On the afternoon of Friday, November 11, 2022, Sean and I continued our exploration of the Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park with a hike up a portion of Tanque Verde Ridge Trail. It allowed us to quickly reach some great views of the entire northern reaches of the Santa Cruz Valley, which encompasses Tucson, and the mountains that encircle the city. The trail climbs for eleven miles up a southwest-northeast trending ridge into the heart of the Rincon Mountains high country. But on this afternoon, we only did the first one and a half miles, which was still a vertical rise of over seven hundred feet.

The trailhead is near Javelina Rocks along the Park’s Loop Road. After parking and shouldering our daypacks, we started our ascent of the trail at 2:30pm.

The trail ascended fairly quickly, and almost before we knew it—maybe ten minutes of hiking—we were beginning to get some good views.

Up here were more huge granite formations like the Javelina Rocks below.

We continued up, passing a few other hikers making their way down.

Here it was still very grassy with the same assemblage of plant species we’d encountered on our morning hike.

The Saguaros beckoned us up and up until Rincon Peak (8,482 feet) itself came into view to the east. It as a reminder that although—like the vast majority of visitors—all of our time in this eastern side of Saguaro would be spent in the foothills, the unit itself extended through the mountains to encompass Rincon Peak.

Farther up, the grass began to give way to more bare rock.

We paused now and again to take in the big views.

As we climbed higher, the Saguaros themselves vanished from the landscape.

At 3:30, we stopped for a snack at a sweeping vista at 3,848 feet, 732 feet higher than the trailhead.

All of Tuscon lay below the Santa Catalinas.

Up here we also got a check-in photo of Elsa from Juan, who was watching her.

Far below, we could see the trailhead and the Loop Road.

It’s always a little difficult to turn around when a trail beckons you upward, but turn around we did. We figured if we headed down, we would have time for some wandering in the Saguaro forest as the sun set.

Someday, I would love to hike farther up Tanque Verde Ridge. But on that day it was a great way to get some bonkers views on a pretty short hike.

On the way down, we passed some French-speaking visitors who were excitedly watching a Red-Tailed Hawk.

We reached the trailhead just after 4:30pm. It was a great little three mile hike with 732 feet of elevation gain.

Now, for sunset in the Saguaro forest.