Little Rincon Mountains

Above, a panoramic view of the southern end of the Little Rincons, taken August 31, 2008 from the upper bajada of the Whetstone Mountains looking northward across the Mescal Pass. The blue massif rising behind the complex at far left are the Rincon Mountains, while the faint, sunlit escarpment in the far distance at far right are the Galiuro Mountains. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Below, the southeastern end of the Little Rincons as viewed from the northern edge of Mescal community on December 23, 2008:

Raised up as part of the geological "Mid-Tertiary Orogeny" between 30 and 20 Million years ago, these mountains expose rather chaotic mixes of geological formations. The highest point visible in the image above, roughly in the center of that image, is Star Peak at an elevation of 6,041 feet. Here below you see it, again from the upper bajada of the Whetstones, as the sharp cone at top middle-right, taken on the same day as our initial banner photo: (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

The area in the immediate vicinity of Star Peak, shown below in a sharpened image to intensify contrast, exposes the following array of formations: Proterozoic Pinal Schist (dominantly metasedimentary in type), Middle Proterozoic Oracle/Ruin mylonitic granite suite, Paleozoic metamorphosed strata, and Middle Eocene Wilderness Two-mica granite. (Much of the Little Rincons display a similar melange of formations. See Dickinson et al in S-J Geology Credits.)

Returning to our original view of the Rincons-Little Rincons linkage, the low hills in shadow at the center of the image below hide Happy Valley, the sunlit space lying behind them. This broad, meadow-like expanse lying beneath Rincon Peak is the culmination of a pair of San Pedro River Valley corridors -- Paige Canyon to the north and Ash Creek Canyon to the south. (The community of Mescal lies in the middle distance in this image.)