In what has become an annual December hike, eight Club members left the McDowell Sonoran Preserve’s Gateway Trailhead on a sunny morning heading for the first stop at Inspiration Point.

Gateway trail was already pretty busy, but once we were on the Windgate trail hikers became more spread out.

Hiking towards Inspiration Point provided good views of Scottsdale to the north and northeast, including million dollar homes on the edge of the Preserve. Along the way the brittlebush and poppies were blooming, along with other wildflowers

Six of stopped at Inspiration Point for a group photo. Unfortunately, the hike leader had not made it clear that we were stopping, so two hikers kept on going towards Windgate.

Leaving Inspiration Point, we hiked up to Windgate Pass in an easy climb, gaining about 360 feet of elevation in a mile. We caught up with one of our hikers, and since Windgate doesn’t have comfortable rocks to sit on, we decided not to stop and continued down from the saddle until we turned west on the Bell Pass trail. Two miles of uphill hiking brought us to the Bell Pass summit, just in time to see the fountain at Fountain Hills.

Leaving the summit, we worked our way down the steep trail.

As we descended, we had great views across Phoenix. Along the way one hiker slipped and got a cut on his head, but some first aid stopped the bleeding. All of us made it back to a now very busy Gateway trailhead, and had a short celebration in the parking lot before leaving for home.

The hike was about 9.9 miles long which we completed in 5 hours, 12 minutes, with an accumulated elevation gain of 2400 feet.