One of my favorite hiking trails is about 30 miles east of Phoenix in the Rogers Canyon area of the Superstition Mountains.

It’s a good eight mile round trip, with a convenient jumping off point at Roger’s Trough, and unlike some of the trails in the Superstitions, it’s neither so challenging that you have to be an extreme sport enthusiast to enjoy it, or so ‘improved’ that you feel like you’re being coddled.

The path mostly follows the streambed down to the canyon basin, and it’s got a lot of Mescalero and juniper to provide shade; if you do it in the spring or fall, the temperature stays within reasonable ranges, but even during the height of summer, this is a doable trek; just bring more water. (Well, that’s sage advice to anyone hiking in the Superstitions.)

Most of the trek down the path will show you beautiful desert flora and fauna, and you’ll get an ever changing perspective on how big the Superstitions really are; it’s hard to get a sense of scale when they’re jutting against the horizon that way.

At the bottom of the trail, is the real secret of the journey – the Rogers Canyon cliff dwellings.  These are protected archeological sites, and I’ll cover them in a later post. Rest assured that you’ll want to leave nothing but footprints, and take only pictures.

The hard part of the hike is coming back – there’s almost a thousand feet of altitude change, and it’s all going downhill on the way out, and uphill on the way back. Experienced hikers like to plan this hike for the late afternoon, so that there’s more shade on the trip back.

Fair warning – there aren’t facilities at the Roger’s Trough jumping off point, just a large tarmac parking lot reached by a barely-road.

Stay tuned for Rogers Canyon part 2 – the Native American cliff dwellings you’ll be able to visit on your hiking trip.