Espero Canyon Loop 3/23/24

I’ve been curious about the Espero Trail for a while.  It starts from one of the most popular and accessible areas for walks/runs/hikes in Tucson, the Sabino Canyon Recreation area.  Then it takes you on a journey into the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, up close to the craggy rock formations in the front range of the Santa Catalina mountains.   Most of my adventures in the Catalinas so far have stuck close by the Sabino Canyon tram road, or its more rugged siblings, the Phoneline and Bear Canyon trails.  A couple times I made it as far as the junction with the Arizona Scenic Trail (a.k.a. AZT) before turning around.  In the summer and fall after I moved here, this reasoning was mostly to do with lack of water.  After that, it was the intimidation factor of going farther out into the wilderness area that kept delaying any exploration out this way.

The word ‘wilderness’ conjures all the scary animals that I bring my giant whistle and air horn to scare away.  It implies ‘you’re really on your own.’  As crowded as Sabino Canyon can feel by Tucson standards, it can also be very comforting to know that you’re in close proximity of sunburned dads and bathrooms.  When I first moved to southern Arizona, I was terrified of every living thing I might encounter.  I thought that not having lots of big trees around meant that there was nowhere to go to the bathroom outside.  Even though I’ve jogged past black bears and through cougar country in other parts of the USA, the special dangers of the desert were so hyped up in my mind that I had to ease into my confidence here one smaller adventure at a time.  (And I ‘ve drastically dropped my standards for how much privacy is really necessary for peeing outside.)

The wet winter made sure that the water situation was taken care of, and the distance was right, so I had no excuse not to venture forth on the Espero Canyon Loop route I found on the Tucson Trail Runners website.  I liked the idea of a loop that would start with the toughest, least familiar area and then wind me slowly back towards the places I already knew. 

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I get to Sabino late morning on a Saturday in late March, which means the parking lot is jam packed.  I park in the overflow lot and make my way to the tram road, where I overhear people talking about the parade of tourists on the trail to Seven Falls.  I picked a good day to do a less popular route.  As I make my way up from a picnic area on the first couple miles of the trail, there are still quite a few people hiking it, mostly on their way down.  As I climb farther up, the people peter out.

Rain in the mountains means flowers.  This route keeps dazzling me with wildflowers of all colors, shapes, and sizes.  Of course, this also means the bees are getting busy.  I’m scared of bees, and the fact that most bees in the area are ‘Africanized’ hasn’t helped much in that department.  Last spring, the sound of multiple bees buzzing often triggered a panic attack.  Was I near a hive?  Were they going to attack me and sting me hundreds or even thousands of times, as I’d read about in bee attack stories?  Were they going to chase me until I ran off the side of a cliff or tripped over a rock, after which they would blanket me in a swarming, black-and-yellow mass?  A lot of my imagination has been spent on these scenarios.

This spring, I feel a little more calm.  Acclimating to the environment in general has helped reduce the feeling of being constantly bombarded with new dangers to consider.  I try to prime my brain to have a welcoming, positive attitude towards all the living things creeping around me.  Today, I decide to use positive reinforcement on the bees.  When I see or hear a bee, in my mind I tell them “good job guys” and “keep it up.”  After all, they are all doing some of the most important work on the planet to keep us all alive.  They are the reason the flowers continue to bloom.  This tactic helps calm my brain a little as I make my way past the bright bunches of yellow and purple and red.

I come across a couple of people peering up at a steep hillside full of saguaro cacti, grass, and brush.  “We’re trying to figure out if that’s buffelgrass,” says the man.  We chat about invasive buffelgrass and they ask me where I’m headed.  I tell them and feel that mild twinge of embarrassment I feel when I tell people about long distance running I’ve done.  I think it comes from being raised not to brag or draw too much attention to myself.  They seem familiar with the route.  “There’s no time like the present!” says the man  when I decide to move on.  Yes indeed.  I say goodbye and continue on, suddenly hit with those thoughts that you’re bound to get at some point early in a long adventure – oh shoot, I’m only x miles in and I’m planning to go y miles total today?  Why did I think that would be fun?  Will I get done before dark?  I feel tired already just thinking about it.

Luckily, there is a lot to look at here. That’s always a good way to stop overthinking.  I look up, down, side to side, behind me at how far up I’d come from the winding trail below.  The clusters of tiny faraway neighborhood roofs are to the left, the mountains are to the right.  I go up a switchback and pass an older man wearing big, yellow-tinted glasses.  Seeing people on the trails who are significantly older than me is always a reality check to my fears.  They often appear to be much less stressed and more in shape than me, as I’m huffing and puffing and sweating.  Seeing them lets me imagine myself in the future, doing this same thing, long after these days of unnecessary anxiety fade away.  Future me has done this so many times.  Time is a flat circle.  I’m just following my own steps.

I come to an unexpected junction at the top of a canyon and check my printed route map, which doesn’t appear to mention this spot at all.  I hear rushing water and look down the canyon to see a distant, raucous waterfall.  One trail goes left along the ridge and back towards Tucson, while the other trail goes right and down.  The latter seems more correct.  Up this way, I spot a falcon hovering high above the canyon, watching and hunting.  This is one of my favorite things to zone out and stare at.  His body and spread wings tilt along with the air currents but his head stays fixed in the same place.  He can probably see all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, and he’s not even wearing glasses.  My own nearsighted eyes are used to nonstop computer screens and sometimes have trouble focusing on the details of distant terrain, even after a brand new prescription.  I admire the falcon for a long moment and then continue on up and along the ridge.

This leads to one of the first stream crossings and the beginnings of many dry rocky spots where the trail gets harder to follow.  The first wet crossing is shallow and full of flowing green strands of algae.  I pass through alternating trees and rocks, trees and rocks.  I hear running water somewhere nearby, the volume turning up and down as the trail and water shifts direction.  It’s such a comforting thing to hear water in the desert.  Eventually, I pass a fire ring in a clearing and hear the hard spattering of water on rocks much closer than before.  It’s a clearing with a waterfall – not flowing as strong as the one I’d seen earlier, but enough to count as a waterfall, or at the very least a dribblefall.  A couple is sitting on the ground in the clearing, sharing an orange.  I say hello and pull out my filter bottle and climb up onto a rock to catch some of the waterfall flow in the bottle.  I get very wet and almost slip off the rock and barely get a drop in the bottle. I decide to wait until an easier spot to fill up.

This is around where the terrain mostly changes to dark brown dirt instead of light sandy dirt.  I’ve become very aware of the different colors and composition of dirt and sand and rocks in Arizona.  It’s a full-on rainbow of geology, and I haven’t even been to the Grand Canyon yet.  The dirt on this part of the trail is moist enough that it’s pretty easy to get a footing up the steeper parts.  Not that there aren’t still a lot of rocks.  Rocks are the official mascot of Arizona trails.

The trail continues with nobody else in sight and soon enough I make it up to the signed junction with the Cathedral Rock trail.  It’s encouraging to see proof that I’m not lost.  It’s time to say goodbye to my new friend Espero for today.  It continues on for some distance, and I hope someday I can come back and see what’s even farther up.

The next section of trail along the ridge is windy.  To the right, I get views of mostly-cloudy Tucson and the lower peaks.  I recognize a rock formation that I’ve looked at many times from the other side, while driving north towards the Catalinas.  I remember thinking, “geez I wonder if I’ll ever make it up there.” Now I’m seeing it from behind, from even higher up.  One of my favorite feelings is knowing that the next time I see a place, I’ll remember when I was there.  Present nostalgia for future memories.  Like I felt before, time is moving differently the farther away from people I go.

I finally get to the high point, and then begin a long descent that passes through some burned areas with blackened trees.  It’s been long enough since the last fire that vegetation fills the wounds in the landscape.   Switchbacks going down and down.  I reminisce about the Plain 100k last year, which included one of the longest, most tedious series of switchbacks in my life.  Some of that tedium was from navigating the big waffle-shaped cinderblocks that lined several of the trails at Plain.  The cinderblocks made me really appreciate good old fashioned rocks.

Back in Arizona, I keep on descending until I enter the lush bottom of the canyon.  This is another special desert feeling, when you’ve been scrambling through exposed areas for miles and finally hit some real shade.  Your whole body sighs and relaxes, no matter how tired you are and how much farther you have left to go.

For the third time on this route, I pass through a grove of trees populated by easily offended blue jays.  They scream at me and I smile at them. A little ways on I find a blue jay feather on the ground.  I take it as a gift to tell me that they don’t really hate me, they just don’t want me walking through their house.

Around this time I make a really stupid wrong turn when I get to the end of the Cathedral Rock trail, which marks the junction with the AZT and the West Fork trail.  Instead of taking two seconds to check my two maps, I am absolutely sure that I’m supposed to turn left.  This is the wrong way.  I realize this as I start ascending again and remember that I’m supposed to be going more down at this point, not up.  I belatedly check the maps and confirm how wrong I was.  I’m on my way up to Mount Lemmon.  I get mad at myself for how avoidable this was and how I’ll need to backtrack.  This is a silly reason to feel bad and I know this is just another lesson to remind me to take two seconds to check my map next time.  I am getting very thirsty but I’m not going to die, and I’ll get to water again soon.

Still, I put on some feel-good music to help reinforce how not a big deal this is and to let myself celebrate being done with most of the climbing on this route.  I have a large batch of downloaded songs on my phone that I like to shuffle.  “Nobody Does It Better” by Nate Dogg and Warren G starts playing.  It’s the perfect soundtrack to both chill out your brain and get pumped up about where you’ve come from and what you’re doing, which right now is ‘running’ through a beautiful wilderness area.  Soon enough I’m back at the junction and on my way in the right direction.  I mentally pour one out for Nate Dogg.

I get to a decently sized stream and refill my water bottles.  I let myself sit for a moment on a rock to help reset my brain.  I am feeling discouraged by my slow pace today.  But it doesn’t really matter – there’s no race, there’s no cutoffs.  I’ve stumbled down mountains in the dark in much worse scenarios than this.  I try to text my husband that I probably won’t be home in time for dinner today.  There’s no signal, so I give it a chance to send later.

The trail emerges from the trees a while and winds around some grassy hills.  All of a sudden I see bouncing flashes of white in the tall grass ahead.  It’s two deer, prancing elegantly away like four-legged ballerinas.  My split second of alarm turns to happiness.  Meandering onward, I get a glimpse of tents and people below me, which injects another burst of dopamine into my brain.  I have the same Pavlovian reaction I have when spotting an aid station late in a long race – everything is going to be OK!  I made it this far!  And then I lose sight of them, and start to hear people talking and laughing nearby.  There’s a short turnoff to Hutch’s Pool, but I decide to skip it since I don’t need water or a rest break at the moment.

My text about coming home late still hasn’t sent, so I switch to using my Zoleo to send a message through a satellite instead.  I’ve been getting more use out of it lately, even just to reassure me that I have a way to call for help in remote areas.  I break out the cake that I’d brought along as a celebratory snack for getting to the West Fork.  I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I wolf it down.  (This post is unofficially brought to you by Zoleo and by olive oil cake from Holy Focaccia.)

This section features a carpet of green, green grass.  I pass through a meadow with some empty camping spots.  These are the times and places that remind me of my home state where I lived out most of my life so far.  It’s a surreal and emotional experience to abruptly drop into a different environment.  I let the loneliness and dreaminess of the empty campsite wash over me.  I look forward to meeting back up with the section of trail that I’ve been on before, which means I’ll be getting closer to home.

Up at the next shallow stream crossing, I see a young woman in orange overalls.  She is stepping across the stream with her wet golden retriever gallivanting back and forth behind.  Her dog has obviously been having a great day.  “Where did you come from?”  she asks. “I don’t remember seeing you coming up.”  I tell her I came up Espero.  As I do this, I already feel the fond memories of the first half of the day, as if it happened days or years ago and not just hours.  We get to the spot where you either continue northbound on the AZT or make your way towards the tram road.  She turns away from the road and her dog follows.

When I finally see the small tram stop shelter and the familiar road below, I get another jolt of happiness.  I won’t be stumbling home in the dark.  The sun hasn’t set yet.  I’m close to the easiest part.  When I get to the shelter, I pack away the poles I’d started using on the first rocky descent.  I get ready to actually run for more than a few minutes at a time.  There was so little actual running on this route today.  Since my brain is in slow ramble mode, I turn my music back on again to psych myself up.

Some late golden sun breaks out of the clouds and illuminates the high canyon wall.  Yellowing blue sky opens overhead as I motor steadily down the pavement, grateful that I didn’t fall or twist anything today.  I’m having one of those times where a song syncs perfectly with the surroundings.  Crossing the concrete bridges across the creek, David Byrne sings about water flowing under, and going into the blue again.  I don’t think people should count on having euphoric moments to make all this rambling and sweating worthwhile.  But it’s nice to suddenly feel like you’re in a scene in a movie about your life, the uplifting part where you’ve overcome something big and have nothing to worry about ever again.  Even after “Once in a Lifetime” ends I have enough positive energy left to power up the very last hill for the day.  (And by that I mean I feel like I’m going to faint by the time I get to the top, and then I walk for long enough to let my heart rate go somewhere below 170 bpm.)

The sun is properly setting as I get back to the car.  The parking lot is mostly empty, the way it should be at the end of a day like today.  I dream about enchiladas and space out for a while. It was a very grindy but successful outing and I already look forward to suffering through it again someday.