Arizona Adventure: The White Tank Mountains, Part 2

Part 1

Hazardous was right. The trail instantly got more rocky and had steep drop offs on one side.

Conker and I stopped several times to look at the desert on the other side of the drop.

Conker seemed like he was having a blast navigating the rocks.

Sometimes we would go a little too fast and try to jump up a rock and hit the end of the leash and snap back down. I had to either try to catch him to leap forwards to prevent this.

Sometimes I think Conker is part Mountain Goat. He loves to climb up things, especially rocks. We found a large pile of rocks and he just had to climb it to sniff around.

I did say it was large, didn't I?

Conker really liked this part of the trail. He was hopping around like mad.

We continued for another 2 miles or so past the warning signs until we came to a rock wall. We climbed up it but the trail just ended on the other side. I was quite confused, since the map said the trail continued on past and up across a pass. We looked for the other end of the trail for a while but after about 20 minutes of finding nothing, we turned back.

Despite the dissapointment in the middle of the hike, it was a lot of fun. Conker really enjoyed all the rocks, it's too bad I haven't found anything like that within a reasonable driving distance of GP.

I do know of a couple places that might be similar. There is a trail along the Rouge River that could have some neat hiking sections, I plan on visiting that sometime soon. And then there's the Badlands in Central Oregon that I am planning a week-long trip for this spring/summer. I am really looking forwards to that one.


Anywho, that was our one hike in Arizona. I really miss hiking in the desert.

But I don't miss these.

Arizona Adventure: The White Tank Mountains, Part 1

I totally forgot about this until I started to try to find a place to hike with non-flat trails.

While in Arizona I took Conker to the white tank Mountains located on the far western side of Phoenix. It was a short drive from my grandparent's place and unfortunately, we only went once.  I would have liked to have gotten in more desert hiking but it just didn't happen.

 The trail we took (Ford Canyon and connectors) started out as an easy walk. It was flat, the trail was wide and there were relatively few people around. Conker had to stay leashed (park rules) or he's have been let off to roam the trail at his own pace.

Never complete without a Shiba butt photo or two

Conker didn't seem to notice that the plants on the sides of the trail were sharp. He stuck his nose into many, got stabbed, then stuck it right back in to take a second shot at it. He even tried to bite one. He is not very cactus savvy.

Speaking of cactus...

It has been some years since I'd seen a saguaro.  Like the other cacti, Conker got stabbed by this one too. I also happened to step on one of it's spines that had fallen to the ground (remember, I wear those thin-soled Vibram toe shoes).

So we continued down the nice trail. We didn't see too many animals but every now and then one of those desert jackrabbits would show up and Conker would go bonkers. He wanted to chase them really bad, so I guess it's a good thing he was on a leash.

Conker being adventurous

A small ravine popped up out of nowhere. Conker, being his usual fearless self walked right up to the edge and leaned over.

After the ravine the trail got more interesting. It stopped being flat and well groomed and turned into a jagged, rough and rocky trail. This is what I'd been looking for, something that made you pay attention to where you're going.

Grass!

We came around a large bend in the trail and found something somewhat unexpected. A large flat expanse of grass! It was pretty cool seeing the short grass in the desert, I had never really seen that before despite living there for 19 years.

Conker didn't much care though, so we kept going after I snapped a couple shots of the grass.

Interesting...

Eventually we came up to a sign. A set of signs... warning that the trail was hazardous up ahead. I was quite interested to now what "hazardous" meant, and if it was anything like the trails I'd normally hiked while living in Arizona.

Part 2