Oct 22, 2018 — The Pusch Ridge is located on the edge of the Santa Catalina Mountains, just outside Tucson. After summitting Pusch Peak a few days ago as a scouting mission, I was hoping it would be possible to do the whole ridge. It looks like it would totally work, but the bushwhacking required is painful and annoying. We ended up only doing Table Mountain and Bighorn Peak, described here.
Starting from the Pima Canyon Trailhead, head up the Pima Canyon Trail until you get to a small waterfall and look northwest to locate the obvious gully that leads to higher ground out of Pima Canyon. bushwhack up this gully, staying as close to the center as possible to avoid the most cactus nonsense. From the top of this gully, we chose to head to the northern ridge of Table Mountain to avoid the wall of bushes that seemed to appear, and to get views along the way. From the summit of Table Mountain, you can see Mt. Lemmon and Mt. Kimball to the northeast, Oro Valley to the west, and the entirety of Pima Canyon to the south. Feeling good, we continued back along the ridgeline and up to Bighorn Peak, where I thought the views were superior to Table Mountain. This summit is filled with boulders and you get a much better sense of the Pusch Ridge and its proximity to the rest of the Santa Catalina Mountains.
From Bighorn Peak, we could go back the way we came into Pima Canyon, or continue along the ridge and route-find up Pusch Peak. It was far enough away and the ridgeline we'd have to take down to Pusch Peak's south face seemed long enough that we realized the route would be as annoying as the rest of the cactus-filled landscape we'd already done, and take forever. You'd think we'd choose to instead go down the gully we came up? Nope. We stupidly decided to bushwhack down Bighorn Peak's southwest face to rejoin the Pima Canyon Trail. We both highly recommend just going back the way you came. This was not a fun bushwhack back.
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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!
