Romero Pools: Tucson’s Other Hiking Trail With Water

Sunset Linda Vista Trail

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Hiking Romero Pools is a tried and true Tucson classic. Starting from Catalina State Park, you wind your way up the rocky slopes of the Catalina Mountains for about 3-miles until you reach Romero Pools. Along the way, you see fields of 200-year-old saguaros and jagged rock outcroppings.

Once you reach the water, you discover how much vibrancy the Sonoran Desert brings. Like blood flowing through a body, the water brings life, warmth, and nourishment to a variety of desert plants and animals. There are few hikes in the country with this level of biodiversity that also offer a glimpse of the pernicious and hidden Sonoran landscape.

Romero Pools Trail Interactive Map

Below is our interactive Romero Pools trail map. You can download the trail layer to your GPS, or navigate right off your phone. We also put in points of interest to get you around Catalina State Park. If It doesn’t load the first time, hit your reset button 😉

Romero Pools Hike At A Glance

  • Trailhead: Catalina State Park. 11570 N Oracle Rd, Tucson, AZ
  • Cost: $7 entrance fee
  • Distance: 5.9 miles out and back
  • Elevation Gain: 900′
  • Hiking Time: 3 hours
  • Camping Available: Yes
  • Dogs Allowed: No

Pro tip: Download AllTrails+ for a one-stop shop app for planning all of your hiking, biking, and camping adventures.

Plants and Animals of the Sonoran Desert

Romero Pools is a full sun hike, even though we ended up in a riparian area. The trail climbs up an exposed ridge and only drops into the valley at the very end. There is an old (bad) joke about the trail condition in Tucson being very gneiss (pun intended).

For the non-geologists reading – Gneiss ( /ˈnaɪs/) is a common distributed type of rock formed by high-grade regional metamorphic processes from pre-existing formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rock. It’s anything but nice to walk on because it’s often rough and jagged.

The exposed geology makes Tucson trekking timeless. An observant hiker can see millions of years of geologic history in the rocks at their feet. I could see the rose quartz crystals on the trail with the bedding plane shifted 90 degrees.

I knew there was some serious fault activity in this region at some point in the past. An experienced Tucson hiker would dance along these crags, trying to maintain their gait and avoid touching the menacing foliage around themselves. For us, it was a bit of a slug fest. We kept saying that the trails were much rougher than we remembered as we slugged along.

It seems like every plant on the trail wants to hurt us, from cactus thorns to agave points to spikes branches of the mesquite and palo verde. Just like becoming one with the heat, we became one with the desert landscape. Once we realize that we are only an observer, we could see the true beauty and diversity of life here.

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The first plant we noticed was the famous Saguaro cactus. (say the “g” as an “h”–>“sah-wah-roh”). These giants are the old growth forest of the American Southwest. It takes 10 years for a baby saguaro to reach one inch tall. It also takes the perfect combination of host plants and weather for them to sprout in the first place.

The Stately Saguaro

Saguaros are about 70 years old when they reach the height of a tall man and start blooming. About this time, they are taking in enough water to have choked out their host plant. The first arms come when they are over 100 years. They are fully grown at 200, reaching a height of 45’ with roots growing more than 60’ around in all directions.

Saguaros are the perfect example of life in the desert. They are old and slow growing. Their prickly thorns look like tough and impregnable but they really are following a narrow life path of conditions that give the life. They need their host plant when they are young, which they eventually kill as they grow. Look closer at an old saguaro to see all kinds of cracks and holes that animals live in. They need the saguaros just like the saguaro needs them to distribute their fruit.

Mature saguaro’s 120’ root span sucks a lot of valuable water out of the ground, which keeps other plants from growing, but it also stabilizes a considerable amount of soil from washing away in the monsoon floods. They are a juxtaposition between strength and vulnerability, taking and giving that forms this world in balance.

Romero Pools Trail Detailed Description

We could have taken the Romero Trail all the way to the top of Mt Lemmon (it goes).  We would be hiking through more climate zones than if we drove from Mexico to Canada. It’s not only the changes in altitude, but also where you are on the hillside that creates different life zone. In each of these zones, an entirely new set of plants animals live.

Our hike started in the Sutherland Wash, a dry waterway filled with wispy mesquite trees that send tap roots down to the water table below. We passed an ancient mortar stone where the Indians would grind mesquite pods into flour. It’s in these washes where we have seen the black and yellow spotted gila monsters, the largest lizards of the desert.

Up from the wash is an alluvial plain of slowly shifting soil eroding from the mountains above. This is where the sagebrush grows that smells so strong after a desert rain. after 1.1 miles, we reached the foothills. Here exposed points of bedrock (Gneiss) poke through the alluvium. Rugged Ocotillo, with their branches covered in thorns, claim the sun and the rocks while the majestic Saguaros dominate the north and east slopes that provide just a little relief from the blazing sun. Lizards of every description dart across the trail. We hiked for another 1.7 miles to reach the pools.

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Romero Pools sits at about 4000’, which is just the start of the pinon oak forest. At this elevation, grasses cover the plains while the oaks prefer the valleys. Here they can send their tap roots down to harvest the water below. If you look closely, you can even see a few red barked Manzanita extending their range down from the mid altitude mountains where they thrive. These pools are also home to bighorn sheep, which need surface water to survive. This is why there are no dogs allowed past the first mile of the trail.

Hiking in Catalina State Park

You’ve paid your seven bucks to get in. You might as well explore a little. Here are other trails in Catalina State Park to explore while you’re hiking Romero Pools

  • Romero Ruins Interpretive Trail – A one mile loop through an old Indian Village. If you’re expecting Mesa Verde, you’ll be disappointed. It’s more nuanced than that. However, you will learn how the ancient people lived in the harsh desert, including finding water during the dry summer.
  • Sutherland Trail – This trail starts out of the Romero Pools parking lot. You can use it to form a loop with the Romero Pools Trail or climb all the way to the ridgeline.
  • Nature Trail – A one-mile loop starting from the Romero Pools parking lot. I like to return to my car for more water and, if I am feeling like hiking one more mile, then I head out on the Nature Trail.
  • Bride Trail – This is a one-mile connector between the campgrounds and Romero Pools. If you’re camping at Catalina State Park, you need to know this trail.
  • 50 Year Trail – I always consider this trail to be a mountain bike trail. It’s a massive trail that will get you up to the Biosphere if you try, but it’s all on the desert flats.

Romero Pools FAQs

Are dogs allowed in Catalina State Park?

Leashed dogs are welcome on all trails.

What is the elevation of Catalina State Park?

Approximately 3,000 feet.

Final Thoughts on Romero Pools

Each mountain, like Mt Lemmon, is a sky island that is an isolated biosphere from other sky islands hundreds of miles away. Most of the mountain-dwelling animals just can’t cross the empty deserts so they have been isolated for the last 10,000 years since the shallow Arizona seas subsided. For example, Mt Graham red squirrels only live on Mt Graham and were thought to be extinct until a new family was discovered fifty years ago. Even though Mt Lemmon is 100 miles away, they have their own flavors of squirrels living at Summerhaven.

I wondered as I wandered off of the Romero Pools trail just what it was about the Sonoran Desert that ignited my hiking spirit twenty years earlier. I was a peak bagger at first, trying to lay claim to every summit I could see. Then, I used Tucson hiking as training for places like Havasu Falls or Angels Landing.

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After a while, I realized that I just liked watching the diversity of life and land. I loved how the Sonoran Desert shifted in each season, responding to the increases of heat and water. I loved how fiercely independent yet interdependent each plant and animal was with each other. The enigma of Saguaros having thorns and housing birds at the same time made me respect the strength of and forgiveness of the powerful people in my life. The desert isn’t for the meek. It’s for the strong, and spiky who give their own brand of love.

Places to Stay near Romero Pools

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Romero Pools: Tucson's Other Hiking Trail With Water

Romero Pools: Tucson's Other Hiking Trail With Water

Romero Pools: Tucson's Other Hiking Trail With Water

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