Madera Canyon Feb 8, 2014

Madera Canyon is located in the Coronado National Forest, 12 miles east of Green Valley.    We’ve been gazing at those beautiful mountains for days.  So, off we went to check out Madera Canyon.   It is a short drive and our Senior Park Passes got us in without paying the $10.00 entrance fee.   ( Forest Service funding ended in 1987.  This is the second wildlife area (Coronado State Park, north of Tucson is the first) that a group of “friends” have organized to keep it open.  The entrance fee keeps the roads accessible.  The Friends of Madera Canyon contribute 5000 to 6000 volunteer hours annually.

We drove the paved road up the mountain to the end, as close as we could get without hiking to Mt Wrightson.  It would take 10.8 mile hike one way to get there.  Instead we walked a short portion of the 9 mile Old Baldy Trail. (Although our Esperanza walking path is a good start, we are not ready for anything vigorous.)The views of the mountains that tower over us are so amazing to this Midwestern.  Our prairie lands have their own specialness, but these mountains are forever changing in color and definition.  You can see rock bluffs as the dirt has been worn away by wind and rain and probably snow at this height.

Madera Canyon experienced a fire in 2005 which was described as burning in a "mosaic pattern" meaning that the fire skipped around the mountain side.   The charred bark on this tree indicates it was in the fire but not totally damaged.  So, I guess this is how a forest repairs itself.  I was wondering about that after seeing the totally burned out mountains in the Gila Range in New Mexico (- see Jan 28-41 blog) 

Looking up

Looking down at valley

Grateful for the handrails on the path down!!

The park maintains teaching areas for school children and adult field trips.


We did not see any. ( Thank you Lord!!)

We stopped at Bog Springs Trail head to have our picnic lunch.  As you can tell this is a forested area.  Not many cacti.  The temperature was an invigorating 60 degrees, so we thought we’d try some of the Bog Springs trail.  After all, I could not imagine any swamp like areas up here on this mountain.  

No matter how close we get, there's always more mountain.

 We thought .4 mile didn’t sound too bad.  However, it proved to be quite rocky and quite an incline, so we came back down.  There is a road that leads to the Bog Springs camp Ground.  We’ll try that next time just to see if there why the trail is named Bog Spring.

Leaving the easiest to last, we walked some of the paved wheelchair accessible path.  

We found this very old grave site off to the side of the path, but there is no printed information about it.  The inscription said,"Sister" and "Brother" and we could not read the rest.  It was very weather worn.  We’ll have to ask one of the docents about it.

 This large rock formation is called Elephant Head.  There is a hiking path to it, but not for us today

Even though we are at the lowest trail in Madera Canyon, the valley below is still very far away.  We agree to come back once a week.  This is a beautiful, quiet place.  And, they have a gift shop!

Time to go home and check for sun burn.