Hiking Catalina State Park

Yesterday Ian and I embarked on a little adventure. Our goal: hike the Romero Canyon trail to the Romero pools and swim!!!! Sounds like a great Idea right? Well, it would have been, if powers out of our control hadn't intervened. The plan was to leave my house at 6:30, beat the heat. However, I overslept, and couldn't here my phone, which was in the kitchen, and Ian could remember which house was mine. So, after the comedy of errors and 45 minutes, we were finally on the road to Catalina State Park. It was amazing how green everything was, I hardly recognized it!

More bad news.... yes, the road through the park was closed, because they were clearing silt from the road that was washed down from the mountain during the flooding.

But did that stop us? Nope, we decided to just walk into the park. Because of the work being done on the road, Ian and I followed the wash north, crossed the wash about a 1/2 mile out and ended up at the deserted horse stables and the start of the Bridle Trail. The trail, (which is mainly used for horses) worked it's way east through the flat part of the park to the parking lot where we would have parked our cars, had we been able to get into the park! The weeds along the trail were taller then us!

See, finally at the trail head, almost 2 hours later then we planned and having already hiked about 2 miles, we considered our options. The Romero Canyon Trail goes up about 1000 feet to the pools, and were weren't sure we would make it, because the growing heat and out already diminished water supplies. However, not finished yet, we decided to see how far we could get.
The Hike was hot and uphill, but we went for about another mile and a half before we decided to start the walk back to the car. A little disappointed that we didn't get a dip in the pools, we headed out. However, when the ridge leveled out and the trail hit flat land, we decided to explore the canyon just off the trail. There was a sign indicating the "Montrose Pools", so we descended into the canyon. To our delight, the stream had enough water in it, and we were reward with a soak! You can't believe how wonderful that felt!


So, we didn't reach our goal, and the worst part was that the park road was opened by the time we walked back to the entrance. Anyway, our plan next Saturday, get up earlier, and providing the road is open, hike to the Romero Pools!