Goodyear, AZ – Estrella Mountain Regional Park is part of the excellent Maricopa County park system, and the third such park we’ve visited this trip (Cave Creek Park and McDowell Mountain Park being the other two). The Sierra Estrella, or Star Mountains, are located near the junction of the Gila and Agua Fria Rivers and were once part of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. We decided to visit this park mainly due to its location on the West side of Phoenix, correctly surmising the terrain and geography would vary from its Eastern neighbors. The most striking difference was the lack of ground cover vegetation, resulting in a more arid looking desert.
Estrella Mountain Regional Park had less vegetation than parks on the eastern side of Phoenix
We opted for a loop combining the Butterfield and Gadsden trails for about 6 miles of hiking. The Butterfield trail begins at the rodeo arena, where a good number of RVs and associated horse trailers were parked. We watched four riders lead their parched mounts to a water trough after returning from a ride. There is ample parking here for day hikers even on a beautiful weekend.
We headed out onto the Butterfield trail
The hike has a small amount of elevation gain and loss over the 6 miles, perhaps 500 feet total, but no more than 50 feet at a stretch. I’ll admit that the cool and mostly cloudy weather this morning threw us for a bit of loop, lulling us into not using or even taking sunscreen. As many southwestern hikers are well aware, desert weather is a fickle mistress, leaving you with scorching sun shortly after she tantalized you with becalming shade and chilled skin. Upon departure, we optimistically talked of extending our loop hike by additional 3 miles to form an even larger 9 mile loop. Such talk abated within 30 minutes of the sun making its first appearance from the clouds.
Palo verde and Creosote along the Gadsden trail
Excess sun exposure aside, we enjoyed hiking among the saguaro and palo verde dappled hills from which distant Phoenix can be seen. We even spotted Karla’s favorite love-hate animal: the rattlesnake. A medium sized (4-5 feet) western diamondback rattlesnake slithered across our trail, about 15 feet in front of Karla. I decided to get a closer look at a rattlesnake, which sounds very similar to how a “hold my beer while I…” story begins. It turns out this particular snake’s comfort zone was about 6-8 feet, beyond which it assumed the striking position and began the unmistakable, and surprisingly loud, rattle. If nothing else this provided for good photos. We backed off for a few minutes to let the snake calm down, but eventually had to detour off the trail and around our venomous friend.
The western diamondback rattlesnake assumed a defensive posture
The triangular shaped head and diamond pattern help to identify the rattler
The rattlesnake calms down after we go around it, while still keeping an eye on us
We ate a post hike lunch at a nearby Culver’s, which for those of you not from the midwest, or, apparently, Arizona, is a tasty burger and ice cream joint we highly recommend for replacing calories lost trudging up and down ravines and washes in the hot desert sun.
Another view along the trail
Gadsden trail view of Goodyear, Arizona
On a side note, we’re noticing our fitbits (the Charge 2 HR) are always overly optimistic on miles hiked. Over the past week or so, we both start the hike at 0 steps and 0 miles, and then compare when back at the car. Our steps are off as would be expected by our different stride lengths, but the miles are pretty much dead on. Today I had 8.34 miles and Karla had 8.50 miles, a small difference that past hikes had corroborated. But the hike map indicated our loop was only 6.0 miles, and we didn’t get lost. I don’t know, fitbit claims to adjust to the users stride length, but something is off.
We visited this park while staying at the Monte Vista RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona. This park was about an hour drive each way on the weekend.
