Apache Leap Hike

Time is getting short before I head back to Dillon Beach for the summer season at the Landing. And we hadn't gotten to climb up Apache Leap yet. So yesterday, we took up our (still new) walking sticks and set out on a two and a half hour walk up towards Apache Leap. The first shot shows how far we actually got. No, we didn't get to the top of the mountain itself. The odd thing is that the mountain peak which looks so nearby here from town, is actually a far piece when you come to walk it.

We got on the old Raymert Mine Road that winds up toward the bottom of the craggy bluffs themselves and walked it for an hour and a half. The walk was rocky rubble in places and mostly straight up. At times, I'd have to stop and try and catch my breath. We thought we were in pretty good shape from our daily thirty and forty minutes walks, but a hike uphill for four or five times that long tends to let you know what kind of shape you're in! And it wasn't as though we finally ran out of road to walk on. No, it continued on up, towards the bluff's base. While we felt we could still go on, we weren't sure we'd have much energy for the rest of the day, so reluctantly we called it quits and came down.

Coming down was quicker, by far, but in some of the rubblier places I was glad to have that third leg of the walking stick and it caught my fall at least two times. We paused on several overlooks to get some good shots of the town and Queen Creek canyon below us. Resolution Copper Mine, the old mine north of town, showed up real good from that elevation. In that second picture there, we climbed a ridge of rock jutting up from a peak to get a view of Highway 60's Queen Creek bridge just north of Superior. I was surprised by how agile Chuy was, able to perch on rocky shards like a little mountain goat.

At the end of the walk, though, Chuy flung himself into the shade under the car and panted. I put my walking stick into the car and picked him up. He was covered with big stickery burrs from the plant he'd been lying in. Docilely, he allowed me to clean him up and he curled up in my lap for the ride home. We didn't get a lot more out of him the rest of the day and today we purposely didn't walk anywhere. We thought we'd give the puppy (and ourselves) a day of rest before we find somewhere new to explore.