Photos from Safford Peak & Butterfly Trail

Better late than never, right? And I could have told you that I did the Safford Peak hike today, and you'd never be the wiser, anyway. :P So here are the photos from the hike.

Here's the Mountain. Even from terra firma, it looks daunting!


We're on the way up!



This is inside a sort of cave formation. This is all of us. Can you tell who made it into the photo with Photoshop?


Here are some of us coming down after going up the wrong way on this loose rock.



Here are some from up on the Peak:



On Monday, I was in a daze and incoherent with exhaustion. LOL not really! I just don't remember the day.

Tuesday I went on a hike with Duane and Herb on the Butterfly Trail on Mt. Lemmon. These Mt. Lemmon hikes are a great choice for this time of the year, because it's so much cooler up there! On a day when it was into the 90's down in Tucson, it was in the 50's up there.


The trail was both pretty and a mess (because of the 2003 fire), both enjoyable and physically challenging. It was, we estimated, 2500 feet of up, and that did not count the myriad downed and blackened trees that we had to maneuver around or over. Here are some shots from the trail:








But the most exciting part of this hike was seeing the Arizona Black Rattlesnake! Amid all the blackness of burned logs and branches, he was fairly well hidden. Duane saw him first, when he accidentally got his hiking pole a bit too close to the snake. The rattler assumed a striking position and put his rattles up into the air! When Duane told us about the snake, we stopped and planned an alternate route, giving the reptile a wide berth.

Once we were around him, I began snapping pictures, of course!





Me... with charcoal-blackened legs and chin:

Each of us lost some blood on this hike, from brambles or run-ins with logs. Of course, a good time was had by all!