I went on a cool lit­tle hike with a co-worker this week­end. A photo gallery is up on Flickr.

I’ve actu­ally got­ten quite a bit of hik­ing in this sum­mer. Sev­eral long –very long– day hikes and a back­pack trip or two.

This par­tic­u­lar hike was mostly a scram­ble down Pine canyon in the Santa Catalina moun­tains. We started off head­ing down the Pal­isades trail and then dropped into Pine canyon. Lots of cas­cades, falls, and pools of pre­cious water made the hike extra spe­cial. After a slight detour we con­nected with the East Fork trail and made our way past Sycamore Reser­voir and on out to Prison Camp (offi­cially named Gor­don Hirabayashi Recre­ation Site).

Another great adven­ture here in the southwest.

Our vaca­tion for this year was a short but fab­u­lous trip up to Zion National Park with some friends from AJ’s work (Charles and Alli­son). It was yet another new and awe­some expe­ri­ence in the out-of-doors. This trip included two excit­ing days at two very dif­fer­ent canyons.

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Jenny and I recently took a trip to Flagstaff where we hiked to the high­est point in all of Ari­zona.  Mt. Humphreys tops out at 12,633 feet and on a clear day pro­vides views all the way to the Grand Canyon and beyond.  It was a beau­ti­ful day and though we weren’t set­ting any speed records for the 9 mile hike, my lungs and heart told me I need not go any faster.

This was the high­est elava­tion hike we had ever done.  Some­day we’d love to hike Mt. Whit­ney or Longs Peak.  Some­day.  For now we’re happy explor­ing the peaks and canyons here in our own great state.  Cal­i­for­nia and Col­orado will wait.

Water in the desert is such a rare thing — it is almost sacred. Com­ing from a place where you have more water than you know what to do with (the Ohio River Val­ley) it was hard to grasp the pre­cious­ness of water in the south­west. How­ever, hav­ing lived here for just two years I have learned to appre­ci­ate water in almost any form; rain, snow, sleet, river, well, bot­tled, tap and I could go on. When­ever we are out on a hike, if I see even a trickle of water or pud­dle that hasn’t quite dried up I get giddy with excite­ment. Well, you can imag­ine my state when we hiked in Car­godera Canyon a few weeks ago where you could hear the water rush­ing from over 100 yards away! Okay, so at some places it was more of a gur­gle and it never got so fierce that we had to wade through it but, it was flow­ing the whole way down the canyon — in the desert that is some­thing to get excited about.

Suther­land Trail

So on Feb­ru­ary 27th, Lance, Erin (friends of ours), Aaron and myself set off for Car­godera Canyon in the front range of the Catalina moun­tains just north of Catalina State Park. We hiked up the Suther­land trail a ways and then dropped down to the creekbed of the canyon and essen­tially boulder-hopped our way out of the canyon. As I men­tioned the water was flow­ing down the entire canyon. If you do enough hik­ing in the desert you learn that water likes to play dis­ap­pear­ing acts . It will be trick­ling along then all of a sud­den it is gone and you are look­ing at sand. Then maybe another 100 feet or even a 1/2 mile later it shows up again gur­gling along. So to say there was water flow­ing down the entire canyon is rather profound.

look­ing down Car­godera Canyon

Our hike was absolutely won­der­ful — I was ecsta­tic hop­ping from rock to rock over the water. Smelling it, hear­ing it, watch­ing it tum­ble, swirl, and cas­cade over rocks just made me smile the whole way. The day was awe­some, partly cloudy with big puffy dark clouds threat­en­ing the sky, adding an ele­ment of excite­ment to the hike. Every­thing was fresh and alive with all of the recent rains. Lance and Erin as always were such a plea­sure to hike with, shar­ing all kinds of infor­ma­tion about the land­scape and his­tory of the area. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the day any other way.

water cas­cade in Car­godera Canyon