Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Aravaipa Canyon

This Labor Day weekend Josh and I took a trip down to Tucson to see some friends and to do a little backpacking.  I've been hearing about Aravaipa Canyon from my friend Megan for years now, but somehow I managed to never get there while I was living in Arizona.  She organized a trip to the canyon for the holiday weekend, so we decided to pack up and head down south to join her and some friends.  We got in a couple of days of hiking and camping, and also got to visit with a bunch of our old friends in town.  It was pretty great.

Aravaipa is this amazingly gorgeous, riparian desert canyon about 1.5 hours northeast of Tucson.  It's like a different world than Tucson.  There are huge cottonwood trees and cattails, towering stone walls and beautiful side canyons.  We hiked in for a few hours before finding a decent camping spot, then we dropped our packs and continued up canyon and found a really great swimming hole up one of the side canyons.  The night stars were amazing, the water was cool (even though the temps reached 102 while we were there), and the vegetation was lush and green and beautiful.  The entire canyon is about 12 miles from end-to-end, and I think we saw only about half of that.  It's amazing how much slower you hike when you're trudging through the middle of a river and having to find your footing among the river rocks!  This place is definitely on my list of spots I'd like to return and spend more time in the future.











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