Trail Review: Pima Canyon

Today got off to a slow start.  The weather forecast was for high winds so we waffled awhile about riding vs. hiking, and eventually settled on hiking. We headed north to the Pima Canyon trail.  Go north on 1st Avenue, cross Ina and keep driving.  There is a parking lot at the trail head.
Memory is a funny thing, neither of us remembered the rocks!  It's a rocky trail.

 

More rocks.

 

Really big rocks.

 

Still life on big rock.

 

This is the creek.  It took us about 45 minutes to reach this point.  I do not have a good idea of how far it was.  It's slow going due to the uneven trail and the climbing.

 

We saw 3 hikers and asked how much farther it was to the dam, it was a mile or mile and a half.  Since it was 2:00, we hadn't had lunch, and we had insufficient food and water with us; we decided not to proceed since we were totally unprepared for a longer hike.  The plan had been to go an hour out, we bailed after 50 minutes.
This is part of the trail back, did I mention the rocks?

 

Look!  A crested saguaro.  We saw this on the way back.  The sun was on the wrong side to see it clearly.  There was a park ranger behind us, so I didn't really want to leave the trail to photograph it from the other side.

 

I found this via Google images, it was taken in 2008, and gives you a better view of the crest.

I like this trail.  The first section is a little like stair master because you're going up rocks, but it's not as hard on the knees as Hugh Norris was.  It's a beautiful trail.  Next time we're going to take lunch and water.  Hiking poles and stiff soled shoes are highly recommended.