Peak Peak

Sunday morning a group of us hiked up Picacho Peak. First fun trivia bit, "picacho" means "peak" in Spanish. So we totally hiked up the redundantly named Peak Peak. Second, Picacho Peak is the site of the furthest west Civil War battle.

The peak is on the far left in the photo below. The trail winds up the front side to the base of the cliff, then over to the saddle point (to the right of the peak on the right), then almost all the way back down to the base, and up the back side of the mountain to the peak.


The hike is relatively short in distance at just over 4 miles, but a lot of it is very steep. Steep enough that there are several portions with steel cables for assistance. Wikipedia tells me that such trails are called via ferrata, and they're quite rare in the U.S. at least. In such a lawsuit-happy country I guess that shouldn't be all that surprising. What could possibly be safer than walking along the edge of a mountain on a 2x6?


Now I'm ok with steep ascents, but steep descents scare the crap out of me. I know it's mostly irrational, especially as I've done (and survived) this hike once before and I've seen children, senior citizens, and even a very pregnant woman on this trail... but I spent a fair portion of the hike feeling like this:


It doesn't help that I'm short enough to make some of the moves to get up onto rocks a bit out of reach, so I find myself scrambling and pulling myself up or lowering myself down more than a lot of people. It's pretty normal for your legs to be a bit sore after a good hike right? But my legs weren't all that sore afterward, it was my shoulders that were killing me the next day. Even if I am a wimp, Picacho is a good hike. One of those that I'm proud of and glad I did after the fact even if I make a lot of faces in the process. :)

I have to thank Dallas for most of the pictures on the cabled portion of the hike - between my wimpy-ness and need for free hands my camera spent most of the hike in my pack.