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| Hiking | 13.50 Miles |
2,398 AEG |
| | Hiking | 13.50 Miles | 7 Hrs 45 Mns | | 1.74 mph |
| 2,398 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | I set out alone from the trailhead at Lockett Meadow at about 3:00pm with the goal of making the summit of Mt. Humphreys by sunset and returning by the light of my headlamp and the nearly full moon. The trip up was enjoyable and not as hard as I had anticipated. The views were spectacular although I had little time to stop and admire them if I wanted to avoid being caught above the saddle after dark (the trail above the saddle is faint to the point of non-existence in some places; it's hard enough to follow in daylight.)
As I climbed along the summit ridge I could see the shadow of the mountain rising up to the horizon and then visible in the air itself. I reached the summit at the exact moment the sun was setting. I hauled pumpkin back to the saddle, barely making it before the last light of day disappeared. It was at this point that I encountered something strange. At the moment the sun set, insects--mostly moths--started flying up to the summit ridge from below. First a few, then more; finally they were so thick that their collisions with my jacket sounded and felt like rain hitting me. It was very annoying and persisted until I had descended to at least 500ft. below the saddle. I've always seen bugs at the summits of mountains, but nothing of this magnitude before. What were they doing?
After clearing the cloud of moths at the ridge, I descended by headlight without event until I hit the treeline. The Weatherford Trail between the treeline and the Inner Basin Trail intersection had been rendered indistinct in a few places by a combination of rain and fallen trees. I had no problem moving through in the day but I wandered off-route about five times during my descent. Every time but one I realized my mistake quickly and backtracked to the last know location of the trail and was able to find the correct direction from there. The other time, however, the trail was faint and strewn with fallen trees to begin with and when I backtracked to where I expected the trail to be, I couldn't find it.
I located a distinctive fallen tree nearby and declared it my base of operations and began a search pattern from there. After what I guess to have been about twenty minutes, I still hadn't found any sign of the trail and the thought crossed my mind for the first time in my life that I might actually be lost and consequently might have to hold there until dawn lest I wander too far. I had prepared for this eventuality and had plenty of extra water, some food, some shelter, fire making equipment, etc., and in a way I was almost excited by the prospect of a night in the wilderness on a survival level.
Looking back I guess it was pretty stupid to try this sort of thing alone. I never saw another living soul after leaving the trailhead. I had planned on going with some friends but they backed out at the last minute. As I stood alone in the dark halfway up the highest mountain in Arizona and tried to decide what to do next, I couldn't believe that solo hiking almost fourteen miles up and down nearly four-thousand vertical feet, on a trail I'd never been on before, half at night could have ever seemed like a good idea.
I knew I had to be close, though, and decided to give it one more go. In my searching for the trail I had gained a good picture of the lay of the land in the immediate vicinity and determined that I was in a patch of trees sandwiched between a boulder field and a drainage, neither of which had I crossed on the way up. I knew the trail had to be in this 150yd. wide strip of trees, somewhere downhill so I set out to criss-cross this tree field in a downhill direction. After about three to five minutes I came upon a fallen tree that showed the distinctive pattern of wear that comes from having been stepped on repeatedly by people. Figuring the trail to run perpendicular to the fallen tree, I followed this route for about fifteen yards downhill and found the trail once again.
After that point, the trail remained easy to follow for the rest of the trip. The rains had washed away a lot of the dirt that had once made the top layer of this trail and exposed the uneven rock beneath. The miles of downhill hiking from the top of the Inner Basin Trail to the trailhead were not pleasant simply because the surface was so uneven. I twisted my ankles many times on rocks that looked flat in the light of my headlamp but proved pointy underfoot. By the time I saw the red flash of my vehicle's taillight reflectors, I was tired, sore, cold, and barely able to believe that I'd done it. It was definitely one of my top hikes of all time.
NOTE: The distance of 13.5 miles that I gave for this hike is just a guess based on the distances I know and estimates of the ones I don't. Does anybody know the actual distance from Lockett Meadow to the Mt. Humphreys summit? |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
...NO WATER! After filling my water bottles, I had somehow neglected to put them in my pack. I momentarily considered going on without given the relative shortness and ease of this hike but common sense got the best of me and I decided to turn back. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow.
