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| Hiking | 3.31 Miles |
1,090 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.31 Miles | 1 Hour 36 Mns | | 2.16 mph |
| 1,090 ft AEG | 4 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Hike #4 of the PHX5 Phoenix Summit Challenge. Numbers 2 and 3 were easy hikes. This one definitely lived up the the "Challenge" name. Apparently we were supposed to go around the loop counter-clockwise. Most people who read the Hiker's Passport put out by the City knew that. My little group didn't get the memo, and there was crappy signage at the start. It wasn't clear that you need to take a sharp right immediately after the start and make nearly a u-turn to go the right way. Either way it's a steep, challenging trail. I think I like our clockwise route better than the other way, but I'll have to try the other to know for sure.
Trail starts out pretty easy and then starts climbing a bit. The sun finally came out and it felt nice and warm. We turned right to follow the trail up to the ridge line. It was crazy steep. Really hard work! A tough slog up to the ridge line. The ridge line still climbed fairly steeply, but not nearly as bad as the stretch of trail getting to the ridge. There were some exposed places along the ridge where the ground dropped off steeply on both sides which made it interesting. We ran into a couple members of our group along the ridge line near the top who were hiking the loop counter-clockwise. They advised us to turn around and go down the way we came up because of the steepness of the trail they had just taken.
We reached the summit at the trail junction and decided to keep going clockwise. It wasn't bad and we were glad that we ignored the advice.
Of all the different hikes I've done on Phoenix Summit Challenges over the years this one was the most challenging. Better signage would have been nice. |
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