Hiking Lake Pleasant Regional Park Ruth Bindler One of the West Valley’s favorite areas for hiking is the Lake Pleasant Regional Park. It straddles Maricopa and Yavapai counties and contains a 10,000-acre lake created in 1927 by the Carl Pleasant Dam. The lake originally received its water from the Agua Fria River, and in 1973,…
Lynn Warren On a comfortable but slightly overcast Feb. 24 morning, 19 hikers enjoyed a quick 5.7-mile hike in nearby Verrado. The group started at the golf course and proceeded in a counterclockwise direction to cross Central Wash on the way to the popular petroglyphs, and then returned to the parking area via the SOB…
Do the PebbleCreek Hikers Ever Get Lost? Jan Sherwood Each month, photos and articles feature PebbleCreek hiking adventures; perhaps you wonder how we know where to hike and how we don’t get lost. For most hikes, there already are maps, parking lots, trail signs, and usually restrooms at trailheads. There are also more informal trails…
Hikers Conduct a Pink Hike October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month; several members of the hiking club have been affected directly by this dreadful disease and others indirectly through friends or relatives. So, how might a hiking club show support for the fight against such a disease? With a hike, of course. On Oct. 16, 16 members…
“B” Hiker Raises the Bar Higher Lynn Warren has been hiking with the club since retiring from a long IT career with Boeing in 2011. Early on, there were a few club members who had accumulated several thousand miles, and he gave little thought to mileage records. As a young teenager, he was fortunate to…
Lynn Warren The White Tank Mountains, just west of PebbleCreek, put on quite a colorful show this spring with lots of brittlebush, poppies, and other wildflowers, followed by outstanding saguaros in bloom. This Maricopa County regional park is a convenient treasure offering an impressive variety of terrain, scenery, and trails for PC hikers who hike…
Lynn Warren Is it a glacier or snowbank? No, the setting for the picture is an impressive outcropping of quartz in nearby Estrella Mountain Regional Park just across the Gila River, a short distance south of PebbleCreek. This park offers a wide range of trails that can be combined to create a custom hike through…
Lynn Warren Humphreys Peak is the highest point in Arizona at 12,633 feet, and the hike starts at Snowbowl at 9,000 feet. Because of the challenges of the altitude and elevation gain, the hiking group went to Flagstaff a day early and warmed up on the anniversary of 9/11 with a scenic 9-mile hike on…
Lynn Warren Although many readers cannot imagine hiking in the triple digit conditions associated with summer in Phoenix, there are members of the Hiking Club who continue to hike on a regular basis in spite of the heat. A compromise for summer, however, is to choose hikes that are shorter and closer to PC. On…
Lynn Warren Mike Tansey and wife, Ann, both St. Louis natives, have three children: sons in St. Louis and Atlanta, and a daughter in Portland, Ore. It was while their daughter was a student at ASU that Mike visited this area frequently and enjoyed hiking local trails, so Phoenix was a logical retirement choice after…