A friend and I took my three german shorthaired pointers on this hike and we had a great time.  The only down side was the prickly pear cactus and another smaller cactus.  I picked thorns out of the dogs for about two hours.   Other than that it was a great hike.  We missed the trailhead and stayed on the road to the observatory, but still found the upper loop and walked it.  On the way down we saw the trail head we missed early, so we took it and did the bottom loop as well.  Along the way we saw large numbers of red birds (cardinals).  The dogs scared up an armadillo and had fun with him for a while.  My youngest male also found and pointed some quail. We only saw four other people on the trail and that was only later in the day when we were finishing up the hike and getting ready to head home.  I would not want to do this hike with dogs in warmer weather as I would suspect that there are allot of rattlesnakes around.

Overall we had a great time and it was a great hike. I rated this a 3 star hike because of all the cactus.