Passage 16 of the Arizona Trail is south of Globe by Kearny. So we leave Phoenix on this cloudy day to go on a nice day (even if not dry) hike.

The hike starts by the Kelvin-Riverside Bridge. The Arizona Passage 16 runs about 15 miles beside the Gila River here, but we will only be doing 3.5 miles of it today. The Gila is running bank to bank today, in the summer time it is a series of puddles.

There is a nice parking lot just before the road ends and the trail begins. We start next to the Gila and start walking to the west. The Arizona Trail is mostly a north/ south trail, but today it 100% east/ west. This is an easy well marked part of the Arizona Trail.

This is one of the newer parts of the trail. The trail follows the bank of the Gila, but at the start it makes a jog up a ridgeline. The desert part of the landscape is green, but the part by the Gila is brown, because it is too early in the season for the leave to have grown out. In the summer it is reversed with the Gila being a green strip and the desert being brown. The rail line goes over the tip of the ridge, so the trail has to go elsewhere. This trail has some crested Saguaro along the trail.

We make our way down to the old rail bridge that crosses the Gila.

This bridge is still in use, but we see no trains today. They must run on weekdays. This is our lunch spot. The forecast said there could be rain today, but none has fallen yet. We have our lunch and at the end of lunch some light rain starts to fall. It’s light enough that I think that maybe I could skip the rain jacket, but it keeps falling so I have to put my jacket on.

The Arizona trail runs flat and next to the Gila at this point, so it is easy walking. We get to 3.5 miles from the trailhead and so it is time to turn around and head back. The rain continues, but is very light.

This is proof that is does rain in Arizona. We go to Kearny and stop at Old Time Pizza and Deli for pizza and subs for a late lunch or early dinner. Kearny is a small town that supports the local mining industry.