Hike the Sycamore Reservoir trail 39

I parked in the trailhead called either "prison camp" or "Gordon hirabayashi recreation site" just up the hill from Molino We only hiked a total of about 3 miles on this date because I got a late start, and when hiking alone, I prefer to hike in the time window from 9AM until about 4:30PM. First we went up to the top of soldiers canyon trail. It's just a short hike about 0.2 miles west to the trail junction between the Sycamore Reservoir trail and the top of the Soldier trail. You take the Soldier trail south and then east, and it starts the climb up to the saddle. Up on the saddle, there is a white flat rock on that high spot of the trail, at the top of the canyon. Pearl and I took a leisurely lunch on that spot, and had a nice view looking down at the city and canyon. After lunch Pearl and I hiked west up to the saddle at the wilderness area boundary. We retraced our steps back to the Sycamore trail, and headed west. There is an old jeep trail/ arroyo path that goes gently up hill west to the saddle with not particularly interesting views up until the saddle.

When we reached the saddle, we were able to see up the canyon toward Sabino east and west forks, and Cathedral Rock Trail as well as the south end of Sycamore canyon ridge. We relaxed there for a few minutes and drank some water. According to the green trails map, it's a mile down to the sycamore reservoir from the saddle, and it gains 600 feet in elevation. So that would take me about 45 minutes to hike down and about 75 minutes to hike back up, getting me back to the saddle at about 6PM, which at that time of the year is about 40 minutes past sunset, and will still another hour walk back to the car. so I turned around and hiked back to the trailhead where we were parked with a resolve to come back and do the whole hike sometime in the near future.