In twenty minutes we were hiking through dense plant growth including ferns, flowers, and raspberry vines, filled with fruit.

This forest had burned in 2003, but you couldn’t tell in this area. There was a ghostly reminder of the fire, haunting the trail.

The trail was in good shape. We quickly got to the low point in our hike near a small falls, about 2.75 miles from the trailhead.

We didn’t try to hike down to the base of the falls, but it could be easily done. After leaving the falls, we started looking for the side trail to the 1957 crash site of an F-86 fighter. Mohammed had hiked this trail before and had been at the site, but he was coming from the opposite direction. Our first trail might have been leading us towards Novio Spring, but no plane. We backtracked and continued our hike.

Between enjoying the lush vegetation, and looking for the crash site, we had not noticed that the clouds were building up. A few drops of rain quickly changed to a heavy rain, about the time we took another trail to the right, 0.6 miles from the falls. Those of us that had rain gear put it on.

Mohammed scouted ahead and came back announcing that he had found the plane.

Heather O., Li, and me followed after him and in a pouring rain, we took a few pictures.

It was not the time to explore the wreckage. According to my GPS reading the crash is located at 32.4243304, -110.718799.

Returning to the main trail, we started the three mile climb towards Mt. Bigelow. It wasn’t long until the steady rain turned into a combination of rain and hail, along with the sounds of distant thunder. The good news was the temperature did not drop significantly, and we generated heat by our climb. It’s lucky for us the trail was built with good drainage, and except in a few areas, footing was not a problem. One thing that concerned me was that the thunder was becoming for frequent and we were becoming more exposed as we approached Westfall Knob.

The good news was that everyone was in good spirits and we continued talking just like we would on a sunny hike. We were all equally soaked, even those with a raincoat or poncho.

At one point Li stopped, took off her boots, and poured the water out of them. We slogged uphill for 1 hour, 45 minutes until the thunderstorm activity moved away from us and the sun came out. At that point, some of us went back to grazing on raspberries, making up for the lack of snacking during the rain.

Reaching the Butterfly-Bigelow trail junction, I decided not to hike up to summit, but continued down the short distance to the trailhead. After quickly retrieving the other car, we did what we could to dry off. One person had the foresight to have a complete change of clothes, an excellent idea for this time of year. Leaving the trailhead, we didn’t go into Summerhaven, but instead decided to descend, stopping at a Panera Bakery in Tucson, sitting outside so that we didn’t freeze inside with our damp clothing.

Leader’s Note: I picked the Butterfly to Bigelow direction so that we would have a longer climb and shorter downhill mileage, thus reducing the load on my knees and giving us a better cardiac workout at 7500 feet on what constitutes a short, but beautiful hike. There is a way to make this a loop hike, but it would require walking on a gravel road (E. Mt. Bigelow Rd.) and maybe a short distance along the Mt. Lemmon highway. I don’t know how much traffic would be on the gravel road.

We hiked 7.0 miles in 4 hours, 35 minutes, with an accumulated elevation gain of 2800 feet.