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.