On March 19th and 20th, 2016, Richard, Maxie and I hiked Oracle Ridge, most of Passage 12 of the Arizona Trail. We started from the intersection of the "back way" up Mount Lemmon and the paved road through Summerhaven. Though there was snow on the top of the mountain, the weather was temperate all the way to the top.
We may have made a mistake, since we traveled from Phoenix to the top of Mount Lemmon on the first day. Going from about 1000 feet above sea level to approximately 10,000 in one day might have been too much; it would probably have been better to sleep a day at altitude before doing a 12-mile hike to American Flag Trailhead, where we had left the second car. I also, perhaps, shouldn't have bought that spicy trail mix.
Anyhow, the trail down from near the summit was mostly clear, but at times steep and rocky. The panoramas show the majestic views. On Oracle Ridge, we had a view of Biosphere 2.The way was simply long, and when we reached the American Flag trailhead, I know that at least I was exhausted--too exhausted to really eat. We were all so tired that instead of camping on the back way up to Mount Lemmon, we instead opted for a motel.
On the next day, we took the Mount Lemmon Highway to the top, hiked around a bit near the summit, saw Summerhaven, and did not complete the trail down Pusch Ridge, as we'd intended to do. So, we were not quite done with Passage 12, but got most of it. This summer (2020), the stretch we hiked burned. The last picture is the fire damage from a previous fire on Pusch Ridge. I'm sure more of the route looks like that now.
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