The sky couldn’t have been any bluer, unlike last year’s overcast Tom’s Thumb outing! Eleven eager Trailblazers met at the Gateway trailhead of the McDowell Mountains, and gathered into 3 groups for the drive to the start of our hike at Tom’s Thumb trailhead.

As we made one of our last turns to the trailhead – 128th St., which is a dirt road, I was eager to spot some wildlife. The last two times I traveled this road, I spotted a jackrabbit the size of a small coyote.

This time I saw a small cottontail rabbit, which wasn’t quite as exciting, since I see them quite often in my neighborhood, but just moments after that we were lucky enough to spot not 1, not 2, but a small herd of deer! Quick, someone grab a camera! Of course they moved too quickly to be photographed. But by one account, one of them was an 8 point buck. Just beautiful!

This might be a good example of why one of the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy’s (MSC) goals is to complete the connection of the North and South Preserve lands – in order to have a continuous wildlife corridor for creatures such as this. Other wildlife spotted on today’s trip included a stunningly bright red cardinal, a gardener snake and a Phainopepla (which looks like a black cardinal bird).

The hike started at 8:30 AM and 41 degrees, and began on relatively flat terrain (TH TT to TT3 on the GPS map). The steep section from TT3 all the way up to the TOM THUMB map marker is where you find the granite boulder formations, which is like a fun Rorschach test on a grand scale.

When we came to the junction of the East End trail, I told the group “This is where we will come back to and continue our journey, once we go explore the Tom’s Thumb area for a while.” Some of the group sticks around what I fondly call the “Flintstone’s area,” while others check out Tom’s Thumb up close and personal:

This is the point where we bid adieu to one of our hikers (who was returning back the way we came since she needed to head home earlier than the rest of us). The remaining 10 hikers then made our way down the steep East End trail. It has a similar pea gravel footbed, like the ascent to Tom’s Thumb. Prior to the hike, I had more than 1 fellow MSC volunteer say to me “You’re going DOWN East End?! I’d much rather go UP it than down – it’s really steep!” So of course I was a little concerned about taking the Trailblazers on my selected route, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it not nearly as treacherous as they were leading me to believe.

Of course, I was prepared with two hiking poles and took my time, and advised the others to do the same, which made the descent much more tolerable. Plus, going down, you get the fantastic sweeping views. This is of particular interest, since this is the point at which the rocks change from rounded granite boulders to jagged angular layers of multicolored rocks.

Once at the bottom of the East End trail, two of the faster hikers decide to head back to the Gateway trailhead, while the remaining eight opt to linger and explore the nearby old windmill area for our lunch break.

After lunch, we begin our second ascent for the day, up to Bell Pass, then it’s pretty much all a downhill trek to the Gateway trailhead. We notice the various plant oddities along this section:

We covered 10.2 miles with a total time — including lunch and exploring breaks — of 6 ½ hours.