Superstition Climbing

After our hiking trip on the Arizona Trail we took a rest day to get cleaned up and catch up on photos and other computer stuff.

The following day we were right back at it with a morning visit to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum (which had a huge variety of plants and really nice trails) near Superior (see Andrew's photos here) and then afternoon sport climbing at Queen Creek.

These descriptive and decorative tiles were placed throughout the Arboretum.
What a lot of work involved in making them!

This sign was sort of humorous until we actually saw a rattle snake in the trees along on of the trails.

The Queen Creek climbing area is a small area of spires and large boulders. Some of the routes seemed very hard for their grade but it was fun climbing and we pretty much had the place to ourselves (we only saw two other people near the end of the day).

The following day we headed over to Lost Dutchman State Park and the Superstition Mountains to find a route called "The Crying Dinosaur." The guidebook says, essentially, follow the main trail, pass a big outcropping on the right, then you'll be able to see the shape of a dinosaur head in the rock. In this photo below, in the closest part of the rock, the dinosaur head it so clearly visible to me. Two eyes, nose, mouth. That's gotta be it! Ya . . . no . . . that was not it. It didn't match the sketch drawing in the guidebook and it took us FOREVER to figure out the route was on the another wall just out the photo on the right and it took us a full two hours to get there! Very frustrating!

Looks like a crying dinosaur to me!

The top of the first pitch required a squeeze through this little tunnel to get to the belay.
(This was pretty much the only photo we took on the way up.)

Two rappels took us down the other side of the pillar. We decided the
old faded sling that was already there needed some new backup. 

Andrew getting ready to start the second and longer rappel.

On rappel.

The view.

Me rappelling. You can see Andrew and his white helmet below.