In planning for my trip to Saguaro National Park, I read hiking guides and looked at maps to plan a soft itinerary so I wouldn’t just show up and hike a random trail. For my first day at the west unit of the park, I planned a moderately strenuous and scenic hike up to Wasson Peak. I figured this would be a good day-hike and then I’d figure out what I wanted to do after that later.

At 4687 feet, Wasson Peak is the highest location in the west unit of the park and there are many different ways to hike there. I chose a route such that I could make a big loop and end up back at my car. I prefer this to an out-and-back as I get to see more scenery this way. I started with the King Canyon Trail, where there is a nice large parking lot. The King Canyon Trail runs through a dry wash for about a mile and then turns into a proper trail that continuously climbs up a mountain ridge until it reaches a junction with the Hugh Norris Trail after about 2.3 miles. From there, you can follow the Hugh Norris Trail about 1.2 miles up to the spur to Wasson Peak. From the King Canyon Trailhead up to Wasson Peak, there is an elevation gain of 1678 feet, with a lot of steep switch backs as you near the top. See a map of my hike below:

After enjoying the peak for a while, I returned to the Hugh Norris Trail and continued down it until the junction with the Sendero Esperanza Trail, which descended to the Gould Mine trail and back to the parking lot. The entire hike was about 7.8 miles in total, with almost constant climbing or descending on rocky trails. I don’t remember how long it took me to do the hike, but I stopped a lot to take photos and to rest from the seemingly endless switch-backs.

One of my hopes for this journey was to see a lot of desert wildflowers and I was fortunate in that the wildflowers were in full bloom and the farther up the mountain I got, the better the wildflowers were. Below is view from near the top of the King Canyon Trail looking back in the direction from which I started. The bright yellow poppies were all over the hillside amid the cactuses. It was difficult not to stop and take a photo every few steps.

Note how deeply blue the sky gets toward the top of the above photo. I did not use a polarizer nor did I boost the saturation; it was an amazing blue sky that you will continue to see in my photos.

The photo below shows the junction of the King Canyon Trail with the Hugh Norris Trail. It is a steady ascent up to the peak, which is actually out-of-shot to the right. You can see several people at various points along the trail climbing up to the peak. I stopped at this point and rested and drank water for about 10 minutes before continuing the climb.

After more switchbacks than I can count, you eventually climb up to the junction with the Wasson Peak Spur Trail. From here it is an easy climb to the peak. In the photo below you can see Wasson Peak with some people standing at the very top.

Once you are at the peak you can sign your name in the registry, and you can see most of the rest of the park and Tucson in the distance. The top of the peak is quite rocky and there aren’t really any comfortable places to sit, but if you don’t mind sitting on a boulder, you can relax and enjoy the breeze and rest up for the rest of your hike. There were a lot of people on this trail and on the peak, so you probably won’t feel alone on this trail. The photo below shows an ocotillo cactus on Wasson Peak with the Hugh Norris Trail running along the mountain in the distance.

Now, back to the wildflowers. Up near the peak there were more and more bunches of indigo-blue lupines along the side of the trail and as I headed back down the steep switchbacks of the Hugh Norris Trail I stopped along the way in several places to take photos. The image below shows the wildflowers near the peak with the trail continuing off along the distant mountain.

As a general rule, photographers view midday light as too harsh for making good landscape photos. And the strong down-light and harsh shadows can make it difficult to bring out the rich colors of the landscape. But, that doesn’t mean that you should put your camera away and not enjoy photography at midday. I was only going to be on this peak at midday and I was going to do my best to take nice compositions and work them with post-processing to create some beautiful images with all the wildflowers and cactuses. One trick I mentioned in my last blog post was using a polarizer, so at this point in the hike I switched over to a 35mm lens with a circular polarizer. The polarizer really helps to soften the midday light on the landscape and help you capture the colors. The photo below of flowers along the hiking trail was shot at about 1:00 PM on a cloudless afternoon.

With full polarization, the image already looked pretty good, but I did give it some edits in Lightroom. Mainly I reduced the mid-tones to reduce the harshness of the light on the landscape. I also targeted the color in the flowers and boosted the saturation and luminance by a generous amount. The trail was so bright that it was overwhelming the image so I targeted the color in the trail and reduced its exposure half a stop. And lastly I applied some negative clarity to give the plants a softer look. I like the way it turned out and I think it looks nearly as good as if it had been taken closer to golden hour and I didn’t have climb down from a mountain as it got dark.

As I got back down to the lower elevations, the wildflowers thinned out and I didn’t take any more photos. This was a very nice hike. I wish I could do this more often, though I don’t think I would have enjoyed this so much in the summer. I hope you enjoyed the wildflowers. Thanks for reading.