Hiking in the Rain

March 9, 2010 by taha 

Okay, so I’m sure you’ve heard the song “Singing in the rain” right?  Well, there should be one for Hiking in the rain!  Wow, we have had so much rain this year in the desert!! I have never seen the desert as green as it is right now.  There is so much ground cover and plenty of tiny wildflowers popping up everywhere.  If you haven’t been out there yet, you should try to make some time to do so.  We do not get great rainy seasons like this too often.

Speaking of which, we just did a hike this past Sunday (a very stormy day).  We started out (and finished the hike) with 17 people in an absolute downpour!  First of all, I have to say hats off to the hardy souls that joined us for what promised to be a very wet hike.  Fortunately, the rain did slow down and actually stopped for some time so we were not being rained on the whole hike. I have not had many opportunities to actually hike here in the desert during a rainstorm. It seems more often than not, that our rains are accompanied by thunder and lightning and we do not go out in that weather. But on Sunday, we were fortunate enough to have the rain minus the lightning which would have been a showstopper.  Anyway, as I was saying, this is one of the first times I’ve been out hiking in the desert mountains in the rain here in the valley.  I have to say it was absolutely beautiful!  The creosote bushes, which give our desert that great aroma when it rains, literally filled the air with their scent.  It kind of reminded me of when I used to hike in the pine forests back east and you couldn’t seem to breathe in enough of the beautiful scented air.

Not only did the desert smell fresh and the air felt crisp, but we were rewarded with some great views from within the clouds and above the clouds as we hiked up.  At some points during the hike it felt like we were walking out of the mist into a new world. It was very serene to say the least.  Then to top off the hike, the clouds cleared just enough to let the sun peak through and create an unbelievably bright, colorful rainbow as we were hiking back down to reality.  It really doesn’t get any better than that!  Anyway, I was just so in awe of the beauty of the desert on this hike, that I just had to mention it on our blog. And I wanted to highly recommend to those of you who haven’t done so yet, try to take advantage of some of the rainy days and get out there and hike!  Just don’t go if there is thunder and lightning in the forecast!  If you do get out there, let me know about your experience and send me some photos. I’d love to hear about it.

Lastly, you can go to our photo gallery on our site http://www.takeahikearizona.com and look at the gorgeous photos we took during this hike. They are included in the WM Symposium folder on our flickr page (which is linked to our photo gallery).  I also included a photo with this post of the rainbow we saw on our way back down.

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