Rest Stop for Illegal Aliens: Hike to the Saddle

 There is a mountain saddle (because it looks like a horse saddle) between two peaks on the south side of our campground.  It looked doable to reach this spot, even though it meant creating our own trail through the desert. If you look carefully you can see a Saguaro Cactus at the bottom of the saddle--that was our goal.

Desert hiking varies in difficulty.  Some places it is like walking on a sidewalk.  At other times, it is picking one’s way through cacti and down and up through washes.  Slow going.  Lots of back tracking.  That was what it was like today.

The washes show evidence of the power of flooding in this area--huge uprooted plants thrown together with incredible force into tangled messes.  Read in the paper that several hikers were caught in floods in the Tucson area and had to be rescued by helicopter.  Lesson:  Don't hike in the desert in the rain.  

Here are photos of us crossing washes.  

 

Several times today we had to remove from our pants and shoes what is called a Jumping Cholla.  They do seem to jump onto you, like they are alive.  Apparently a whiff of air from walking close to them causes them to detach and follow the airstream to your leg.  And they have this remarkable ability to immediately, even through your clothes, dig their spines into you.  They also have barbs at the end of the spines, so when you pull them out, it is extremely painful.  A very strange plant.

Our first attempt to the saddle was up the west side.  We made it to a point even with the saddle, but could not get over to it—too many areas that were dangerous and steep.  You just can’t see them unless you get near them.   We were level with the cactus that was our goal, but couldn't make it to it.  It was frustrating because we were so close, but after invoking the safety rule, we stopped going that way.

 

So we went back down, crossed a wash, and struggled up the east side.  It was much easier going, relatively speaking.  

 

 

Then when we got close to the saddle, we saw a trail………

What?  A trail?  Here?  

And at the top it was clear that this trail is used by illegal immigrants.  And one group was here having a picnic and was very sloppy.  Shame on them.  Didn’t take them long to act like Americans. 

We cleaned it up so people wouldn’t get bad impressions of illegal immigrants.  After all, we are liberals. 

Here is the cactus that was our goal:

Instead of coming straight down we decided to hike around the mountain and try to meet up with the “ranch” we had seen on the first day.  We figured it was about mile away.  Took us quite awhile, but we found it. 

Quite a rewarding hike, even though the numbers don’t reflect anything much and don’t reflect the difficulty of creating one’s own trail on a desert mountain:  3.4 miles and 500 foot elevation gain.