Locals Hike – Page 2 – Kingsnake's Home Den

Indicating the direction to turn on the Desert Rose Trail. You can't get lost with all the signs!

Maricopa Trail: Estrellas to PIR

2022-12-15 Hiking 0

Counter-clockwise from Bronco Trailhead, this is the 11th segment of the Maricopa Trail. One of my current projects is to hike or bike all 240 […]

Honey bee gathering pollen from a teddy-bear cholla.

Maricopa Trail: Sun Valley to White Tanks

2022-04-07 Hiking 0

Counter-clockwise from Bronco Trailhead, this is the 8th segment of the Maricopa Trail. I’d be surprised if any other metro area has a loop trail […]

I guess you could say I have a thing for sunburst photos. My favorite was in the Castle Dome Mountains.

San Tan Mountain Regional Park

2022-03-16 Hiking 0

Unlike most of metro Phoenix, which is laid out in one mile squares, the roads in Queen Creek are all curley. So, for the third […]

I'm not sure if it is a measure of cactus needle sharpness, or how thin cans are now, but when I tried to balance my hiking beer on this cholla, it fell off and punctured, forcing me to chug it.

Dixie Mountain Loop

2022-03-03 Hiking 0

I haven’t gotten out of the house for anything more than a spin around the neighborhood since biking the Maricopa Trail three weeks ago. Funeral […]

Lost Ranch must have been really something back in the day. Whenever that was.

South Mountain: Pyramid Loop

2022-01-19 Hiking 0

Every winter, I do hikes in lower elevations, where there is no snow. Most of those are what I call a “locals hike“: Phoenix area hikes […]

Stone X at the east end of Gadsden Trail. The stone X overlooks Desert Rose Trail, which ends at Phoenix International Raceway (PIR), barely visible past that small hill in the middle.

Toothaker / Gadsden / Butterfield

2022-01-05 Hiking 0

Estrella Mountain Regional Park is 19,840 acres of easy Sonoran Desert hiking. Officially, the most difficult trail is rated “moderate-difficult”, but Maricopa County tends to […]

Balanced "mushroom" at Mushroom Rock Scenic Point. Tom's Thumb Trailhead visible on the left. It is an easy one mile roundtrip to Mushroom Rock Scenic Point.

Marcus Landslide

2021-12-23 Hiking 0

Marcus Landslide was “discovered” in 2002 by two ASU geography post-grads. Surely, many people had looked at the rocks before, but the students were the […]