Pima Canyon Trail in the Santa Catalinas

HIKE OF THE MONTH PIMA CANYON TRAIL IN THE SANTA CATALINA MOUNTAINS

TEXT BY LAWRENCE W. CHEEK PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK DYKINGA We lounge on a couple of boulders, feasting on a threecourse trail dinner of oranges, crackers, and canned ham. A nostalgic movie is unreeling in my trail companion's head, and he's narrating: how he climbed that cliff to our left back in high school; how his mom never saw him off to the canyon without worrying; how, in later years, he sweated away the office's tensions by running the trail to this mountain spring in the Santa Catalinas, 3,000 feet above Tucson.

The show ends abruptly on this cool April day. "I may never see this again," he says.

He's leaving Tucson, his lifetime home, for a new job in New Mexico. I feel his pain of separation as sharply as if it were mine. He's been hiking, climbing, and camping in Pima Canyon for 30 years, and several mileposts of his life are in it. The trailside death of a good friend. His first published essay, which was about Pima Canyon. Our friendship. I was the magazine editor who bought the essay, then invited him to lunch, curious to learn what had inspired a scientist to write a piece that crackled with so much emotion.

"Let me take you into the canyon," he'd said.

I had lived in Tucson for nearly 20 years without venturing into Pima Canyon. I'd read plenty: a pair of developers own 471 pristine acres near the canyon's mouth, there had been rumblings about a hotel and golf courses, and preservationists were on red alert. I'd been concerned, too, but in the abstract.

The first three miles up the trail are easy. The canyon is a wide, gently-sloping V with a narrow riparian forest of sycamore and hoary cotton-wood at the bottom. Water runs unreliably here, but there was enough, apparently, for the Hohokam to have farmed Pima Canyon a millennium ago: a little more than three miles into the canyon we find four metates, circular crater-like depressions for grinding corn, worn into a rock.

The last two and a half miles are a struggle. The canyon narrows progressively; the trail steepens radically. We grit our teeth and push headlong through clumps of yucca, turnstiles of desert cutlery. Then at one boulder-strewn passageway, we encounter the first rattler of spring, a two-foot-long Mohave wrapped around a black rock, taking the sun. Right at the trail's edge, of course, mandating a difficult, rocky detour for us.

For my companion, the snake is merely more personal history. "I've seen them in this exact place before," he says.

The trail's end is Pima Spring, 5,600 feet high and well into the mountain's piñon-juniper woodlands. Above us the canyon walls, craggy as late Beethoven sonatas, soar almost vertically to form several of the Catalinas' more prominent peaks. Below us, where the canyon opens to the southeast, is a little wedge of Tucson, glittering in the sunlight. Behind it, 70 miles away, we can see the thumb-like stub of Baboquivari, mountain home of l'itoi, the spiritual elder brother of the Tohono O'odham.

"You should take this trail sometime in the moonlight," my friend says.

I prefer to find my rattlesnakes in the revealing glare of the midday sun, I say. But I consider the idea. And suddenly I understand how this canyon has exerted such force on my friend's life. A few million years of geologic history exposed, a few thousand stars undisturbed by city lights, a view of a god's dwelling in the distance it's all here.

Some people, in the presence of such awesome natural beauty, feel themselves shrinking into insignificance. Others, more admirably I think, become more determined to enjoy, to explore, to understand.

He's taken that from the canyon; now I begin.

When You Go

To reach Pima Canyon, drive north from central Tucson on Oracle Road, turn east on Magee (about eight miles north of downtown) and park at the road's end. The trailhead is signed. The roundtrip hike to Pima Spring takes about seven hours. Carry ample food and water.

Hiking Guide:

For a detailed guide to hiking in Arizona, we recommend Outdoors in Arizona: A Guide to Hiking and Backpacking, a collection of 48 great hikes through desert, mountain, and canyon environments, including easyto-get-to trails in the urban areas. To order, call toll-free 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area, telephone 258-1000.