Tuesday 21st February – Picacho Peak

Today was incredible.  Starting as a day where we were going to enjoy some of the great outdoors and save some cash, but turning into a day of achievement for us. 

We had to move from our overflow spot by noon (right) and went to the ranger station to book in for another night.  We had hoped that we could stay in the overflow for our second night to save cash.  We are verging on staying in budget for the first week EVER!! But we’re not there yet.  We had to upgrade to a space on the camp ground for $30, but we’re still on track…. Just! 

We’d been studying the trail options at the Park and I was surprised that Simon was keen to try the most difficult.  After our trip into the Grand Canyon the other day I thought he would be put off hiking but it seems the opposite is true.  Having conquered the Grand Canyon, we are now seasoned hikers who can tackle ‘extreme trails involving cables over a steep and twisting route’! This was the Hunter trail. 

They even recommended wearing gloves, which did come in handy.  Two miles from base to the peak which is at 3374 feet elevation.  We set out at 1245 pm having loaded the rucksack with drinks and oat bars for the journey and scoffed a banana for energy.  The views were incredible all the way up, which gave us the perfect excuse to take our time!  We were also distracted by the screeching of bird of prey above.  This falcon kept swooping off the cliff and returning to perch:

 

I was keen to get a good photograph so we ‘perched’ for a while ourselves before a male came and joined her and this happened (right)!

 

We were in the shade for a large part of the initial climb, then we reached a bench at a location called the ‘saddle’ and we suddenly had a view across the vista on the other side of the mountain and were bathed in sunshine. The size of some of the cacti on the mountain was amazing (right). After this point the climb became a lot more technical, some sections requiring a cable on both sides to support us up the rock face. Some sections were also over steep drops, which was unnerving but we kept at it until reaching the peak after a couple of hours. We had a clear 360° panoramic view around us. We were joined on the peak by chipmunks, a squirrel and I had also arranged a fly-past of F35 and A10 military jets to celebrate us making it (that’s a lie, but the timing was immaculate!).  I don’t recall climbing a mountain as high as this before, or one which was such a challenging but rewarding hike. 

A friendly mountain-top chipmunk

Our panoramic view

We also walked up the second-highest peak (below) before starting to make our way back down.  I found it harder going down rather than up! Partly because I could now see how high up we were and also because my knees started aching from trying to stop me being propelled downwards too quickly!  It had taken us over four hours to do the whole four miles (wow, an average of 1mph IS slow!).  We were exhausted and thirsty but feeling very proud of ourselves.

A new challenge for Arizona – find the most interesting/rudest shaped cactus possible!  Here are some early contenders for your amusement:

No caption required...

Octo-cactus...

 

We made our way to our new plot for the night (right) and the sky treated us with an amazing sunset, I think it’s one of my favourites so far, cacti make brilliant shadows for contrast! The sky looked like it was on fire. 

It feels great to be back in a region without snow, so we don’t need to use heaters every morning and evening.  It’s lovely and warm but it’s dry, so no mosquitoes or bug issues.  This may just be temporary though as there’s been severe flooding in the whole of California for the last week, people have lost their homes and rivers have burst their banks.  Here’s hoping everyone is okay and the situation improves before we arrive there next week.