A hike near Stewart Mountain

As you drive south on Bush Highway past Saguaro Lake, you can see some beautiful mountains up ahead. There are often cars stopped along that stretch of road as people take pictures. There is a canyon that goes up into those mountains and I've wanted to hike up that canyon for a while. I could get there from the Blue Point entrance to Bulldog Canyon, but it would be a long hike just to get to where I want to start hiking. I could park close to where I want to start hiking (which is what I did today), but then I have to cross the Salt River. Well, the river has looked really low the past couple of weeks, so I thought I might be able to wade across or use some stepping stones. Click below to open a new window with the pictures.

Near Stewart Mountain

The first picture is looking in the direction I wanted to go. Look how hazy it is. This morning the air reminded me of Houston (except it didn't stink). It didn't look foggy, but I couldn't see the Superstition Mountains from my house. It was like they had dissapeared. Anyway, the canyon I wanted to hike up is on the left side of the picture.

The next picture is taken at the edge of the river. I couldn't get across without getting my feet soaked. The water is too cold to wade barefoot. Besides, with all the tubers here in the summer, there have got to be some broken beer bottles in there. There was an interesting dead tree by the river (next picture), so the short hike down to the river wasn't a total loss.

The next picture is a small peak across the road that I decided to climb. It's much bigger and steeper than it looks in the picture (isn't that always the case, though?).

There were a lot of pretty rocks on the way up. Some of them looked like big chunks of iron. The next picture is of a magnet I stuck to the side of one of them. The magnet also stuck to a lot of greenish colored rocks.

Next is the view from near the top. My truck is the middle one of the three parked there.

I found a USFS Control Pt up there. I couldn't figure out what it controlled, though ;-) I pushed it, pulled it, and wiggled it around but nothing happened.

Then there are a couple of ladscape pictures I took while at the top. I took 63 pictures today but most look pretty boring. I can blame the haze this time. A neat thing about haze is that is allows you to show distance in a photograph. I need to work on making use of that.

I just decided to add the last picture. Looks like a B-25 to me.