Hugh Norris Trail in Tucson Mountains
— — a saguaro forest you walk up into the sky.
Not only on a wall.
“The Hugh Norris Trail climbs the spine of the Tucson Mountains from the desert floor to Wasson Peak, the high point of the range. Switchbacks first, then a long ridge that gives back the whole Avra Valley on one side and the city on the other. Saguaros stand in every direction, some of them two centuries old. Most people start at sunrise to beat the heat. The summit is a pile of volcanic rock and a small register box that fills up fast in spring. — from the studio
Hugh Norris Trail in Tucson Mountains, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Hugh Norris Trail runs through the Tucson Mountain District of Saguaro National Park, west of Tucson in Pima County, Arizona. It begins on Bajada Loop Drive and climbs roughly 4.9 miles one way to the summit of Wasson Peak at 4,687 feet, the highest point in the Tucson Mountains. The route gains about 2,100 feet, mostly along an exposed ridge with views across the Avra Valley toward the Roskruge and Silver Bell Mountains. The trail is named for a former chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation and is maintained by the National Park Service.
The trail sits in the upper Sonoran Desert, between roughly 2,600 and 4,700 feet, where the saguaro forest meets the first scattered junipers. Summer afternoons routinely break 100 °F in Tucson, so most hikers start before sunrise from October through April and avoid the climb in June through September. After the summer monsoon, the air carries the smell of wet creosote — the distinctive scent locals call the smell of desert rain. From the ridge, the line of the Santa Catalina Mountains rises across the basin to the northeast.
The trailhead is on Bajada Loop Drive in the Tucson Mountain District, accessed from Kinney Road and the Red Hills Visitor Center. The park entrance fee runs about $25 per vehicle and covers seven days; the America the Beautiful pass is honored. The round trip to Wasson Peak is roughly 9.8 miles and most parties take five to seven hours. There is no water on the trail and no shade past the first half mile, so the standard recommendation is four liters per person in cool months and more when temperatures climb above 80 °F.