Monday, September 8, 2008

We got up at 3:30 a.m., grabbed our oatmeal bars for breakfast, stopped briefly at a gas station convenience store for coffee and juice and headed up to the Humphreys Peak trailhead at the Arizona Snow Bowl. There was an early morning light overcast but it started dissipating about the time we hit the trail at 5:50 a.m.

As the sun started to rise, we could begin to see more of the surrounding countryside, although the western slopes of Humphreys Peak were still shrouded in shadow. The remnant overnight clouds continued to dissipate, promising decent weather for at least a little while.

Once we reached the Humphreys/Agassiz saddle, we could see our goal off a mile or so in the distance. The true summit is the hump farthest to the right on the ridgeline in this photo. Although the GPS says you're only about 0.7 miles from the summit, the trail wanders a good mile-and-a-quarter along and just below the ridgeline past what seems an interminable series of three false summits. Most of the time, there is an easily-discerned trail but there are a few spots of confusion and a moderate amount of boulder-hopping here and there.

At this point, the weather seemed to be cooperating nicely...nearly clear blue skies with only a hint of high clouds.

Did I mention the false summits? Well, look at the shot to the right, then the true summit a bit later in the report. So tempting and yet so frustrating when you find the trail bending around the false summit and continuing on to the north.

The fact that there are three of these gems merely adds to the climber's pleasure. At least the views off to the east make up for some of the frustration in the long ridge traverse.

After traipsing around and over the false summits, we did eventually reach the approach to the true summit. A brother and sister had passed us shortly before while we stopped to catch our breath and are visible halfway up the final scramble to the summit proper. These last few feet are about the steepest part of the climb but even so, no appreciable exposure and only a moderate amount of rock-hopping as opposed to trail walking.

At this point, seeing that the skies were still blue was a most welcome sight. Our confidence was certainly buoyed for the last push up to the summit.

A few minutes' more scrambling and we were at the highpoint of Arizona, 35° 20.786'N, 111° 40.677'W. We reached the summit at 9:30, just over 3-1/2 hours after leaving the trailhead. Not a speed record by any means but for 4.8 miles and about 3,000' of gain, with minimal acclimation, we were quite happy.

We traded summit photo duties with the brother/sister duo who had just preceded us to the summit. The view from the summit is spectacular, but what is that ominous shadow to the west and why is there suddenly a dark cloud right overhead? It must be time to head down!

I did spend enough time to shoot the source images for my traditional summit panorama. (You will need a Java-enabled browser to view the small copy that pops up from that link, or have loaded Quicktime to view the larger copy linked to from that page.)

With the clouds overhead building rapidly, we left the summit at 10:00 a.m. The first rumbles of thunder behind us began by 10:15, so we were not inclined to dally long on that mile or so of summit ridge. We did run into several other groups of hikers still headed up but were not any more successful than usual at convincing them that they were running a serious risk of becoming human lightning rods if they continued upwards. Indeed, a couple of college-aged guys even commented as they hiked past in shorts and t-shirts that they might have been better off if they had thought to bring a jacket with them.

As we continued down the ridge, we were pelted by graupel, those styrofoam-like snow pellets. We encountered one climber hunkered down along the ridge saying that he was going to wait a while and see if it cleared off so he could continue. No such luck...between graupel, rain and lightning flashing behind us, we continued down and into the trees before even thinking about stopping for a break.

By the time we were off the ridge and well below timberline, the skies opened up even more. Our planned snack stop disappeared in the interest of getting as low as possible as quickly as possible. By the time we got back to the trailhead at the Arizona Snowbowl, the storms were dropping moderate to heavy rain and lightning was occasionally striking trees even at lower elevations. We hoped that the hikers who remained up higher on the mountain were safe!

Back to the car, a bit damp but undeterred, having succeeded in our first (and primary) goal for the trip, we headed back into Flagstaff for a well-earned pizza lunch.

Nathan's highpoint count has now reached 40 and mine, 42. Arizona was the fifth for each of us in the Western region, so we now qualified for both our 30-highpoint and 40-highpoint pins. (The 30 pin requires at least five from each of the four regions. The 40 pin has been recently reaffirmed as "any 40" by the Highpointers Club Board of Directors.)

The map above is a section of the Humphreys Peak 7.5-minute USGS quad with the trail as recorded by my GPS highlighted.