Sabino Canyon to Bear Canyon loop

Today I had the day off.  On call tonight.  It was a beautiful day and I met a friend out at the Sabino Canyon parking lot and we did a great loop from Sabino Canyon to Bear Canyon.  I had done this loop on a couple of occasions, but it has been a while.  We started going clockwise and up the road.  There is minimal water in Sabino Creek now, but it is flowing.  None at any of the low bridges.  The Road is closed after the last bridge which is at mile 3.  They have cut a new trail that switch backs up to Phone Line Trail at that point.  It is an immediate rise up about 500-700ft and is in very good shape.  After meeting up with Phone Line, you keep following it in towards Sabino Basin.  It was an absolutely beautiful day.  Maybe around 80 and sunny.  One of those days you feel like you can go all day.  The trail is a little overgrown once you get back to Sabino Basin, and it looks like there is probably plenty of water if you go to Hutche's Pools to the east.  But we went along the west fork and connected to Bear Canyon.  I haven't been back there since the fires a few years ago and was surprised to see minimal evidence of a burn until we crested over towards Sycamore Canyon.  It is pretty chared there and mostly low lying grass.  But the trail is in great shape!  It looks like they recently came through with a weed wacker and opened up the trail.  So the decent into Bear Canyon towards Seven Falls was as open as I had ever seen it and you could fly.  We bouldered through Bear Canyon Creek for a mile or so above the falls and with the water running saw tons of footprints from animals.  Mostly dear it looked.  But to my surprise around a corner we ran into 3 Coaties!!  It was awesome!!  I have never seen them in the wild and even questioned there existance here.  They have them at the Sonoran Desert Museum and are fascinating to watch.  They are a long tailed climbing machines!  After dropping into Seven Falls, we stopped and it was good to see the pools now exist.  The last time I was up here they were filled with dirt/sand/debris from the flooding during monsoons.  It was a little eerie, thinking of the two people that died there this summer during the massive flash flood.  But even the trail down Bear Canyon Creek is in great shape.  It is one of my favorite trails to run down.  Not too steep but downhill and techincal enough to get in a great groove.  There is about a mile and a half road to get back to the parking lot.  You can take a longer trail, but the 17+ miles was enough today and it felt great.  This loop is a great pre-marathon training run, and a must do for anybody that loves to really get out there.  Total elevation is minimal for the distance at around 14-1600ft I would estimate.  No GPS today.