Hiking in the Superstitions

On Friday, Rich and Bill spent much of the day hiking in the Superstition Mountains from a trailhead at the end of Peralta Road. The innumerable hoodoos and giant rock formations, which are why I so love looking at these mountains, make hiking them extremely difficult and risky. Rich took lots of great photos but without a frame of reference the scale is not always apparent. I've selected a few that will hopefully share a sense of their experience; my favorite is this first one. For many years they had day hiked mountains in the L.A. area and backpacked the Sierras together so it was great that they got to mountain hike again. In this photo they have hiked up to an area named Fremont Saddle.

Here is a zoomed shot of that magnificent rock formation seen to Rich's left in the photo above.

From Fremont Saddle, they hiked up and along the backside of the ridge at the top left of this photo, came around the front base of the rock crown near the center, and continued hiking down and to the right from that crown. But then, they encountered an impasse so had to turn back and find another path.

The prominent rock formation below is Weaver's Needle. Notice the rock spires, hoodoos, covering the mountainside between where Rich took this photo and Weaver's Needle.

Seeing this vast assortment of hoodoos gives you a good idea of how difficult it is to hike this area. Try to locate the large hoodoo, with two smaller rocks at its base, near the center of this photo; the next photo is a zoomed shot of it.

I hope you found that hoodoo. Here Rich zoomed in and luckily there was an unknown hiker taking a break below the base of it which provides us with a good sense of the scale of these huge hoodoos. See the guy in the blue shirt at the bottom of the photo?

My favorite scenic photo of their day, it shows another part of the area they hiked...simply breathtaking!

In addition to showing how green these desert mountains are this time of year, this one again provides scale with the unknown hikers in the photo.

During the years when Rich and Bill and other friends of theirs went backpacking in the Sierras he took lots of photos, most of which he had developed into slides. After we were married, he stopped taking photos because I often have a camera in my hand. I am so thrilled that he had the G9 restored and is now taking photos again because he has a great eye for photography!

Lovin' Life ~~ And Rich's Photos