Waddell, Arizona.

In mid-December, our hiking club leader for the week chose one of my favorite hikes, a 6.6-mile (10.5 km) hike across two canyons in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park. On this hike, I was the “sweep”, the last person in the group that stays at the end of the queue to make sure we don’t leave any of our group behind.

This hike starts at Area 7 where a short trail connects the parking area with the Mesquite Canyon Trail as it goes by the lot. The trail then begins a long 1,426-ft (435 m) climb until it crosses a ridge on the north side of Mesquite Canyon. After a short rest at the top, we started down the other side of the ridge into Willow Canyon. At 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from Area 7, Mesquite Canyon intersects with the trailhead of the Willow Canyon Trail. At the 3.3-mile (5.3 km) mark, the remains of an old cistern and some broken-down fencing are all that remains of a camp once used by ranchers in the area. A short distance further, we stop for a snack in an area that is usually a watering hole for animals, a shady spot with an occasional waterfall known as the grotto. After our break, we retrace our steps back to Area 7, for our group, about four hours in all.

The mule deer are plentiful in the area, but they are hard to spot, and though I hike this trail once or twice a year, I’ve seldom seen more than a single deer if I see any at all. Imagine our surprise to see a small herd of about 14 deer as we neared the ridge at the top of Mesquite Canyon. Most were in a clearing and fairly visible from our point on the trail below.

It was cool that morning, cool enough to wear gloves, and I didn’t have time to capture the closest mule deer only a few yards from us. It would have been a great image, but by the time I got my gloves off, my cellphone out, and prepped for a photo, the deer had moved away from us and was now well hidden by the bushy terrain on the mountainside.

About the photo: At the end of the hike, we encountered four more mule deer, again higher up near the ridge of Mesquite Canyon. We watched them for a while and this time I had the opportunity to capture a few images to share.

In the bright sun at our back, the Samsung S20U screen is hard to see. I wanted to use the zoom feature to make it easier to see the deer, but knowing how image quality suffers, I kept the setting to 4x. I wasn’t really able to see the deer in the viewfinder so I was basically “shooting blind” and hoping I could catch the deer on the camera’s sensor. To make things worse (and better for the deer), their coloration blends into the terrain so they are very hard to spot anyway. Take a look at the photo and see how quickly you can find the two deer that I was lucky to capture without seeing them in the viewfinder.

If you click on the image, you can view it on my Flickr site in 2K HD. If you click here, you will find an album that includes a cropped version of the photo above as well as a photo of two deer that were a little closer to the top of the ridge.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner