SWSW day 1 classic Brown at Catalina State Park (1:10000, 5 m) from the picnic area we usually start at (we figured this is our fifth trip to Tucson). Warm enough when we started for short sleeves; car thermometer said it was 77 when we left the park.
EDIT to add stats: 3.5 km, 90m climb.
Tucson has had a bunch of rain so vegetation was much more of an issue than in previous years, with morning glory vines (not a problem on my routes), tall grasses obscuring subtle contour details and prickly pear cacti, and
amaranth aka pigweed, a weed with many scratchy seeds on its branches--thickest in the streambed south of the park road--which I did my best to avoid where I could. I wore long pants and gaiters and added duct tape around my ankles so the socks didn't pick up a multitude of seeds. When I finished I had mostly the pointy grass seeds and just one amaranth seed, I think.
I was on the correct trail headed toward #2, but when I saw the stairs on the trail headed up/down the spur I didn't recall them from previous visits and thought I was headed up the spur with the archeological remains which was put of bounds, so I turned around and investigated other trails before heading back the same way and going up the stairs I should have gone up to start with. Spent an extra 5:30 on that misadventure.
Mostly straight to #3, finding the "knoll" less distinct than it might have been because of the grasses, but it was a small pile of disturbed soil that I was happy to see because it was inside the circle. George Minarek was punching about the same time and I followed him down a trail toward #4 until he stopped to talk to Leslie who was down in the reentrant perhaps fighting the vegetation. I kept on moving; saw him here and there to the next couple of controls.
From #8 (#103) I thought I was headed down the correct spur to #125, but apparently wasn't so I had to cross over another reentrant but could see where the flag was relative to a saguaro and then found it pretty easily. EDIT: after looking at the map more closely...North lines aren't parallel to the edge of the map and I didn't use a bearing there, just went SE when I needed to go SSE. Oh well.
Rick B and Marie-Josee P passed me leaving that control and I basically followed them to the finish, the last bit of which was a mistake because they blasted through green to the road rather than staying on the trail to the side trail, but it was fine. ;-)