Eat My Words

This hike was humbling for us. We can whip out Flat Iron and Angel’s Landing no biggie, but this one was a surprise. We thought we’d knock this hike out quickly and even do a second hike in the afternoon. Don’t let the mileage fool you. Definitely a stair climber the whole way. It was hotter than I like, because the heat just radiates up off the rocks. We started at a beautiful 80 degrees at 7:30am and some shade going up, lovely breeze. Ideally, we would’ve (and should’ve) started earlier, but this already had us departing from Mesa at 4:30am. Coming back down it was 92 degrees and zero shade. The views on the trail were gorgeous, but the top was pretty underwhelming. I had read 360 degree views, but it was 180 at best. Still beautiful of course, but not quite what we expected. We brought poles just in case, but ended up stowing them because we wanted hands free for scrambling. Lots of prickly pears and pretty lizards. The trail is often not clearly evident. I referred to the trail map on my phone a few times, but we relied heavily on the white diamonds marked in the rock.