Mount Lemmon

Sometimes there’s a good reason for the road less traveled being less traveled. We decided to take the back way up to the top of Mt. Lemmon, 9157 feet. The pavement ended almost immediately, and one of the few signs we saw was at the beginning: Mt. Lemmon 50 miles. The unpaved road quickly deteriorated into more of a wide path of dirt, rocks and sand. As we got higher, the road narrowed even more, and each curve was tighter than the last. Need I mention the truck is an extended bed with a poor turning radius? About three hours later we had passed a dozen cows, four horses and two guys on ATVs. The desert landscape slowly transformed into forest, as aspens and pine replaced cacti. If the signs about recent fire activity and flash flood hazards weren’t unnerving enough, we had also reached bear country. The last 14 miles took just over an hour. Just before we finally saw a few campsites and reached pavement at last, we caught up to the ATV-ers pulled over to the side surveying the landscape. “So, you made it!?” one of them called out as we passed, as if they had placed bets on whether we were ever to be heard from again. Once on the peak, the only thing keeping us from descending was that we couldn’t get the truck back out of 4-wheel drive (quickly solved by consulting the manual) and that the speedometer had stopped working (that inexplicably fixed itself). The front of Mt. Lemmon was beautiful! It looked more like Colorado than Arizona. We must have stopped at a dozen pull-offs before the 60 degree temperature we enjoyed on the mountaintop crept back up to 90 as the sun went down.

For more mountain scenes click here- http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j97/d3loeber/Tucson/Mount%20Lemmon/