Ventana Canyon

Today was certainly my most adventurous hike yet. The way I've been going about picking my hikes has been to search online, google places I've heard of, read up on several different sites to compare reviews. So I decided to take the Ventana Falls Loop, which takes you off the trail and up the creek bed to the "falls," then you find the trail and take that back down. Some of the notes on this hike intrigued me: "For those who are a more adventurous and would like to skip the crowds, its possible to venture off the trail and do a bit of canyoneering in this wild and scenic place." FUN, right??



So the creek bed was really dry, indicating the "falls" may not be running much at all. The site stated, "As you head up Ventana Canyon, you will have to scramble over some large boulders choking the streambed." Scramble?! I was literally climbing and pulling myself up over these huge boulders. But it was cool.







One thing about hiking out here, and today was the worst yet, is there's these really annoying bugs that swarm you when you hiking. Like little flies of some sort. They stick to your arms & legs & try to go in your ears and it gets really irritating at times. It's good to keep moving. So as I am "scrambling," I finally get to some small pools of stagnant water. Covered in this green mossy stuff. And hundreds of wasps. I was able to climb around the first pool, but the second one gave me no options: I had to literally step over it. A few feet of stinky water and all these wasps!! And when I stop moving to consider if there's any other options, the flies start to land and drive me wild, so I just had to take a deep breath and pretend there were no huge wasps below me and step over them. But I succeeded!

So after I have been climbing up this dry streambed for a long time, I start to wonder if I missed the falls, if they were so low I climbed over where they should have been, and if so, then where the heck's the trail to take me back?! I am supposed to see these Maiden Pools, and I climbed around some pretty good sized pools, but it's not like they're labeled or anything. I finally get to where I decide must be the falls, not much more than a trickle today, but I could see how it could be impressive if the water was flowing more. But now I am at the bottom of this canyon and I need to find the trail. It's just all rock face around me. I remember the review saying, "Getting past Ventana Falls is the final obstacle of the trip. Pancho Doll claims that a rappel is necessary to access the base of the falls, but I disagree." I am AT the base. So I need to figure out how to climb UP.

Bushwacking uphill in the desert is not very fun. I tried several times to climb up the rockface, but seeing as I have never rock climbed before, I have no safety equipment, and it was a damn long way up...I knew I needed to head through the scrub. Which still involved rock climbing and going straight up. Everything in the desert hurts, no matter how soft it may appear to be. I was on all fours, climbing over cactus and dirt and rocks and yeah.....but I finally made it up. Then I had to bushwack more to get up to the highest point and try to see the trail...which I spotted, across another canyon. So down I go, back through the hardscrabble. Needless to say, I finally made it to the trail.



If I could draw on this photo, I would show you that those green things in the center/right are actually full-size trees, and I had to make my way from the bottom all the way up to where those brown rocks are, which were about 15-20 ft. tall. The pic does NOT do it justice.

Anyway, I was so happy to find the trail! Then it takes you up to this ridge and I stopped to take this pic of Tucson:

...and I stuck my butt right into a cactus. Seriously, I was already so scraped up and full of catcus sticky prickles, I didn't need more on my ass. I just dropped trou right on the trail and tried to get the things out of my butt and my shorts, yeah, I was almost a naked girl on the trail. Sheez.

So, needless to say, I made it back down. Every hiking website tells you to bring the necessities: water, food, sunblock, etc. I want to add a few: a bandana, to pull down over your ears and try to keep the flies out. A backpack, to cushion the fall you may take when you're bushwacking downhill (yeah that happened, too). But the best reason to have these extra items is to surround your body with extra layers if you need to climb up rocks through catci and under catci and around catci. I have cactus prickles (there must be a real name for them) in my shoes, socks, legs, BUTT, shorts, shirt, arms, HANDS, backpack, and bandana. I have spent tonite with a pair of tweezers and a needle, trying to dig these things out of my body. So that's the last thing you should also bring with you: tweezers.






Close up of a hummingbird!