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| Hiking | 5.50 Miles |
2,400 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.50 Miles | 3 Hrs 40 Mns | | 1.50 mph |
| 2,400 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | A beautiful fall day on Elden. Overall, there is nothing particularly special about the day. Nice weather, blue skies, light winds, warm, and color is spotty and more or less just starting on Elden. The only thing noteworthy is that today is my last hike on Elden as a resident of Flagstaff. That doesn't mean I won't be back in Flagstaff in the future and do all or part of the hike, but I won't be living here and it won't be my gym anymore.
I may have done Humphrey a lot in the 5 years I lived here, but Elden was really my main squeeze. Unlike Humphrey's Peak, I don't have an accurate log of the times I did it, but I started logging every trip in late 2007, and added a conservative estimate for the previous year to that figure and tallied up some good totals. Officially, I'm at 177 summits, but it might be closer to 190, probably not over 200. No big deal, plenty of folks do Elden a lot, like Tommy, a guy who I ran into from time to time and told me a couple of years ago that he had done it twice a week for several years. He could be over 400 times now.
I'll miss Elden as it's a great trail and hike. Maybe it is not a super scenic hike like the East Baldy Trail, but it is a really good convenient urban mountain trail. 15 minutes to something I would have had to drive 4 days across the country to reach from the east, that was a dream come true 5 years ago. It was the first hike I ever did in Flagstaff, way back in early August of 2006, and it seems fitting it be the last. It was really hard the first few times and a serious hike back then, but after a while, 5 miles and 2400 feet somehow became routine and almost easy. I didn't always like it, and sometimes I got sick of it, but from May to October it is usually really nice to be on, and I love the rugged rocky terrain, the views, and the vegetation. Yeah, I'll miss Elden. |
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Autumn Foliage Observation Light
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Route Editor
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