Gateway Loop Trail - MSP Photoset • tibber • 2011-03-02 • HikeArizona.COM

Gateway Loop Trail - MSP, AZ

	2011-03-02
	16 by tibber

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Gateway Loop Trail - MSP

Phoenix, AZ

Gateway Loop Trail - MSP

Phoenix, AZ

Hiking	5.15 Miles	838 AEG

Hiking	5.15 Miles	2 Hrs	2.58 mph
	838 ft AEG

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The weather was so nice, who wants to go to the gym? :--:

Not me. So I decided to do a quick after-work hike. I hadn't done the Gateway Loop in quite awhile so I opted to do that since it's only a few minutes from my office. I do remember when I first did this trail it seemed a long hike for me. Now I'm happy to say, it's pretty well a piece of cake. So with my mom's camera in tow (mine was at the repair shop so that the zoom function could be fixed), off I went at 3:05. My goal was to do the hike in 2 hours.

I went from 104th St to the Levee Trail and followed that until the intersection directing you to the Gateway Loop access where instead of continuing toward the Gateway's access intersection, I took a right and headed east thru the fence opening paralleling the Levee Trail I had just come off of. About 10 minutes later I look north and see the trail I should be on [-(

. Oh well, I'll keep going and see what happens. If there isn't a crossover I'll just hike as far as I can on this trail for an hour and then head back. Not to worry though as the trail soon intersected with the Paradise Trail that headed north to the Gateway Loop Trail. I actually prefer this part of the route to the Gateway as there isn't any traffic.

So now that I was back on track, I felt better and kept on pushing while still shooting intermittent movies with commentary and shot a couple photos. I would later come to find out that the movies were not good quality

so I was quite disappointed. Even more surprising is that my mom had a 512 card in there too and when I downloaded the photos, she still had photos on there from 2006

.

There is a bit of a climb to the Saddle elev 2,375 feet (2.5 accumulated miles so far for me this day) and then it's all down hill from there. I think it would be a better workout for me if I came from the other (north) side as I think the climb is longer. I did run into about a dozen or so hikers along the way but not bad. The scenery is nice off and on. Eventually as you swing west you can look back and see Tom's Thumb. There were lots of intersecting trails that headed west as I made my way back to 104th Street. Needless to say, it is well signed. I made it back in my 2 hour time frame I had set for myself. If I left my camera behind :-$

, I think I could cut off about 15 minutes at least.

When I went to save my track on Scout, I realized I had never pushed the ON button :doh:

and even though Scout was tracking the route, it didn't get recorded. The temps were a little warm when I started the hike but after I hit the saddle, the temps were near perfect as the sun ducked behind some cloud cover. All in all , the Gateway Loop is a nice little after work hike.

This video is poor quality but there's lots of commentary for your listening pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFtL5j2Ri2U

I'll post a few unedited

photos too.

_____________________

For me, sometimes it's just as much about the journey as the destination.
Oh, and once in awhile, don't forget to look back at the trail you've traveled.

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