with saguaro. You'll enjoy expansive views as you follow the east fork of Sabino Canyon, a woodsy cathedral guarded by cactus spines and rocky cliffs. The trail crosses Sycamore Canyon before making a steep descent into the Sabino Basin. (Don't worry, this isn't your swimming hole.) Starting at the Gordon Hirabayashi Trailhead, the trail first follows a dirt road before branching off past an old reservoir that's now mostly a marshy riparian area. Hike from desert to cool mountain forests with a stop at a refreshing swimming hole as hike this route to the top of the Santa Catalina Mountains-which form the northern border of Tucson-and their rising ramparts of peaks and angled summits. ![]() Passage 11: Santa Catalina Mountains (18.5 miles) ![]() To sample some of the immense beauty of the Arizona Trail, here are a few passages, from south to north. The Arizona Trail is divided into 43 passages, and even those can be tackled in more bite-sized chunks. The Arizona National Scenic Trail is a lanky route traversing the entire state, stretching from Mexico to Utah for 800-plus miles and crossing isolated mountain ranges, rolling grasslands, sun-spanked desert, forested plateaus and a canyon called Grand.ĭesignated a National Scenic Trail in 2009, the pathway is popular with hikers, equestrians and mountain bikers. Arizona is a big state-the sixth-largest in the nation-and one way to get a sense of that expanse is to walk the length of it.
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