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| Hiking | 9.90 Miles |
630 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.90 Miles | 3 Hrs 51 Mns | | 2.62 mph |
| 630 ft AEG | 4 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | My original plan for this hike was to take an Uber ride from the hotel to where the AZT meets I-40 on the east side and walk back into Flagstaff while Radmila took the car and did her adjudication. Unfortunately, the weather the day before and the forecast for this day made things too risky to attempt to be stranded in the middle of a 17 mile hike in a thunderstorm. Of course, there was no lightning activity along the trail all day, as Murphy's Law would dictate.
This allowed me to get an extra hour or 2 of sleep and take my time driving out to the AZT Walnut Canyon Trailhead. my backup plan was to hike from there out to I-40 and back and then see what the weather was like.
It was very sunny and even warm when I started around 7:30am. It was nice to have a walk through the ponderosas as a contrast to the open Sonoran desert around Phoenix. After crossing the road in to the Walnut Canyon NM, the landscape quickly changed to open grassland and pinyon pines. Lots of great views of the San Francisco Peaks were everywhere. Still a lot of snow up there. the weather forecast for the day had a 50/50 chance of rain and snow above 11000'. By the end of the day it seemed like there was less snow than we saw the day before just after the rain ended then, so it seems like the peaks are still getting snow this late in the year.
I made it out just past I-40 and the railroad tracks. A train was there just as I arrived. The AZT markers NB into the underpass are gone, so I couldn't tell that was the way to go through, so I waited for the trail to pass before I crossed the tracks. After that I took trail a little further up the hill until it leveled out some to avoid the descent on the way back on day as I try to finish the AZT.
On the way back the clouds started to roll in from the north. I got hit with some light drops of rain, and for about 5 minutes a little hail. Nothing too threatening, but enough to make me want to pick up the pace a bit. Once I got back to the car I had lunch and soon started to hear some rolling thunder. I had another 4 hours to kill. I checked my weather app and saw lightning strikes 1.3 miles away in a storm cell. I had taken my family from this trailhead the other way on the trail 11 years ago and went out about 1.5 miles. Between repeating what I had already done and trying to outrun a lightning storm, I decided to head back into Flagstaff to finish some the AZT that goes through the central area there. it was also a lot closer to where Radmila was finishing her gig for the day, so that seemed to be the better call to spend the rest of the day while she finished up. |
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