Sometimes there’s a good reason for the road less traveled being less traveled. While visiting Tucson, we decided to take the back way up to the top of Mount Lemmon, the highest point in the Santa Catalina mountains, at 9157 feet (2791 meters). We were driving a Ford F350 Super Duty (work vehicle, shh), with dual rear wheels. We figured it was designed to do pretty much anything, and since we’d been pulling a 40-ft trailer around with it for months, we figured climbing a mountain would be a piece of cake.

The pavement ended almost immediately, and one of the few signs we saw was at the beginning. It read, “Mt. Lemmon 50 miles.” The unpaved road quickly deteriorated into more of a wide path of dirt, rocks and sand.  We wondered if we were still on the trail at all. As we got higher, the road narrowed even more, and each curve was tighter than the last. Need I mention the truck was an extended bed (both long and wide) with a poor turning radius? About three hours later we had passed a dozen cows, four horses and two guys on ATVs, plus a ton of dust and low, scrub. Eventually, the desert landscape slowly transformed into forest, as aspens and pine replaced cacti. We started to see signs again, but it wasn’t so reassuring after all. If the ones about recent fire activity and flash flood hazards weren’t unnerving enough, we had also reached bear country.

Horses on the back-side of Mount Lemmon

The last 14 miles took 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 would ever be heard from again. Once on the peak, we took time to soak in the views ourselves. The town of Summerhaven is a popular retreat, especially in summer.  When temperatures below are steamy, the summit of Mount Lemmon is cool and refreshing. There’s skiing in the winter.

Front of Mount Lemmon

We descended via the equally scenic Catalina Highway after figuring out how to get the truck back out of its stuck position in 4-wheel drive (quickly solved by consulting the manual).  The speedometer had stopped working, as well, probably having rattled itself out of place on the drive up. The front of Mount Lemmon was beautiful! It looked more like Colorado than the typical Arizona we think of first. 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 below. http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j97/d3loeber/Tucson/Mount%20Lemmon/