Mellow level club hikers hiking near the Amphitheater at Brown’s Ranch (photo by Richard Schugel)
Warren Wasescha, Sun Lakes Hiking Club
If you haven’t noticed, it’s been a dry hiking season out there. In my eight years of hiking with the club, I’ve never seen landscape so close to completely drying up as I have seen this year, especially in sun-parched south exposure sides of South Mountain and the Superstitions. You wonder if some of these hillsides will ever recover. I think so. I hope so.
Compounding the challenge of dry landscape are the remains of burned-out patches of landscape from summer fires, areas sitting dormant waiting for a few raindrops to jump start the seeds that are now laying on the ground waiting for moisture to arrive.
If this is your first year hiking with the club, please note that the landscape usually does look much better this far into the hiking season than it currently does. Do not let one super-dry season cause despair!
All this said, I am continually amazed at the pockets of green we do come across when we hike the Valley. I call them “hidden gems” (not to be confused with the estate sale company!). A recent example was a hike I took with a neighbor to Hackberry Springs. The trail in was scarred everywhere from summer fires. And yet, halfway in on this hike, we came across a very green internal canyon that was beautifully green and lush. Another example this week was a hike up to Siphon Draw in the Superstition Mountains. While the path up was dry and brown, once we reached the steep V-shaped hill ascending to Siphon Draw, lush green desertscape greeted us. We have pictures to prove it! A tribute to captured hillside water and maybe good mountain shadows protecting the desertscape from the hot sun.
Feel like getting out on the trails to see what nature can offer? Come join our Hiking Club. We are a friendly, inclusive group of hikers welcoming all able-bodied hikers. Our goal is to make group hiking fun, challenging, social, and safe. We hike Mondays at three different intensity levels, and often a second “mellow” or “moderate” hike on Wednesdays. Our club is open to anyone living in Sun Lakes and SunBird.
For more information about our club, please type “Sun Lakes Hiking Club” into your web browser and look for our Meetup page. Questions not answered on our website? Please contact our president Ted Maresh at [email protected].
Hiking is one of the many rewarding activities you can do in our community. We look forward to hiking with you!