Today On Silly Mountain

We went hiking at Silly Mountain this morning. Karen headed back after our climb up the Palo Verde Trail and I continued on. After reaching the saddle below the summit I headed down and had a couple of interesting things happen. The first was coming across a guy on horseback coming up a pretty steep section of the trail! I was amazed that the horse could make it up the trail with a rider on its back. We exchanged greetings and I continued down the trail. The next interesting thing was meeting up with a park ranger headed up the trail. He was the law enforcement kind of park ranger, not the "Ranger B" kind. We chatted for a few seconds while he caught his breath. He told me he was on his way to the summit because people had called in reporting someone signaling up there. When I got back to the car I look through the binoculars and saw a young guy with a large (maybe 2' X 2') sheet of some material flashing it towards Phoenix. There were quite a few people up there and I'm sure it was innocent. Maybe it was a group of scouts practicing signals with a group on some other peak. Who knows. But it was something you don't see every day.