This was actually a hike. Perhaps for purposes of Mileage Board I should apply some sort of equivalent conversion factor from hiking to running. But for now, I'll let it be.
My wife wants to hike the Grand Canyon Rim 2 Rim in a few months with a group of girls she knows from our hometown of Kingman. She's gone on a handful of hikes with them to prepare. Since tomorrow is our anniversary, she was torn about going on this particular hike with them because it would technically be over our anniversary weekend. So she talked me in to doing it with them.
The hike was Mount Baldy, near Greer Arizona. We drove up Saturday to Pinetop-Lakeside. That's where we rented a cabin last year during Spring Break. Vickie's friends' names were Daylene, Heidi, and Labrae. They rented rooms at the Best Western. Vickie checked that morning on-line and saw that there was vacancy, so she didn't bother booking a room. We got there and of course by then there was no vacancy. So we went down the street to the Quality Inn and no vacancy there either, but they told us their sister company, the Comfort Inn, had vacancy. We booked a room there, a little more expensive than I would have liked, but what are you going to do?
We met for dinner at 7:30pm. Of course, nobody bothered to get reservations, so we had to wait a good 30 minutes. What's with these people?? After dinner I stopped to top of the gas tank at Circle K and got a breakfast burrito, a chocolate milk, and a cup of glazed donut holes for breakfast. I set my alarm for 3:30 am so that we could pick up the girls at 4am and drive to the trail head. I didn't end up eating any of the donut holes. Also, it was entirely too early for a bowel movement.
We drove out towards the Mount Baldy trail head. On the way there I saw a group of what I can only assume were wild horses. They weren't fenced in or anything. About 10 miles later I saw another large animal on the side of the road. It was just barely getting light out. The sun had still not broken the horizon. I thought it was a cow. I slowed down and I could see more figures, including one in the road. We realized it was a large herd of elk. It was amazing! There were babies and everything.
We got to the trail head, and there were a handful of cars there, even though it was not even 5am yet. Apparently people like to do this hike in two days. They hike up a ways, set up camp, and finish it up the next day. We were doing the whole thing in one day. We got our packs on and headed out, taking a couple of pictures to prove we were doing this.
It's a looped trail. There's a gravel trail from the parking lot to the fork where the loop starts. Daylene said we would be going clockwise. I had to teach her what clockwise meant because indeed we would be going counterclockwise. We talked about it the night before at dinner. I told them it would be nice to go this way because there were three little hills to go up and down before getting to the big long climb. Once we got to the top, it would be downhill the rest of the way.
For some reason they had me lead the way. Before we knew it we were through mile 1. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Daylene can hike! She stayed right behind me while the other girls lagged a little. Somewhere around mile 3 we must've walked right by a baby deer. The laggers saw it because they scared it with all their chatter. At mile 3.5 we came to a large stream crossing.
They made me cross it first to make sure the logs were steady. After crossing, we took our first break. I ate a couple of pieces of beef jerky. Then I wandered up the hill behind a bush to take care of what I couldn't when I woke up. The rest wasn't very long, and we were back to hiking. The trail was following the stream. Around mile 6 we entered a meadow and the wind really started picking up. I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be a foreshadowing of things to come.
Although our first break was the start of the long ascent, now we were entering the steepest part (between mile 6 and 9.5.) They knew from the reviews that there were fallen trees all over the trail. We started to see them. Some we had to crawl under, and others we had to scramble over. We soon realized it wasn't just a few. There must've been easily 50 trees we had to do this to! It made the difficulty of the hike double. Being the man of the group, I felt obligated some times to stop and help the girls over on some of the more hard ones. Daylene decided we would take our second break at the half way point, 8.5 miles By this time we were getting tired. Every tree scramble followed by immediately going uphill was exhausting. I would have to catch my breath each time. Anyway, I had already taken my hoodie off and the shirt I had underneath it was sleeveless. I wasn't chaffing yet with my backpack on my shoulders, but I was afraid I would, so I changed my shirt. I had another pair of socks, too, but I never changed them.
After our break Daylene and I were putting some serious distance between us and the laggers. And we weren't even going very fast. Some times we would stop and wait 'til we saw them before we started again. At one time we stopped and another hiker came by. We asked how far back the rest of our group was. He said about 300 yards. He also said we were only about a quarter of a mile from the saddlehorn. So I asked Daylene if we should wait for the girls or go to the top and wait. We decided to go the top since we were so close. The other hiker was taking a break with his dog. He said he hikes this almost every weekend. He said that we're about three quarters of a mile from the crest of Mount Baldy. But we weren't supposed to go up there without a permit because it's sacred Indian land. He told us they spread their Apache ashes up there. He said that during the monsoon season it really starts to stink once all the rain hits the ashes. We talked to him for a while until he was ready to leave. He also told us that this is one of the few places where we had cell service, so when he left, Daylene called her husband to let him know we had made it to the top.
Once the other girls got there, we took another break. Vickie took her first and only pee. She was afraid that she was going to have to completely take off her pants, but I told her just to find a fallen tree. They were everywhere. Daylene adequately called that area a tree graveyard. The wind blows so hard that trees fall down all the time. I doubt the forrest service can keep up with keeping the trail clear. Sometimes we would hear a tree creak, and get nervous. Once I heard what I thought was a round of gun shots. But now I think it may have been a tree that fell over and rolled down the mountain and was crashing into other trees.
It was all down hill from here. The sign said it was 6 miles, but it was actually closer to 7 miles. I would have liked one more rest, but Daylene thought that we would probably not need one with only 6 miles to go. The master hiker dude had told us that there were still trees that we would need to climb over on the way down. He also told us where to find the plane wreckage. Going down felt so much better. Whenever we climbed a tree, I was no longer gasping for breath. We were moving along pretty quickly, at least 5 minutes per mile faster than our uphill average. We wanted to be done. My feet were starting to hurt. Now there were no more laggers. Everyone was scooting along. I knew it was going to be longer than 6 miles, but I knew I had it in me to finish. We got back to the trail head, took a couple more pictures, got to the Jeep, and I just wanted to collapse. We all did.
It was a fun and beautiful hike. I drove the girls back to Pinetop-Lakeside. We were going to go out and eat again, but they were exhausted and thought they would just get some fast food for their trip back to Kingman. Vickie and I stopped at a restaurant in Showlow. It was good food, but surprisingly, I didn't have much of an appetite. The drive home sucked eggs. There was so much traffic between Globe and Superior!! I was happy to be home. It was a hard hike, and now I'm not sure I want to do Rim to Rim. But maybe it won't be so bad if there aren't trees to climb over and under.
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