Horseshoe Mountain, bees, snakes, wasps, hawks, lizards, etc.

This is what I call Horseshoe Mountain. I don't know if it has a real name.

In my continuing effort to lose some weight, I've been re-visiting a lot of places I've hiked before. I was on Horseshoe Mountain a couple of days ago. I hadn't been up there for a few years. There was a saguaro next to a rock wall on the way up, and you had to go between the two. The saguaro had no spines on the side facing the rock, up to about shoulder height. I thought that meant that a lot of people had been through there and a lot of those got saguaro spines embedded in their sides. I guess it's more likely that some kid with a stick knocked the spines off, though. Anyway, that saguaro has fallen over.

A saguaro that had guarded the path up for many years has fallen.

A beehive a little further up the trail. I don't know if they are killer bees or plain old wild honeybees.

I was standing near the fallen saguaro enjoying the breeze and cooling off a little after the steep part of the climb when I became aware of a humming sound that was not traffic. Snakes, scorpions, centipedes, wasps, and heat are some of the things you have to be careful of when hiking in the desert. The thing I fear most, though, is killer bees. You read about people being attacked by them in the Phoenix area every now and then, sometimes on hiking trails. Once they decide to attack, they don't stop until you are gone. You have to run a minimum of 300 yards to get away from them. They attack the eyes, nose, and mouth of their victims in order to blind and asphyxiate them with swelling from their poison or with their dead and dying bodies. Imagine trying to run down a mountain with angry bees stinging your eyes and flying into your mouth.

Killer bees are most likely to attack in the spring, when the swarm is searching for a new place to nest. Swarming season is over. They also don't like loud noise. I'm normally pretty quiet, but I decided to walk very softly. They don't like strong fragrances. That's one of the reasons I use unscented soap, shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, laundry detergent, and no fabric softeners. I decided that it would be safe to walk around them if I didn't get too close. I restrained myself from swatting at anything buzzing around me. Bees frequently check me out while I'm hiking. They buzz around at belt level about 2 inches away for a minute or so. Swatting at it could cause it to release pheromones that would bring the whole hive to attack you.

I think I've photographed this view from just about every possible angle.

There's a mine shaft up there that goes about 12 feet into the side of the mountain. I had hiked to it once before and decided to see if I could find it again. It wasn't hard to find.

An old mine shaft. I had hiked to it from below before. Now I don't see how I was able to do that. Nothing around there looks climbable from up here.

Looking into the mine shaft. There was a rattlesnake in it last time I was here. Didn't see one this time but I didn't look under that rock.

I have never been in that mine shaft. There was a rattlesnake in it last time, and that huge boulder on the floor makes me think that more might fall at any time. I think the bolts in the sides of the shaft are a recent addition, but I have no idea why they are there.

Another trail I hiked recently is Jacob's Crosscut up to the aluminum bench. I haven't been all the way up there for a while because it always makes me tired. It's the trail where I saw my first snake in Arizona. It was a red racer and it was wrapped around a bunny. I got too close trying to get pictures and it let the bunny go and zipped away. People say it was nice of me to save the bunny but I feel bad about making the snake lose it's meal. Anyway, just past the place where I had seen the red racer, I thought I heard a squealing rabbit. I got the camera ready and walked carefully along the trail. I eventually saw a zone tailed hawk fly away with what looks like might be a piece of rabbit. It's hard to tell.

Zone tailed hawk with what appears to be a piece of rabbit.

That was pretty cool. There was another hawk on a saguaro making screeching noises. That might be what I thought was a rabbit at first.

There are three benches along this trail. I adjusted my shoe laces on this one.

The trail gets a little steep towards the end. I trudged very slowly to the top, then stopped to take some pictures (i.e. catch my breath) and a guy ran past me. Show off.

Runner on the trail. It must take a lot of time to be able to do something like that.

Horned lizard. I also saw a deer but it was too dark to get a picture.

I like the way this turned out.

Zebra tailed lizard.

I saw a zebra tailed lizard that did the usual zebra tailed lizard thing. It sprints ahead of you for 10 or 20 feet and then stops and slowly wags its tail back and forth. I wonder if they are trying to make potential predators confuse them with the fellow pictured below.

Rattlesnake.

I saw that snake recently behind Phoenix Mountain, which is the mountain with "PHOENIX" written on it in large white letters. It was stretched out in the sand of a wash warming itself up. Just before I saw the snake, I had seen a tree covered with tarantula hawks. At least I think that's what they were. There were dozens of them. I don't know why they were all in one place. Must have been a mating party or something.

Tarantula hawk.

Let me know if you have any trouble finding the rest of the pictures.

Near a familiar place

I haven't been going to Bulldog Canyon much lately because there aren't many places there that I can get to that I haven't already been to. I was looking at Google Earth and decided there might be an interesting spot that I hadn't seen before near the Willow entrance to the area.

This rock is near the Willow entrance to Bulldog Canyon OHV area. It is very noticeable as you drive to Canyon Lake.

I was going to check out a spot that looked like a wash had cut a mountain in half. Surely there would be something worth seeing there. It didn't look like there would be much climbing involved, either, which was good because it was about 102. I started out following what looks like a road but really isn't. When I left the road I found that I was following a very well-defined trail.

This trail is narrow with sharp edges. That means it was made by people on horses.

Before I had followed it very far, the trail split. I followed the side that went towards the notch. It climbed slightly and after going past a large column of rock, it dropped steeply down to the wash. Very steeply. I can't imagine people riding horses down that part, and I didn't see horse shoe marks on the rock. I was going slowly and carefully and thinking about the article I had read that morning in AARP magazine about old people falling down and decided not to add to the statistics that day. It was too hot to go back to the fork and follow the other route so I was just moseying back to the truck and looking around.

The trail descends steeply on the other side of that rock.

I looked to my left at one point and thought that area needed its picture taken. I did that and of course, I needed to go in that direction a little to see what else needed a picture taken. It's funny how you can wander from one interesting spot to the next and then the next and before you know it you're on top of a mountain.

This led me away from the path.

Then I had to get a better view of that.

Then I needed to get pictures of these scattered rocks from different angles.

Which resulted in my finding this (suspected) rattler hiding in a rock hole.

Which was right next to THIS.

Obviously, somebody hid something here. Recall that not 10 feet away from here I found a napping rattler in a hole just like this. Anyway, I figured that it was either the Lost Dutchman's gold or a geocache. One would be worth wrestling rattlers, one would be *meh*. I carefully removed one rock and could see the corner of a Tupperware container. Geocache. I put the rock back and looked for the next picture to be taken. That's when I found myself on top of the mountain. I took a 360 panorama which is on my Panoramio page and my Photosynth page if you're interested in seeing it.

I couldn't go any further, so it was time to head back. I passed by a grassy area along the way and heard a rattler start up. I really like it when they tell me I'm getting too close. I would hate to step on one. I didn't get any good pictures of this one. It was moving away quickly.

Notice the pinkish underside and reddish tail. I think that's real (and not because it was getting late).

Click below for all of the pictures.

2013_06_09

Someplace I haven't been before

I've sometimes thought about not writing about an area until I was done exploring it, but I'm never really done. I've been on four hikes in an area near Canyon Lake and now I have a bunch of pictures but I've probably forgotten what I was going to say about them. You may recall (but probably don't) that I have been hiking along Willow Creek several times. It's a short drive from the house and easy to get to and the area is scenic (at least to me). I decided I would hike around a relatively flat area between the road and the creek.

The place I was hiking is near the 20 foot waterfall that I got pictures of a few months ago.

As I was wandering around, I saw what looked like a small side canyon on the other side of Willow Creek. The more I thought about it that night and the next day, the more I thought that I needed to go check it out.

A bad picture of a small side canyon on Willow Creek. I didn't think much of it at the time or I would have tried to get a better picture.

This picture is taken from further downstream. It makes it look like it would be easy to hike up to that side canyon.

The side canyon is along a short stretch of Willow Creek that I hadn't explored before. I had no reason to expect it to look much different than the rest of Willow Creek. On the other hand, the scenery varies considerable along the short length of Willow Creek. Well, it does to me, anyway. I suppose some people would say that it's all rocky desert. I'm glad I don't see it that way. So I headed back to Willow Creek a couple of days later to check out that side canyon.

Prickly pears are blooming. Most of them have yellow flowers so I take pictures of the ones that aren't yellow and end up with lots of pictures like this.

I used to try to get pictures of every kind of flower I came across. Now I look at a flower and think, "I've probably got a picture of that somewhere."

I descended to the creek close to the 20 foot waterfall. I suppose I should give that waterfall a name so I can quit referring to it as "the 20 foot waterfall". Any suggestions?

Somebody recently built some cairns in Willow Creek.

I hadn't gone far upstream before I came to an obstruction. In the past I have referred to these as puddles but in the southwestern U.S. the proper name is tinaja. This one is large, deep, and has steep cliffs on both sides. Well, they weren't extremely steep on one side. I could probably have worked my way around on that side. I really did not want to fall in, though

A tinaja blocks my progress upstream.

Since I couldn't go further upstream, I decided to see what was uphill on the left bank of the creek. It looked like it might be pretty up there and it also looked like an easier climb that the right bank.

The view looking downstream along Willow Creek. The 20 foot waterfall is at those cliffs on the right.

I eventually got to a spot from which I could look down at Willow Creek just a little further upstream of the tinaja that stopped me. I could see another large tinaja that would have stopped me again if I had gone around the first one. There were also tinajas in a couple of streams that empty into Willow Creek near there.

There are at least 5 tinajas visible in this picture.

I made a short video walking to the overlook where I saw the tinajas. Sorry about the shakiness. Also, you have to use the camera's LCD display when shooting videos (long story) and I have a lot of trouble seeing that display out in the desert so the camera is often not pointed where I want it to be pointed.

Video made as I approached a cliff overlooking some tinajas.

I don't think I ever saw the side canyon I was expecting to see. If I did, I didn't recognize it. I saw enough, though, that I decided I needed to explore that area some more. I went back a couple of days later and took a slightly different route to the creek and crossed it a little downstream of the 20 foot waterfall.

There were cairns along the route I chose, and a very faint trail.

I started going up a wash on the other side of Willow Creek and there were cairns there, too. It wasn't easy to follow the trail, though, and I didn't really try. I just kept going in the direction I wanted to go. I kept running across cairns, though.

The predominate color of desert flowers seems to be yellow.

There's a pointy rock along the way. It probably has a name but I don't know what it is so I decided to name it "Dragon's tooth".

It was on this hike that I encountered a problem I don't remember having before. The ground is covered with some kind of grassy plant. It has produced seeds and the seeds are at about ankle height and seem to be designed to be distributed by animals, and they hitch a ride on animals by getting stuck in their fur. I don't have fur, especially on my ankles, but I do wear socks. I got lots of seeds in my socks and shoes, and they burrow through the socks and the linings of the shoes and poke you in the feet and ankles. It's very annoying. I was thinking about that and about how the gnats, though they aren't too bad this year, are also annoying and how the rocks are always trying to twist my ankles and the sweat from the effort of walking drips into my eyes and stings them and how there aren't many saguaros (which provide the only shade) in this area. Then I thought about what it would be like if I could drive on a paved road and walk a short distance on a paved walkway to get here. It would be like the north rim of the Grand Canyon; so thick with tourists you couldn't stir them with a stick. Thank God for grass seeds and gnats and ankle-twisting rocks and heat.

On this hike I encountered something else that probably keeps a few other people from exploring the desert. It was a friendly rattlesnake. I say he was friendly because he started rattling when I was about 4 feet away from him. I really appreciate those early warnings. I often go an entire year without seeing a rattlesnake, so this was a special occasion.

A friendly rattlesnake. His rattle is a blur. Also, notice the heads of grass seed around him. That's the stuff I don't like.

I mentioned the seed problem to some fellow hikers at work and one guy said he carries gaiters to keep that stuff out of his socks. I got some and they work great as long as you keep them snug.

As I continued up the wash, there was a faint trail and cairns there. I wasn't intentionally following the trail but it seemed to be everywhere I went.

One of many cairns.

I saw some mining claim markers out there and wondered if the cairns had been put there by whoever thought they had found their retirement fund. I have stopped stuffing my pockets with gold nuggets since everywhere out there seems to be staked out ;-) That's OK; all that extra weight was just another annoyance anyway.

I went as far as the top of a hill which was only about half a mile from where I had parked. It was not an easy half mile, though. The top of the hill was flat and smooth and had very few ankle-twisting rocks scattered about. I didn't dare take my eyes off the ground, though. I didn't want to find an unfriendly rattlesnake by feeling it bite my leg.

Cholla on the hill.

My next hike in that area was the first time I tried the gaiters. I didn't have a lot of sunlight so I just wandered around near where I had already been. I didn't take near as many pictures because I already had pictures of most of the stuff out there. Strangely, it seemed that no matter which direction I went, I encountered cairns. I started to wonder if some nutcase had spent several years putting them all over the place out there.

Several buzzards kept an eye on me during this hike. Maybe they had worked out some sort of deal with the rattlesnake.

An elegant but flimsy cairn.

I have a couple of specific places in mind that I plan to visit out there. I'll be doing that soon if it doesn't get too hot. Since I organize my pictures by date, there are several album links below.

2013_04_19

2013_04_21

2013_04_23

2013_04_25

Gnats and rattle snakes

I was planning to hike up the side of a mountain in Bulldog Canyon on Sunday. I hadn't been up there for a while and I knew it would be pretty and I wanted to try to get to some places I hadn't been before up there. Before I even left the truck, though, the gnats were being very annoying. They were so bad that I wore my sun glasses just to keep them out of my eyes.

I was planning to go up there.

By the time I had gone 200 yards, my arms were tired from swatting at gnats. I had actually caught and killed 3 in my hands (which is unusual) and had smashed another 40 or 50 on my arms, but they weren't discouraged. I was, though. It was difficult to take pictures with gnats crawling up my nose and into my ears. That's very distracting, you know. It looks like it's going to be a bad year for gnats, so I'm going to have to find a solution. I'm hoping that the sunscreen my sister gave me will keep them away. I've used it twice (to prevent sunburn) and wasn't bothered by gnats at all on those hikes. I don't want to use insect repellent because I just don't like that stuff.

So I headed back to the truck and started driving slowly home. Just a little way down the road there was a snake stretched across the road. It rattled and got ready to strike when I got too close for it's comfort while taking pictures. Then it slithered away.

A little bit further and I came across another one. I'm pretty sure they are in the road to warm up (it was only about 89 out there), but this one was in the shade of a palo verde. As you can see in the video I made with my phone camera, it also started rattling before I was very close.

Western diamondback rattlesnake

The same snake on the side of the road, taken from the safety of my truck.

Then not too much further along the road, I came across a third snake. I got out of the truck to take some pictures and to shoo it away because I didn't think I could drive around it without possibly squashing it.

The third snake. This one's dangerous.

The third one never moved as I got as close as I dared to a rattlesnake. Not even the slightest rattle. As I moved around to it's other side to get more pictures the head followed me, but that was the only movement. It wasn't going to move, so I looked around for a nice, long stick. Longs sticks can be hard to find sometimes but there was a half dead palo verde nearby. I nudged the snake with the stick. It did nothing. I moved it a few inches toward the side of the road. I moved just a little. I started to wonder if it had already been run over. I was sliding it to the side when it decided that enough was enough and it gave its rattle a couple of feeble shakes and slowly slowly slithered away. I don't think it was injured after all. If I had stumbled on those first two snakes without seeing them (while hiking), they would have given me plenty of warning to avoid them. That last snake would have done nothing until I stepped on it. Then it probably would have bitten me. That would spoil the whole hike. It would probably be worse than hundreds of gnats.

I think I've come across 4 rattlesnakes while hiking (that I know of). Two rattled like crazy. Two sat there like rocks. I prefer the ones that rattle. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2012_05_06