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| Hiking | 4.96 Miles |
2,800 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.96 Miles | 5 Hrs 42 Mns | | 1.16 mph |
| 2,800 ft AEG | 1 Hour 25 Mns Break | 20 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | The perfect day for a hike... beautiful cool weather on a Memorial Day weekend and no crowd.
We were up early and on the road well before sunrise prepared for a long day of hiking and exploring for future hikes. The Forest Road was in great shape and we made good time to the location we chose to begin our hike.
Absolutely no warm-up on this hike with an immediate and very steep 400' climb to get your heart going. A very slight leveling off before the next steep climb, which is pretty much how the hike progressed. Realizing early on that the first peak is not Rockinstraw it's a matter of choosing how high and how close you stick to it as you going around. Unfortunately I chose to climb a little too soon and was rewarded by a dead end at the edge of a cliff. Ok, so it's backtrack then drop down 150' feet and try again. This worked much better as we skirted along the bottom of the steep rock walls before the next steep climb to the saddle between the two peaks.
Although this section looked to be easier, the footing was tenuous so we were careful with each step we took. This was a good thing because the grassy fox-tails were so thick it would be easy to step on a rattlesnake.
Speaking of that... just as I lifted my left foot for the next step something in the grass didn't look right so I stopped and leaned forward to look over a patch of thick fox-tails and their was a tightly-coiled Western Diamond-Backed Rattlesnake. If I had taken one more step I would have been on it.
But no matter, we have a video opportunity here... but with Tracey having none of it and my snake hook inside my pack I thought I'd shoot a quick video and move on. It had yet to move or rattle so I walked past then turned and approached it head-on within a two feet and starting shooting the video. Within a few moments I wondered why I bothered with the video because it did absolutely nothing! But then this was a cool morning after an overnight low in the 50's and it would be a good 90 minutes before the sun hit this area to warm it up. Whatever, let's move along, nothing to see here... and that's just what we did, albeit Tracey gave it a pretty wide berth.
Onward and upward to the saddle then up another steep climb to the west until the north end of the Rockinstraw Mountain ridge where we turned south toward the summit. The summit had a number of items of interest... the USDA Forest Service benchmark at the summit (placed in 1935), a USGS Reference Point #1 about 75' to the west, a USGS Reference Point #2 about 35' to the south, then a recently varnished large cross, and finally a tall cairn 100+ feet south of the true summit. I looked for a summit log at the true summit but in all our wandering I didn't think to check for a log in the tall cairn, mainly because it was not at the true summit. Oh well, I'll be back soon enough to remedy that issue. (Whoops, getting ahead of myself a bit here... I'll gain some great information later in the day that will make this a short and easy hike next time)
But for now it's time to head back by retracing our route, only this time skipping the unintended side-trip to the cliff. The sun was shining here now so the rattler was long-gone. Thankfully there were some great views because the rest of the trip was a drudgery of traipsing through the thick fields of grassy fox-tail and other assorted small burrs. Tracey was barefoot in sandals and I was wearing socks with mine, but it either way it was a constant irritant. The only way I could continue was to simply blot out any sensation from my feet and keep going and eventually the hike was over.
I posted 25 photos on HAZ with the full set of 79 photos here:
http://changephoenix.c...
Rattlesnake video
Rockinstraw Mountain summit video |
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