The goal was to hike to the top of a mountain. Mark had scouted out the possibilities in hiking guides and on line. He chose a nearby trail which was rated a medium to medium difficult challenge. It’s in the Saguaro National Park so one could expect the trail to be well maintained. Unlike the Arizona state trails since park maintenance is one of many line items which have been eliminated from the state budget.
We started off at 7:00 through the cactus, palo verde trees and rocks, walking the gravel stream bed towards our destination, Wasson peak 4,687 feet. We began to climb and the consequences of my previously light hearted assent to the hiking proposal began to dawn on me. Few people were on the trail and not until we reached the first summit did we meet anyone. Three very fit looking hikers were enjoying a respite from their run up the trail which we had been plodding along for hours. I had been walking on the top of the brick sized rocks and gravel trying not to lose my balance and pitch down into the cactus or worse. I was hardly aware of the vista until we stopped there on a bit of land between two looming peaks.
Everyone who hikes regularly knows that the top of the mountain is not that hill you see in front of you. No it’s further and higher and requires much more effort than you have given so far. Not being a hiker I had to learn this one myself. About two and a half hours into the hike I looked ahead and gave up. The young men in shorts and t-shirts who had passed us earlier were merrily jogging along the switchback trail above. The term insurmountable came into my mind. I sat down and could not be moved. The view was good. Through the branches of an ocotillo I could see far into the distance to the suburbs of Tucson. I watched Mark go up the mountainside to my left while listening to George Jones on the ipod. George did it for me. I recognized that it only took the length of a few songs for Mark to make it to the summit saddle. It came to me that if I couldn’t finish this hike I would lose influence with Mark when I proposed a joint adventure of my own later. No one wants to go tearing off into the unknown with a quitter after all. Pulling myself up and reloading George I pushed on to the top. Mark was right that I would feel great about it. The way down seemed long but by then I was listening to a podcast of Paul Theroux traveling through Vietnam as a way to divert my attention from my aching butt and feet. Mark was amusing himself by actually picking up rocks as large as bricks to bring back. I looked over and astonishingly he was carrying a big load of them in the backpack as well as hand carrying what he judged to be really great chunks of stone which could not be left behind.
We smirked when we passed a group milling around in the gravel at the beginning of the trail. They were each fully decked out in the total Patagonia clothing adventure traveler disguise including straw hats with colorful hand-woven indigenous like hat bands. Many were older than us although some probably were contemporaries. We could overhear the guide telling them that they were only about a quarter of the way from the trail end. We could hear the moaning and wheedling about weather worries and equipment shortfalls. And I thought the distance is nothing compared to the hike up a winding windy and cold pathway. We continued merrily tromping down the gravel wash, one of us carrying thirty pounds of rocks in his hands ; the other one trying to land gently on tired knees and thighs lest she collapse.
The rain was starting as we got into our car. Upholstered seating never felt so good.
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