Mt. Charleston

Yesterday, I summitted Mt. Charleston, the tallest mountain in the state of Nevada, standing 11,918 feet above the surrounding desert.

My alarm clock went off at 4:30am so that I could be hitting the trail by 6, the earliest it was possible to start without using a flashlight.  The sun wasn't truly up, but colored the sky a pretty orange as I began.

The normal trailhead was closed for construction, so I had to use a spur trail that added about half a mile to the one-way trail length.  A crescent moon hovered ahead of me as the sun started to gleam on the cliffs.

A little more than an hour into the hike I hit the switchbacks and began gaining altitude rapidly.  It was very quiet - I encountered only one other hiker and two young mule deer bucks as I climbed.

By 9:30 I reached the top of the switchbacks.  4.33 miles in, and a gain of 3,102 feet.

After the switchbacks, the trail changed to a much easier ridge hike.  The birds of prey loved the ridge, using the thermals to swoop at high speeds from one valley to the next, just inches above the ground.  One was so close to me that I heard the thwack of his wings as he broke out of his stoop!  Mostly they didn't hang around long enough for a positive identification, but I did startle an owl at one point and a kestral flew near enough that I could see the distinctive colors.  That was exciting - I love kestrals, but had never seen one in the wild before!  There had clearly been a wildfire through this area at some point, as the area was dotted with burned and dead trees.

The trail got closer and closer to the summit.  At 11am I geared myself up for a final push... only to round a corner and see that what I'd thought was the summit wasn't.  So I pushed again... and again, what I'd thought was the summit wasn't!  By the time I finally laid eyes on the flag, I was quite demoralized.  Even the pretty yellow flowers went practically unnoticed!

The final quarter mile push to the summit was brutal.  I was so tired and unmotivated that I would take a dozen steps, then rest for ten seconds or more!  But eventually, at 12:30, I made it!

I didn't hang around for long though, since I still had another 8.5 miles left to go before dark!  I only snapped a few pictures on the descent, quickly becoming too tired to risk stopping more than I had to.  It would be too easy to stop for too long, and I didn't want to be hiking in the dark.

I finally made it back to the car at 6:25pm.  Twelve hours and twenty five minutes round trip, 17 miles, and 4,279 ft of elevation gain and then loss.  I had conquered Mt. Charleston!

Tucson Hiking

This weekend I flew out to Tucson to visit my friends with whom I'll be hiking the Grand Canyon in a few weeks.  Friday night we poured over the trail books and eventually decided on a hike that we thought was eight miles long, but I'm not convinced that it was.  Every place I look seems to list a different mileage for the trail.  Oh well!  It was still a fun time and, even better, my knee didn't hurt at all!  I don't know if it was the lower elevation, the lighter pack, or the fact that I switched from advil to aleve, but I was excited about that!

The way up wasn't so bad.  I only fell behind once (I'm a slow hiker and am trying hard not to be!), but after a brief rest was able to keep up the rest of the way.  The first half of the way down was a breeze as well, but once we lost elevation the heat was pretty brutal.  We were happy to reach the trailhead again!

We also gathered some prickly pears - and paid the price picking prickles out of our hands the whole way back!  They did make fantastic mojitos and margaritas though!

Prickly Pear Margaritas

The next day we drove out to Mt. Lemmon to get out of the heat.  We did a short little hike just to get the muscles going and to work off some of the tasty dinner we were planning for that evening.

In other news, I realized today that the Mt. Charleston hike I've been planning is twice as long as I initially thought.  16 miles is a lot, but on the other hand we do have a 14 mile day with similar elevation change in the Grand Canyon, so if I can summit Mt. Charleston I'll feel a lot better about Evil Day Three.  If the weather holds, I'll make my first attempt Friday.

Cathedral Rock and Little Falls

I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, but exactly six weeks from now I will be at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, two days into a six-day backpacking trip with two good friends.  Needless to say, I've been hitting the gym hard.  The gym isn't enough though, and it's only this week that it's gotten cool enough for me to dare hiking outside here, even in the mountains.

This morning I rolled out of bed at 4:30am, threw together a few last minute things, and hit the road.  It's an hours drive from home to the trailhead.  When I arrived around 6am, I was the only car there.  Another pulled up as I was putting my pack on, and I chatted with them briefly.  Very nice gentlemen, and they were headed up a different trail than I was (and made me decide to try that trail next week).

A few switchbacks up I stopped to take pictures as the dawn was breaking across the entrance to the canyon.  I am not generally a morning person, but the dawn combined with the cooler weather may have converted me.

From there I continued the 1.5 mile climb up to Cathedral Rock, hovering about a thousand feet above the trail head.  And I do mean hovering:

I was moving slower than I'd hoped to, and not only because I was stopping to take a lot of pictures.  I need to do a lot more hiking in the next few weeks!

It took me an hour to reach the saddle (picture below, center left), and then another 15 minutes to scramble up to the top.  I was moving pretty slowly on the scramble, because the "trail" was right on the edge of a thousand foot drop and full of loose rocks.  Of course, once I got to the summit, I realized that it wasn't actually the trail - I'd missed a turn at some point!  Oh well.

The summit was gorgeous.  Great views and cool weather, a few puffy clouds in the bright blue sky.  I hung around for fifteen minutes rehydrating and taking pictures before starting down the correct trail.

The descent was easier on my cardio but tougher on my knee.  I'm going to need to watch that closely, even with the brace, trekking poles and advil it was acting up.  I descended in an hour, but that includes two side trips to see the seasonal falls (unimpressive) and a 10-minute stop to watch a hawk who had landed just in front of me.

Once back at the trailhead, I had a little snack and debated my next move.  I'd intended to climb Echo Overlook, but I didn't really want to push my knee since I'm doing some more hiking in Tucson this weekend.  So I compromised and headed up to Little Falls, which is only .8 one way instead of 2 and has less elevation gain.

The falls were small but gorgeous so I was glad I checked them out!  Next time, I think I'll aim for the loop trail to summit Mt. Charleston at nearly 12,000 feet!

Lake Mead

I'll start this off by being blunt: I hate the desert.  I find it to be ugly, uninspiring, washed out and, of course, hot.  But still, I was starting to go stir-crazy here in the city and I knew I had to get out. 

Since just going out into the desert to take pictures wasn't very inspiring, I decided to pick up some camera toys I've been eyeing for some time.  Neither of the places I stopped had the cable release I wanted, but I did get a polarizing filter!

Of course, since I got the filter, it wasn't a sunny day.  Still, the filter's pretty cool!

So I drove out to Lake Mead to snap a few shots.

I wasn't very impressed with the part of Lake Mead I saw.  Next time I'll go the other way around.

Still, some of the pictures came out pretty good!