Arizona – Mountains and Hiking Everywhere!

The Santa Catalina Mountains frame Tucson’s northern boundary and are very accessible from the city. The first image is a view of these mountains from my hotel.

I hiked the Ventana Canyon Trail (2nd image) into the Santa Catalina Mountains at dawn yesterday: a beautiful hike through cactus-studded mountains and dry riverbeds to a breathtaking view over Tucson.

Another dawn hike at nearly 7,000 feet in the Chiricahua Mountains, where a forest of rock spires has been eroded from layers of ash deposited 27 million years ago in a cataclysmic explosion many times greater than Mount St Helens to form what is now the Chiricahua National Monument (3rd image)