Nice Little Mountain Hike

Yesterday I thought it would be nice to take a little hike and sightseeing tour of the White Tank Mountains located on the far west end of the Phoenix metro area. This photo was taken just inside the entrance to White Tank Mountain Regional Park:

Here's another view of the mountains from the north side of the park looking south.

This photo was taken along the Waterfall Trail, looking upstream. Infrequent torrential rains flow off of the steep, serrated mountain peaks, through the canyons, and onto the plain below. Floodwaters, pouring down chutes and dropping off of ledges, have scoured out several depressions, or tanks, in the white granite below, thereby giving the White Tank Mountains their name. If you look carefully in this photo, you can see how the canyon narrows significantly. At the end of this canyon lies one of these white tanks. The waterfall forming it is just out of the picture to the right of the end of the canyon.

This is the white tank at the end of the canyon.

And this is the waterfall feeding it from above:

The White Tank Mountains also have plenty of these petroglyphs left by the ancient Hohokam Indians.