Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Aint no mountain high enough

The past 3 months has been quite the hiking extravaganza.  Sharath and I have climbed a total of 7 different mountains (technically 6 mountains and a canyon trail) scattered around Arizona, that's like a mountain every 2 weeks!  There are literally mountains or canyons around every corner here.   

We are the tiny figures on Devil's Bridge
The wear and tear that this has done to my body, in terms of exhaustion and muscle pains has made it particularly difficult to keep you guys updated with all our travels.  I would just get round to feeling human again and we'd be off on another adventure to some new vista point! 

Having officially done our last hike of the trip together,  the beastly Mount Wrightson, its finally time to share all those slightly torturous but stunningly beautiful moments with you.   

Before we get stuck in let me just say that my hiking experience hasn't been all smiles.  At times walking up a giant rock has really tested my patience, motivation and endurance to the max, both physically and mentally.  

There did seem to be one recurring trend in our adventures in regard to these struggles. I would start a hike particularly grumpy when we had to get up around 5am and eat breakfast on the move. I am not really a morning person.  Especially if I haven't slept very well the night before, for example cos I'd had to nap in the car or we were so far up north that our motel room was freezing!  Luckily (for Sharath's sake mostly)  this moody period tended to be short lived, as it melted away with the amazing views and general highs from the physicality of it all. 

We also found that food was an extremely good motivator.  Nothing like the promise of  a diner brunch or a Mexican feast to keep you moving, when you realise you still have everything you just finished huffing and puffing your way up, to climb back down.   

I'm not going to bore you with the nitty gritty statistics and names of each trail we went on but here are a few things that stick out in my mind.  The colours in the rocks in places like Sedona and the Grand Canyon are amazing, due to the sheer variation in the rock. There were vast hues of reds, greens, golds that combined with the purples and orange cascades of sunrise and sunset to form quite the Modern Impressionists painting.   It was not only the rocks that showed this immense capacity for variation but the vegetation and terrain in general. I remember going from one layer to the next, then looking down on it all from the top and being awed. All this took millions of years for natural forces to sculpt into the earth.  Wow!

YAY! it rained! Picacho Peak
There was one hike up to Picacho Peak, where the Sonoran Desert graced us with a little rain, a rare and celebrated occurrence (among some, there are definitely some Arizonans who complain about rain as much as the English when it occurs.)    This might have been my favourite hike, in terms of the experience of getting there and coming down, although there were definitely those with more breath taking views. The clouds were low making everything a little hazy, the desert was green and smelt amazing! An added bonus was the lack of intense heat even though we only began the trail around midday.  It was perfect hiking conditions, although a little slippy on the rocks at times. 

The 10 mile round trip and 4000ft of elevation of Mount Wrightson are the one set of statistics I cannot stop myself from bragging about, despite my promise not to bore you with techinicalities .   Most of our hikes had been around 5 miles or less (and a max +/-2000 feet of elevation)  up until this last one, so as you can imagine this was quite the step up.  The trail is said to take most people about 7 hours round trip, it took us more like 12. 

I should point out that Sharath and I have a habit of losing track of time when we are together. We like to take our hikes slow, so we can take in all of the new surroundings (or read a book in a picturesque setting). This day dream filled approach had never caused any problems on our previous short hikes, as we could always trail run back down the relatively short distance before it got dark.   Our tendency to meander was not the only reason our hike was so long, somewhere along the way I developed a throbbing and persistent pain in my upper right thigh. I remember it being particularly bad when we were a little under 2 miles from the top.  We discussed if we should just turn around and head back down, this may have been the sensible option but I could see the top!  It felt like an injustice just to turn around with out reaching those magnificent views across all of Arizona and out to the Mexican border. So we trudged on. 
 Silly faces time!
So much glee

I was so elated when we finally reached the top, I was literally shouting and running with joy for the last few meters. The views were utterly spectacular, with the classic Arizona clear blue skies all around. We were on the highest point in the Santa Rita Mountain Range; on top of the world. 

After refueling and beginning our descent it became obvious that we weren't going to reach the car before nightfall.  Mount Wrightson is what they call a forested Sky Island. A vastly bio diverse mountain, with vegetation and wildlife all over the peak, completely surrounded by the much less inhabitable cacti filled desert.  The unique ecosystem gave us a canopy of trees to walk among for most of the way, which was a great source of shade on the way up but a little intimidating in the dark on the way down.   As the sun set and we pulled out our torches, I became fairly anxious and jumpy to the sounds of lizards and snakes scuttling around the forest floor.  The signs warning that this was bear country down at the  start of trail head was also playing on my mind.  

My heightened state of fight or flight instinct came to its climax when we heard a tree crash to the ground somewhere behind us.  For a moment I really thought, "we might die tonight".  After some reassuring words to calm me down I got my confidence back and we started moving pretty swiftly back down the trail, as my desire to get home overpowered the sense of pain coming from my thigh.
Descent sunset view from Mt Wrightson 
In the conversation on the way down I discovered that night hiking was a real thing that people do for enjoyment, actively choosing to hike at night rather than during the day, but I figured it probably isn't for me. 

Some how we manage to keep each others spirits raised and made it to the car around 10:30pm, worn out and hungry but victorious!  

When we finally got home to feast on some real food, instead of the days fill of trail mix, cereal bars and Hershey's Almond Kisses, I could barely walk but I was pretty damn proud of myself! I'm certainly not going to forget this hike for a long time and I don't think my legs will either!

That was a bit of verbose trail through my hikes, but I hope you managed to make it to the end and found it as satisfying as I did.