Last Friday, March 4, Jay and I went to Nogales, Sonora to get our teeth cleaned. It was a lovely sunny day, nice for a drive and a walk through the town. We had a nice lunch, found the dentist’s office without any problem, and proceeded to wait. The patient before our scheduled appointment was having some extensive work done and she was waiting for him to build a temporary crown for her. We had a nice visit with her, and after about 45 minutes past our scheduled time she was called in and he worked on her for another 20-30 minutes, I gave up keeping track of time. I just figured we were on Mexican time, kind of like Island time when you go to Hawaii. Everything slows down.
When he was finally finished with her, he apologized for the delay, made a joke about being on Mexican time and called me in for my cleaning. Twenty minutes later, all done and it was Jay’s turn. Then another twenty minutes and he was done, $40 US and we are out the door and on to get him a smart $6 haircut.
About 4:00 we are heading back home and I say to Jay, “We should call our friend, Penny, to see if she wants to come over for a beer. She’s by herself for a few weeks while her partner is out of town, maybe she would like some company.” Penny is new to our neighborhood, she likes to hike and play golf, a couple of things I like to do to and we have been trying to find time to get together to do those things. It’s hard because she works 4 or 5 days a week, I work two days a week, and other things take up our time. Jay called her up and she said yes, that would be nice, she would come over later and take us up on that beer.
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| Mt. Wrightson in January with snow. Tall peak on the right. |
So Penny and a friend of hers from Tucson came over. She and I had been talking about playing golf this week and she asked if we were going to play on Sunday. I said, rather sheepishly, that I was, but not with her, so sorry. Then she jauntily fired back, “Well that’s fine, we’re going hiking tomorrow.” I said, well see how you are? Hiking without me. And her friend piped up and said, you can join us if you like. How nice is that? And so I said, yes, I would enjoy that very much, where are you planning to go? Oh, just up to Mt. Wrightson.
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| fresh start in the morning |
Cool, I say. I have been wanting to do that hike since moving here. This is no easy peasy hike. This is 5.4 miles one way, all up hill, with a cumulative elevation change of 4,200’. Which means it is 10.8 miles total round trip. You do start at the top of Madera Canyon, at about 5,200,' the top of Mt. Wrightson is 9,456’. The last hike I did was in Hot Springs, Arkansas, elevation change about 800,' maximum elevation about 4,200’ and was only 4 miles or so. And that was in August. I have however, been training for a triathlon so I have been doing a ton of bicycling, swimming and running over the last six weeks so I was feeling pretty good and figured I could manage the hike. Not even thinking that this would be a problem for my upcoming golf tournament on Tuesday.
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| Me and Penny about half way up |
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| the instigator of the hike, crossing snow |
We set out at about 6:30 from the house, the drive up to the trailhead only takes about 30 minutes and by the time we it the trail after getting all geared up it was about 7:30. Penny’s friend had said someone told her it would take about 6 hours to go up and back down, so we were all excited and figured we would be back home by about 2:00. Hah hah!!! It took us some time to get settled in to a rhythm, and it was slower than I think we thought we would be going. At about mile 2, we met up with Bob. Turns out Bob does this hike every week. Says it keeps his wife from bugging him to go to the gym. We walk with Bob for a ways, then he drops back and lets us go ahead. Later, after another break, he catches up to us and we let him go ahead, we kind of take turns walking along with him sharing stories. At one point while we are all enjoying the view during another break, Bob reveals that he is 81 years old!! And yes, we are all very impressed.
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| looking north towards the observatory |
As we near the top, Penny starts to slow down, she’s got a cramp in her groin, and her thighs are getting tired. We were only about 1/4 mile from the top and she can’t go on. I had been trying to keep step with Bob, but he left me in the dust as I was holding back for the others. Penny said she was going to go back and wait for us at the saddle. So the friend and I continued on to the top. It was pretty tough going, and if it wasn’t for her, I might have given up too. I got in to a meditative space and started chanting the Gayatri Mantra, helped me to keep step and just felt like a good thing to share with the universe at that moment. We met Bob on his way down, just a few switch backs from the top. Then once we got there, there 8 other people up there having their lunch and enjoying the 360 degree view. We took a nice long break, took pictures, visited with the others and signed the log book. I think it took us about 4 hours to get there. I kept meaning to check the time, but got caught up in the view and it didn’t seem that important. After resting and enjoying our lunch, we figured we best head back down and get Penny. We knew it would be slow going down too, we had to navigate downhill over a few snow patches and had some concerns about them being slippery.
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| at the top |
We found Penny, rested and ready to begin our descent. We passed a couple of guys going up who said they saw her and she told them to tell us she was waiting for us. All kinds of nice people on the trail. We were moving at what I thought was a pretty good pace, we were all feeling the up hike in our legs and knew that going down was going to be tough, and it was. After about an hour of going down, we were turning a corner at one of the switchbacks and Penny shouts out, "snake!" We all jumped and I just saw the little guy wiggling up under a rock, rattling all the way. That rattled us all pretty well(get it? Rattled us?) After taking a few moments to catch our breath, we made a wide path around the rock and continued our way down. We were surprised we saw a rattle snake at such a high elevation, especially with snow on the ground.
I stared in disbelief
when we got to the sign that said we still had 2.2 miles to go back to the parking lot. At that point it seemed like we had been hiking for a really long time. And we had been, about 7 hours by then. Those last two miles were really long. We did pick up another companion for that part of the hike, a guy who had hike up that far and knew he couldn’t go farther because it was late in the day. He was talking on his phone to his wife, describing what he had seen so far and had asked us a bunch of questions about our hike. He figured out that we had, at that point, been on the trail for 8 hours. No wonder we were getting tired. He stayed with us the rest of the way down and we had a nice visit with him too.
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| the trail we were on crosses the rock face about 1/3 of the way up in this photo |
We were all glad to get back to the truck at the parking lot. It sure felt good to sit down and take off my hikers. I was tired, my feet and knees were a little sore, but I thought gee, I’m going to be okay. After a good nights sleep, I got up on Sunday morning for an 8:00 tee time. It was a beautiful sunny day, and my legs were feeling pretty darn good. Until the 14th hole. Then I just got tired. My knees were done, even though we were in a cart, I was just ready to go sit in a hot bath and soak. Which I did after the 18th hole. I managed to play pretty well considering how tired I got.
Then came Monday. Boy were my legs sore. My thighs decided to let me know just how sore they could be. Needless to say teaching 3 yoga classes that day was a different experience. My students loved that I was having a little trouble getting down to the floor and said now I can know more of what they feel like on some days. Then Tuesday afternoon was the first 9 holes of the match play tournament and my calves are still tight.
My words of wisdom on this adventure, do some shorter hikes with elevation changes before tackling nearly 11 miles of a rather difficult hike. And don’t hike 11 miles three days before a 3 day golf tournament, unless you don’t really care about how you play. You will be sore and tired.
Happy trails!!
Jay found a group of guys that have ATV’s and UTV’s that like to ride around in the desert. One guy, sort of the leader of the group, Mike, has been living here since 2003 and has explored a lot of the country side around here. He thinks nothing of putting on 60, 80, even 120 miles in a day all on dirt roads, up hills, near the border, into the mountains, ghost towns, wherever there might be something interesting to see. And there is a lot of interesting stuff to see here. 
On the way back, we crested a hill and paused to 
