Rincons - Douglas Spring

December 9, 2021 hike: Rincons - Douglas Spring Trail to Cow Head Saddle and then about 0.75 mile on Cow Head Saddle trail.

I headed out for my weekly hike a day early to avoid the cold and rainy day forecast for the next day. It turned out that yesterday was very cloudy (mainly sunny forecast), somewhat cold and windy, especially at the top. Anyway, it was good to get out.

This trail starts out with very flat desert for the first half mile, then has a nice steeper section for another mile or so through the front-side mountains and then flows up and down over hill and dale for about 5 miles. After that, it finally begins a serious ascent to Cow Head Saddle, which is the start of the high Rincon section. The trail is extremely long - basically you can hike as far as you can go and not run out of trail. The trail is very well marked and it is mostly a very nice surface. I trail-ran a lot of it, so I covered a lot of distance.

Photo 1 shows the front-side mountains in the early morning sun. There are lots of nice cacti and some beautiful rock formations and stream beds (no water owing to the lack of rainfall in the past couple of months).

Photo 2 looks up to the high Rincons, with the prominent rock formations and forest that is characteristic of the high Rincons. It still looks nice in the photo, but in reality it was cool and almost completely cloudy for 4-5 hours in the middle of the day.

Photo 3 looks southeast from the top (about 6,500 feet up) at the nearby southern part of the Rincons and other ranges further southeast. It is heavily forested up at the top and there are nice views of southeast Tucson, the Santa Ritas and north Tucson and the Catalinas from this area. The peak on the far left of the photo is Rincon Peak, which reaches 8,664 feet, and is the second highest peak in the Rincons after Mica Mountain.

Photo 4 looks northwest down the valley leading to Cow Head Saddle from the same location as Photo 3. You can see the entire Catalina range in the background. I believe Reddington Pass goes through lower rolling hills between the Catalinas and the Rincons in the middle of the picture, leading to the next valley to the east of the Tucson valley.

Photo 5 shows the typical nice forest path in the upper parts of The Valley leading to Cow Head Saddle. This is lovely on hot sunny days.

Photos 6 and 7 are a still photo and video, respectively, of the Catalinas shot from the rolling middle section of the Douglas Spring trail. The views of the Catalinas and northern Tucson can be pretty spectacular in this area, which is good, as the terrain is otherwise not particularly notable for miles.

Photo 8 looks at a front-side mountainside in the late afternoon sun. The sun came out around 3:00-3:30 pm, making for a glorious end to the hike.

Photos 9 and 10 show the only two flowers I saw - a verbena in Photo 9 (possibly Gooddings Verbena) and Indian Paintbrush in Photo 10. Both flowers were fairly close together near Cow Head Saddle.

All-in-all, it was a long, but fairly easy hike, but the freezing cloudy windy conditions at the top took away some enjoyment.

Hike stats: 18 miles with 3,830 feet of vertical to a peak of 6,560 feet in 6 hours 36 minutes.