A line of rain, hail and snow moving towards the mountain. December 2015.Winter storm on the route up to Pusch Peak. December 2015.In the clouds on Pusch Peak. December 2015.Light thru the clouds from the overlook off the Pusch Peak route. December 2015.
We watched clouds swirl across the mountain peaks in the AM before we started – but Pusch Peak was clear and it looked like a great place to watch the storm… It didn’t take long for the storm to catch us though, waves of precipitation rolled towards and over us, rain first – then hail – then snow, when we reached the peak it had been eaten by the clouds – too cold to linger we started back down.
The Santa Catalina Mountains had several days of winter storm – while the links below are now ‘old’ a number of them have interesting pictures – some showing the snow on the mountain!
Pusch Ridge in sunset light – taken from Golden Gate Mountain in the Tucson Mountains.
Pusch Ridge – Pusch Peak, Bighorn Mountain, Table Mountain with Rosewood Point on the other side of Pima Canyon and Samaniego Peak and Mule Ears visible on the ridge in the background. November 2015.
Flying into Tucson from Dallas/Fort Worth I had a little luck – window seat facing the mountains, decent light, good weather – and was able to take a few pictures of the Santa Catalina Mountains –
Looking down on Agua Caliente Hill on a flight coming into Tucson from DFW. November 2015.Molino Canyon and the Highway with Airmen Peak, Guthrie Mountain, Green Mountain, Barnum Rock and Windy Point in the distance. November 2015.Ventana, Bird, Rattlesnake, Sabino and Bear Canyons with the Summit Crags and top of the mountain in the background. November 2015.The Cleaver, Bighorn Mountain, Table Mountain, Wolf’s Teeth, Prominent Point, Finger Rock, Mount Kimball, Pontatoc Ridge. November 2015.Pusch Peak rising from the southwest corner of the Santa Catalina Mountains. November 2015.
Update 8/26: This fire was called the Bighorn Mountain fire – the Forest Service reports that the fire was caused by lightning and in a fly over on 8/24 (the morning after the fire started) no fire activity was observed (report here). Bighorn Mountain (Wildfire) – WildfireAZ.com, Wildfire burning on Pusch Ridge – Tucson News Now.
Midnight Update: I could still see two very small/faint orange dots on the mountain, but the fire appears to be very very small at the moment compared to the picture below…
If you are in Tucson you may have seen the smoke and flames near Pusch Peak – I haven’t seen any news yet about this fire but here is a picture from town.
A fire burning just below Pusch Peak in the Push Ridge Wilderness, Santa Catalina Mountains, Coronado National Forest. August 2015.
“Shriveled latex in rainbow colors is ubiquitous in the Rincon and Tucson mountains sections of Saguaro National Park, where the air-filled orbs often land due to local wind patterns, Zylstra found.”
“To Zylstra’s amazement, balloons greatly outnumbered desert tortoises and Western diamondback rattlesnakes in the 120 square kilometers – roughly 75 miles – of parkland she studied to collect the data.”
“In the Rincons, for example, a square kilometer of land had an estimated density of 62 balloons, 30 tortoises, 26 rattlers and 29 plastic bags, which Zylstra also counted.”
Sad stuff from Erin Zylstra who published Accumulation of wind-dispersed trash in desert environments in the Journal of Arid Environments (Volume 89, February 2013) – the first line of the abstract: “Detrimental effects of plastic debris and other trash have been well-studied in marine and coastal environments, but the extent and severity of the threat to terrestrial ecosystems are largely unknown.”
Balloon Litter. January 2009.
A picture from 2009, off-trail in the Santa Catalina Mountains, I took the picture above and wrote “I have found a number of balloons in quite remote places on my hikes – they seem so harmless, maybe even beautiful sometimes, floating up into the sky, but after seeing litter like this too many times they don’t seem so harmless anymore.”
South Fork of Edgar Canyon – on this trip I saw an equal number of balloons and people… March 2014.
This is not an unknown problem – thankfully in some places mass releases of balloons are actually prohibited (the Balloons Blow… Don’t Let Them Go! has a page on Balloon Laws) – but not here in Tucson – the littering continues…
