11 Arizona Trailblazers gathered at the new and improved Pima Dynamite Trailhead on a wonderfully cool, breezy Saturday. What was formerly just a dirt and gravel lot is now (since Nov. 2021) an official trailhead with 200+ parking spaces, a covered ramada with restrooms and a small amphitheater used for gathering and educational purposes. There is now an entrance right on Pima Road, and the original entry point on Dynamite Road is still open, you just have to wind your way over from the old entry to the new parking area.

A great improvement they made here is that instead of all hikers and bikers having to head out on their adventure on the same trail, the trailhead has kind of a bike wheel concept, with several trails heading out in different directions (like the spokes on a bike wheel). The idea is to more efficiently disperse hikers/bikers out into the preserve, and help prevent congestion / bottlenecks near the trailhead.

Many people think of the trails in this area of the preserve as more appealing to bikers than hikers, because there are no big peaks to conquer, but actually there are quite a few interesting rock formations and some spots that offer surprisingly great views with minimal effort. These are things that appeal to hikers, and perhaps that’s why one of the volunteers (Stewards) at McDowell Sonoran Conservancy asked fellow Stewards such as myself to submit for review any photos of rock formations, for the signage they were creating for the soon-to-be improved Pima-Dynamite Trailhead. Because on first glance, you wouldn’t even know that these “trail treats” even exist.

I submitted 10 of my rock formation photos from my previous treks there, and some of them were selected for their new signage!

For today’s hike, I thought it would make it more fun and interesting to pick our route based on where many of those rock formations are, and I told those attending to think of this as a sort of scavenger hunt! As the sign mentions, I told them that the word for today is Pareidolia - The ability to see familiar shapes or patterns in random objects. Which is appropriate for our scavenger hunt today, as we are looking for familiar shapes in the rocks.

I provided a list of 10 rock formations to find along our route, and if they found one of them, then they would get credit for a “find” and have their picture taken with the rock formation. If they found a new one (one not on my list), then they would also get credit, get to (unofficially) name it, and I would take their picture with their find.

I suggested they also stop and turn around periodically while on the trail, because many of the rocks look very different, depending on which direction you are going. Especially since I originally did the route counter-clockwise instead of clockwise when I first found the rock formations several months ago. But we did it clockwise today, so that we could see the crested saguaro near the end of the hike instead of the beginning.

In the interest of time, I gave more hints than originally intended, and some formations were more obvious than others, but it was fun to hear people’s reactions! Even more fun was when someone found “their own” rock formation, and got to (unofficially) name it. It is interesting to hear what different people see while looking at the same formation - one person says it looks like a mushroom, another person says it looks like a heart, etc.

Here are a couple of the new formations found:

Here’s an instance where a rock formation looked completely different from one direction than another:

Below are a couple of newer discoveries by our creative-minded Trailblazers.

We all notice a rock that looks like some kind of animal, but we can’t unanimously decide what it looks like, so we’ll just call it “animal rock.” After that, we have a short snack break, and continue on our journey.

Our final 3 known rock formations are all within a minute of each other. I think I had to point out the chimpanzee head, but we did have winners for the turtle and hen formations.

In addition to all the rock formations, we also saw lots of wildflowers starting to sprout up—brittle bush, fiddleneck, desert hyacinth, chuparosa, a few poppies and lupine, to name a few. I also pointed out lots and lots of rather large bushes of desert lavender—they smell wonderful! We also saw 2 Harris Hawks flying overhead, and a couple on a tandem bike (we saw that couple twice, in fact).

When we get to the Latigo/West Express junction, 4 of our hikers decide to split off to add some more miles to their hike.

At this point, we have 7 hikers in our “short” hike group, and we have 2 more points of interest to see before we head back to the trailhead. We first head up to Sidewinder Overlook and enjoy sweeping views. The granite rock slabs provide excellent traction for getting up to and down from the overlook. Shortly thereafter, we reach the crested saguaro, and take turns photographing it.

We did parts of 8 different trails today. The 4 hikers on the longer hike ended up doing 10 miles in about 5¼ hours, the rest of us hiked 7.5 miles in 4 hours.