Big Cacti in the Saguora Desert

During a short trip down to the Phoenix area for Siobhan’s training class, we took the opportunity to get a hike in around big cacti for the first time. The Granite Mountain Trailhead is a 5.5 mile loop and is located about 45 minutes north of Scottsdale. The trailhead signs and parking in the area are very nice and spacious. This included the bathrooms which were also clean. The trail itself is well groomed and right away you can see cacti of all kinds with a variety of colored flowers growing on them.

The loop is straightforward and easy to follow with signs at intersections to other trails. Though cacti can be seen at all times during the trail, there were some spots that had bigger clusters than others. For us, they were much larger than we were expecting. Siobhan even got close enough to look like she was wrapped up in one!

As we made our way around and to the backside of the mountain, people started to thin out and there was less traffic up until Balanced Rock. There were more varieties of cacti and flowers here too. During this part of the hike I noticed something in the grass with vibrant colors and got closer to check it out. I took a quick picture of this interesting looking bug which we found out later has the second most painful sting of any insect! It is called a Tarantula Hawk and is know to paralyze tarantulas. Needless to say I’m glad that I didn’t spend more time analyzing this deadly wasp!

We decided to take a short detour off the trail on our way back to view Balanced Rock. It isn’t much different than other Balanced Rocks but it is worth taking the short walk over to check it out.

This area was much busier though as it is easy to get here from the main lot if you don’t want to do the full loop. This was our first time in the Sonoran Desert and we really enjoyed our hike through it’s flora, fauna, and unknowingly avoiding painful insect stings!