Superstition Mountains - Lost Dutchman State Park

Author's Comments

The Superstitions do not announce themselves so much as loom. You drive east out of Mesa and the city falls away in stages, and then suddenly there they are, the whole jagged wall of them, and Flat Iron sits at the front of the range like the prow of a ship cut from rust and shadow. I come here in March. Late February in a wet year. The Sonoran desert in spring is one of those landscapes that rewards specific timing more than most people realize, and when the bloom hits, the floor of the park goes orange with poppies under the saguaros, the lupines coming up purple between them, the brittlebush yellow at the edges. It does not happen every year. When it does, the first mile of the Siphon Draw trail is where I spend my morning. Golden hour is the answer here, but I mean both of them. Sunrise puts warm light directly on the western face of Flat Iron and the formation goes properly red for maybe twenty minutes. Sunset is softer, the mountain falling into shadow while the desert in front of it still holds light, and that is when the wide compositions work best - saguaro in the foreground, wildflowers at their feet, the dark wall of the Superstitions behind. The depth is genuine. I rarely make the full climb to the top of Flat Iron. It is a serious scramble and the photography is honestly better lower down, where the desert still surrounds you and the mountain is something you are looking at rather than standing on. Save the summit for a day when you came to hike. Come back another morning for the photographs.

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