When I flew to Phoenix to do the Arizona Winter Six-Pack, I had assumed I'd be doing all the hikes solo. Little did I know that I would have the honor of crossing the halfway point in the company of a large Persian man named Darius. You see, Darius, aka Super Dario, is my co-worker's brother, and even though I have never actually worked with him, it's impossible to know anyone in Darius' family and not know Darius. He's also Arizona's most top-notch immigration lawyer and is on local TV all the time. This one time when I was briefly living in Sedona, I was at a bar and the bartender's name was Darius. I was like, “I have a friend named Darius, he's an immigration lawyer in Phoenix.” And the bartender was like, “I think that guy was in here two weeks ago.” BOOM. Same Darius.

Anyway, I got to hike with Darius.

We decided to do this as an afternoon hike, which was great because I was so zonked from two hikes in two days that having the morning off was great for my recovery. Except I decided that “recovery” meant sampling the wares at Wren House Brewing, and I was like, “I used to hike after a few beers all the time, and Piestewa's pretty easy, right?” Well, all those experiences were long before age 40 was looming on the horizon, and I definitely can't do a hybrid brewery-hiking day like I used to. But that was fine, because Darius is the kind of chill guy who will slow down if I start to get stomach cramps because I absolutely had needed to have that lemon tea sour an hour earlier. (Look, it was a GREAT beer.)

Anyway, Piestewa is very popular but not on the same level as Camelback, and the trail is very well tread. The summit also looks completely different from Camelback's in terms of rock formations and physical features. It's pretty much a nonstop uphill, though, so it's a butt-burner for sure. We definitely earned the Arizona Star beers that I'd brought along.

And with that, halfway there! Today's my off day. But I've already bought the climbing gloves for Picacho.