Well, after Wednesday afternoon's party hike with Super Dario, I took Thursday off to rest my feet and visit some more breweries. In the process, I realized that my Whoop fitness tracker was about to run out of battery power, and my charger somehow didn't make it to Arizona. So I was faced with the prospect of doing my remaining Six-Pack hikes sans tracker, which made me feel naked. I was like, should I even finish the challenge? If I can't monitor my physical exertion in real time, what am I even doing? Yes, this is silly, but it reflects what was going through my brain pretty much all evening: I am tired. It's going to be almost 100 degrees out for the next few days. My feet hurt. The remaining mountains are only going to get harder. Did I mention I am tired?

So I told myself, OK, I just have to get through Wasson. If I do that, then I'll only have two peaks left, and that's completely doable if I fly back for a weekend in April. I don't have to do all six on this trip. I just have to make it through four.

However, I proceeded to screw up royally by misreading the Saguaro National Park hours, which implied the park opens at 9. Nope, that's the visitors' center. The park opens at sunrise. My planned 9:30 AM start was going to put me on track to be hiking through some seriously hot weather. I didn't realize this until I woke up this morning without a whole lot of time to get an earlier start, and so I briefly wondered again if I should put off the hike for another day. But, if at all possible, I avoid national parks on weekends. No more excuses. I was going to do this, even if it took me all day, and if I needed to turn back because of heat or exposure, I would.

The trail to the top of Wasson Peak is not technically challenging at all, and never gets very steep. The exposure and the heat, plus the length of the hike if you aren't in peak condition (which I am, uh, not) are what make it difficult. Terrain-wise, it reminded me quite a bit of Strawberry Peak from the SoCal Six Pack. The landscape has more of a “California” vibe than the Phoenix-area hikes; you could basically replace the saguaros with Joshua trees and then it'd look like a SoCal hike. Also like Strawberry, there's a lot of hiking over ridges (including false summits) and along the side of the mountain. And it's super exposed — truly no shade. I needed to make sure I hiked slowly to preserve energy and not sweat too much.

But I made it! Even though early on, feeling the heat and how swollen my feet and ankles were, I didn't think I'd get to the summit. One word of caution is that it's very easy to lose the trail and get on the wrong trail at a couple of points about a mile into the hike. The markings can be a little bit confusing and I was glad I had AllTrails loaded up for this one.

Anyway, after that, I'm going to assess tomorrow morning whether I can get to Quartz (and then, potentially, Picacho on Sunday). Might do one. Might do both. Might do neither and come back in a few weeks. But getting through this one was a challenge, and one I'm very proud of however the rest of the Six-Pack pans out.