After work hike with Lee & Karl. We met at Karl's and headed out for Peak 2429. We topped out and took a short break. From there we dropped down and circled around for Happy Hour Ridge. Once up top we took an extended break and enjoyed a beverage. Lee headed back early while Karl & I finished our beers and then we headed back too. This was a nice evening hike.

This was a hike to test my knee after not doing ANYTHING all week including no workouts and limited activity. As you know sadly I re-injured my knee after that New Year's Day climb and then when I hiked last Sunday after about 3 1/2 miles my knee really started to hurt. So my thought is it still hadn't recuperated from the New Year's Day hike and thus I decided to lay low for the week.

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altho here at home it feels tight. I had a route in my head to go up and around 8a and then veer west and hook up with VOAZ so I had some bail out options if my knee flared up. Did I do any of that? a small tad of 8 and that was it. I ended up at the top of 304 which I thot hooked up with 8 but it didn't so I did part of an old trail that has been closed; which was obvious when I came across a small part that was no longer there. I thot I saw the trail (encountered some interesting cairns) to hook up with across the gully but nope. And this was NOT the day to do exploring but I might come back to see where it takes me though the trail seemed to disappear... but I did spot another trail across the way (now looking at my route that would be 8b).

So I went back up the hill to the top of 304 and then headed down the east part of that which I guess was the 8a. But instead of continuing on the 8a a little bit later I u-turned and headed east to go thru some gullies and up another hill and around the corner and up another hill and back to the 38th St TH. All the while saying "yes" as my knee was behaving. We have some AZ Trail next weekend so I need to be ready to go.

got out late today after working some overtime this morning, a nap and finishing christmas shopping
haven't done this loop in awhile
both 8A and 8B are nice trails with some elevation gain
nice little rainstorm at work this morning
glad i was inside

Saw a fat trail running up the mountain on the way to taking the kid to PV Mall and thought a hike would be better then going home to wait out the shopping. The 40th St trailhead is nice, plenty of parking and bathrooms. The trail is busy, it was quite hot, but the views are nice and it is quiet and clean for how close to everything it is. There were a bunch of butterflies at the summit, pretty cool.

had to do something over the 3 day weekend since I passed on the HAZ New Year event. Sometimes I have a sense of what I want to do when I arrive at a local TH and others I don't. This time I had a sense but did 3 different attachments. I headed up the main trail and then took a right to take 8A. Sometimes that hike to the saddle seems a little steeper than it is but not today. I sailed right up and then down the backside to the wash where I decided to head up to 8B. I recall seeing a trail that goes up a bit of a gully when I'm hiking 8A and that's what I thot I might try to hook up with.

I took 8A and arrived at the saddle and then up to 8B saddle thinking that the trail I would see when I was hiking below on other hikes would hook up there but nope. Oh well. I looked over to my left (west) and saw this peak. It was pretty straight up but it had a little trail; so why not?! I can do short and sweet peak bagging. So up I went realizing as I got a little higher that this was going to be harder to get down. I encountered 2 others on the way and then one on top. You have to walk over a little further to get to the high point. Needless to say the vista all around was awesome. I took some pics and video of which I posted some pics on FB and then realizing of course, now I have to get down .

I ended up on the wrong path down and went straight down instead of over to the right and then down. On this part I encountered a couple young boys that were trying their best to be macho attacking the mountain. I just found them to be loud and obnoxious! I was glad to finally reach the saddle and altho I wouldn't have minded heading down 8B, I found it to be quite cold. I know it was in the high 50s but even my hands were cold. So I booked down to the wash and out staying on 8A until the next wash.

When I went in, I washed all the way back to 40th Street. That was so cool . The wash changes almost the entire way and though you can hear the people from time to time, you can't see them. I thought washing would give me some good practice for our Goldfields hike on Sunday. Yep, I'll do that again but of course I still got to figure out how that 8A goes from this other side and hike it from there next time. (from the map, it looks it's via 304 but I also see another trail I can take from the 8B saddle to the NE so I may give that a whirl)

There were lots of people out and some in shorts, burrr! And quite a few seemed off trail or peaking too. I did spot a mylar balloon but it was too high up to retrieve so I'll have to leave that to K&K.

Here's a little over a minute pano movie: [ youtube video ]

try to hike somewhere other than south mountain on sundays
failed to get a parking spot at 32nd & lincoln, so went to the 304 trailhead
nature circumference voaz 1A irregular link circ 1A yates quartz ridge ruth hamilton
the idea was to hit 1B and 1C, otherwise just random wandering around
not too busy on any of these
the only part i didn't care for was 1A near the freeway
cool to start, warming up nicely by the end
met my brother and his girlfriend for tots and wings after

I rounded up my niece for my Sunday hike, as to me it's still a little too warm to head out to the Supes... well unless I want to get up way before the crack of dawn.

I took Mia up to the Tibber Ridgeline via a new route (and there's still a different route to try yet of 3 possibilities); it's a heck of a climb but not bad for 445 feet in 1/2 mile. And then we headed west to the top of Tibber Ridgeline and over and down across to the VOAZ where we headed up again. This trail on the north side had some issues the last time I came down it but I didn't notice any trail issues on the way up (from the rain earlier this fall).

We headed down to the 304 and I took her contouring the side of the mountains over to 8 where we went around the front side of a couple little mountains and then thru the wash, east and then north. I got sick a little at the junction of the 8 (something about that junction) and then we powered up the little hill for the all down hill from here part.

In the past couple hikes I saw another trail that was in front of the mountain that the 8 goes around so we decided to check that out. It's kind of hard to spot as we almost walked by it. It takes you west and down thru a wash and then veers south but we were not happy with the heat so we took a short cut thru a deep wash and back out to another sort of trail and headed back to Tonto Jr.

It was fun to get caught up with my niece and to have company. I'm just not big on hiking alone as I just don't like spending that much time talking inside my head to myself. We would have hiked further but it did start to get a little warm and no breeze. Surprisingly, there weren't nearly as many folks and dogs and bike riders out on the trail as there was last Sunday.

This weekend, it's back to some Arizona Trail .

Today was the day I was going to finally be able to do my VOAZ Loop I had plotted in my head. So off I went via 100 over to the bike trail that would take me north. I could see on the hill between me and the 8 (to the SE) was a trail that went on the mountainside so I'm going to have to investigate that. I continued on the bike trail south (slightly different from the one I took a couple weeks ago) and then crossed over the wash to meet up with the 8. I kept on the 8 for awhile and could have went off the 8 to cross over earlier but stayed to the south where I met up with the 8 again (could have stayed on it). I eventually hooked up with the 304/302 up to the VOAZ junction. I have to say the breeze was sure lovely up until here. It was a very strange breeze for this time of year... it was COOL .

I hadn't taken the VOAZ this direction before so it was obviously a little easier once I got to the saddle and started heading down hill. The rain seems to have damaged part of this trail. Once down to 1A my goal was the green hill (a tinted color from the rock) and then up to my lately dubbed: Tibber's Happy Hour Ridgeline that I discovered last week but was too tired and hot to take on. As I was climbing to the Green Saddle I thot I could hear coyotes so I stopped a couple times to listen. And then a short time later HAZel gave me my mileage update with the sound of... yep, you guessed it, a coyote . Once on the ridgeline it has a couple steep sections and because of being out of shape I did have to stop and catch my breath plus the breeze had disappeared.

Once to the top of Fifteen Cent Peak I rested for a moment and noticed other people on what I had dubbed Twenty Cent Peak while looking at it from VOAZ. I had also seen a trail that seems to come up from the south side so I may have to give that a whirl one of these times. Anyway, I hadn't intended on ascending Twenty Cent Peak but after a slight rest, I looked over at it where some other people had just come down and decided, "what the heck" and give it a whirl as it wasn't that high and was still in partial shade.

Well Twenty Cent is a fun ascent. I walked around on top and thot I saw a path over to the NE so headed toward that. Well it wasn't a path and I wasn't in the mood to trek back up to the top of the peak. I surveyed the situation and decided it didn't look like I could cliff out anywhere so down I went. I crisscrossed for a bit and decided it would take way too long to get down this way so I tried to aim for straight down as much as I could. I crossed over to a rocky crag thinking there might be a trail out of that but nope so back I went and continued my trek down to a trail that crosses between these northern mounts.

Finally I reached the trail altho it was very rocky and headed south until I reached up with what looked like a normal trail and took that back to the 40th St TH. Saw about 5 little lizards, a dozen hikers and a dozen bikers. Oh, and I got a very close fly-by from a most beautiful hawk!

I wanted to try my VOAZ Loop but kind of missed the exit off of 100 so decided to go 2.5 on 100 and back with a side trip. Weren't many people on the trail but lots of bike riders. Fortunately there was a breeze so I was able to keep on going and was happy about it. The 100 has a couple intersections that it's not real obvious which way to go because of all the off shoot trails; therefore two hiccups. Anyway, I made it to the Irregular intersection 1A south and then headed back.

My intent on the way back would be to take that one hill off to the north and come around. As I got to the top of this hill I could see a pretty obvious trail to a peak so I gave that a shot. Well that was fun and as I came off of that I went over on another trail that takes you east over to what looks like a ridgeline hike. I will try that next time but as I was hiking in the area I said to myself, "This is my Peak 2429" and I look forward to checking out the ridgeline as it looks like there is obvious trail going over and up in that area. I also thot, this will be my Happy Hour Peak and I can wave to Karl and Kathy and maybe over to Todd's Happy Hour Peaks in the area.

I hiked back down the north side and headed east back to the TH. I passed by some old signage that is maybe where the original trailhead area was.

The breeze made for a nice morning. One of these times I'll get to do my loop (8 over to 304 to 302 to VOAZ to 100 to 40th St TH).

PS Off topic note. I haven't been fingerprinted since the 80s I think. Anyway, did the TSA pre-check enrollment and got that done. Put it this way, they don't use ink anymore.

Had a different route in mind but it was hotter than I liked and I saw shade so I stayed on the trail toward Peak 2429 (Two Bit) with the thought of taking that off trail (a little past the Two Bit sign) back over to the 8. I found that but rather than staying on it I tried to take advantage of the shade and made my own shade trail over to 8. I topped out on 8 and down the other side. Wasn't feeling well so stopped at the turn off to the west and rested a moment.

Continued west; instead of following 8 I took the right fork that stays closer to the mountain on your right. It is a bike trail of some sort and eventually hooks up with 100. A slight breeze started so I was able to pick up the pace but just as I thot I was feeling better and could go further I didn't feel well again so I stuck to the plan of going to 100 and then to 8 to the parking lot which was quite empty at 8:30 when I was done.

Still prefer this heat over going to the Club.