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| Hiking | 31.20 Miles |
9,577 AEG |
| | Hiking | 31.20 Miles | 14 Hrs 34 Mns | | 2.60 mph |
| 9,577 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 34 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was the toughest hike I've ever done in a day. I have done more miles than this in a day, but never with this much elevation to boot. I had a friend Norm from town go with me who had no problems keeping up; he's a marathon runner and had just run the Boston Marathon again the week before. When I saw him putting his pack on to start, it was this little runners thing. I asked, "How many liters are you carrying?" and he said, "Oh, I only need 2, how many do you have?" "7." We both looked at each other like the other was a little crazy, but started off anyway.
We started out about 5:10, heading up Romero Canyon. Whizzed by Romero Pools (still water there!) and got to Romero Pass in 3 hours, and then took the Mt. Lemmon Trail to connect us over to Wilderness of Rocks. Ran into a few senior citizens doing the Arizona Trail, talked to them a bit and cheered them on. They asked what we were doing and we said we were going from Catalina State Park to the top and back and one of them said, "Well, you'll actually want to stay on Mt. Lemmon Trail then, that's shorter"  Riiiight...
Took Wilderness of Rocks to Mint Spring, having a mini creation/evolution debate the whole time.  Mint Spring is still in pretty bad shape since the fire, so actually the Marshall Gulch trail into Summerhaven is nicer if you opt to do this (it only adds on about 1/3 mile).
Stopped in Summerhaven for an hour for a pizza (carbs!) for lunch, then at 1:10 headed up to Ski Valley. From there we took the Aspen Draw Trail up toward the Mt. Lemmon Trail. The Aspen Draw Trail is a challenging one to find, it's not marked off the highway at all, and even with my GPS track off HAZ I was having trouble locating it. I got a cell phone signal there though, so I brought the HAZ website up and looked for the directions to help me find it, so I was able to locate it.  When we came off the Aspen Draw Trail, we took a dirt road to the right, which connected again with the road up to the observatory. We took a left on that paved road to the power substation where the Mt. Lemmon Trail starts, and after a quick break there got ready to finally start our downhill for the day at 2:35.
Took the Mt. Lemmon Trail down to the Sutherland, stopping off at the Mt. Lemmon Lookout for a bit on the way. The only real difficulty we had with trail-finding (other than figuring out where the Aspen Draw trail was!) was a one-mile section of the Sutherland Trail that is in really bad shape. It starts shortly below the junction of the Samaniego Ridge Trail and continues until you start the steep descent down, around 7400 feet. The trail is completely overgrown with baby pines, manzanita, and tons of deadfall, and the only way you can navigate it is to look for one small cairn or plastic ribbon after another, jumping boulders, bushes and small trees all the way. This little area slowed us down more than anything else all day, and is the only part I wouldn't recommend doing with headlamps. Once we got through all that, though, we were home free!
From there, Sutherland had a pretty sharp, steady descent all the way down to the base of the mountain. Along the way I was surprised to see water along the trail in two places, around the 5000 ft range. During this phase, my marathon running friend who had only had 3 liters all day took off running, while I just held my quick walking pace. Eventually, after a long day, he went back to walking, and my pace caught up with him. He was having to then try to keep up with my over 4 mph walking pace for the last few miles, but we made it back to Catalina State Park with just enough light at 7:45 to not need a headlamp, so we did the whole thing in daylight! 
Up until this hike, the most difficult ones I had done in a day were (1) the AZT #9-10 from Loma Alta TH to Reddington Road, and (2) the AZT #19 from Rogers Trough TH to Roosevelt Lake in the Supes. Those, according to the way I calculate distance and elevation to figure out difficulty, were even a little harder than the Rim-to-Rim in the Grand Canyon. This one today outdid them all.  
What's next?!  |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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| "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." — Henry David Thoreau |
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