Thursday, March 10, 2011
Spring Break Hiking the Arizona Trail
Spring Break officially begins for me at 2:45PM today. I will have 10 days to hike 189 miles on the Arizona trail. The weather should be perfect for this stretch from Flagstaff south to the crossing of AZ87 between Payson and Phoenix. I'm dealing with a little cold and a bad sore throat, but this is a training shakedown hike for a much bigger one on the Appalachian Trail this summer. I have been having a lot of trouble uploading the GPS tracks from the Arizona Trail Associations website to Garmin Basecamp on my wacky macky. This resulted in me just staying up super late last night making a track Basecamp, correlating it to the maps in the Arizona Trail guidebook. Hopefully changes since they wrote the book to the trail won't very to much from the actual route. This should be fun!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hope your hike went well- you should of had great weather compared to this week! I'm training for a hike in the Grand Canyon. I'm training for my first Grand Canyon hike and I want to be fully prepared because I'm going with Just Roughin It and don't want to be the slow poke in the group. My biggest concern is dealing with the elevation change from Phoenix. Do you have any recommendations for hiking trails in Arizona that would be good training for hiking the Canyon?
ReplyDeleteNothing substitutes for elevation, like being at higher altitudes. I'm not familiar with a lot of trails around Phoenix, but have been in the Superstion mtns for a few miles. They are quite beautiful, and any hiking in them would defiantly get you in better shape for the Grand Canyon. Also the small blisters you get from training will really help reduce the big blisters that the 5000 vertical feet at the Grand Canyon may give you. I really enjoy the Santa Catalina mtns by Tucson for their vertical mile of elevation change, and the rough overall nature of the trails there. Combine these with awesome views and nice swimming holes, and you have a pretty sweet hike.
ReplyDeleteLast week I went up the Pima Canyon trail on the North side of Tucson, took that across the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, dropped Esperero canyon trail to Sabino canyon visitor center, then went up Bear Canyon trail to the Palisade trail, dropped down Box Camp to the West Fork Sabino Canyon trail, went by deep Hutch's pool, a awesome swimming hole with a river flowing through it, then went out over Romero pass, past Romero pools into Catalina state park. That was an awesome 48 miles.
Wow your hike last week sounds amazing. I'd love to check out Hutch's pool. I'll also probably try Superstition Mountains too; I've heard good things about them from multiple people. Thanks for the tips!
ReplyDelete