Annabelle's First Time to the Summit

On a gorgeous winter day this year, January 29, I experienced a sublime proud-Dad moment: Annabelle and I summitted Camelback together. I'd been dreaming of that moment since Annabelle was born almost ten years ago, and then, sniffle, sniffle, there it was.

When kids get older, parents see fewer and fewer of those precious, significant "firsts." Being with Annabelle at the top of my favorite hill and seeing how excited she was to do it was just as awesome as watching her ride a bike without training wheels for the first time. It's certainly a day I'll never forget, and, hopefully, it's also a major milestone in her life in terms of her self-esteem. We passed several people who were struggling, and that made her feel like Superwoman.

"Daddy, those people are adults," she whispered to me as we advanced past a few twenty-somethings. She could hardly believe she was doing something so seemingly advanced. True, I've seen people as young as four make the summit, but I've noticed a pretty large range of physical strength and ability among children. Annabelle did it when she was ready, without a lot of pushing from me. We'd been hiking on the mountain several times before, and before the summit day, she'd actually asked me if we could go for it that weekend. Some of that was just trying to please me (oh, please, let her never grow out of that!) but she genuinely wanted to reach the top.

We've been hiking "A" Mountain regularly this year, and I'm quite sure we'll do Camelback again soon -- when it cools off. I'll be back out there this weekend, on a day when it's supposed to top out at 117. It was deathly hot last Saturday, worse than the previous week with the fellows, but I started that day at 11 a.m.. This weekend I'll start earlier. I don't want Annabelle to do it when it's this hot. Not only is safety a factor, but she might associate the hike with the heat, which could be a negative incentive. Kids, my kids anyway, don't really understand the concept of "no pain, no gain" or the little aphorism I thought up, "the more miserable, the more memorable."

I still don't know if my youngest, who has Down Syndrome, will ever see the summit. I hope so. She's become a decent little hiker on all sorts of terrain. It's one of my goals to get her up there someday, but it has to be one of hers, too. We'll see.

Here are a couple of shots of the kid from a different trip last year:




























Just for the halibut, I'm also including here a "pyramid shadow" picture I took that's sort of like the one I ripped off another Web site for a previous post. I took this a few months ago, not on the hike with Annabelle.

Fellows Hit the Crag

I took a couple of the fellows from work rock-climbing a couple of weeks ago and scared the bejesus out of them. Partly because of that, I consider the trip a success.



Fear wasn't the only thing Adele and Bryan discovered, I'm sure.

They're both from out of town and have never been to anyplace quite like Camelback. She's from Washington D.C.; he's from -- dang, I forget. It wasn't Libya, so it must be someplace that rarely gets as hot as it did on the day we went, that's for sure. He'd never been rock climbing before, whereas Adele had been to a rock gym once in the sixth grade.



The NT summer fellowship program put seven newly graduated college kids in Phoenix to learn about -- and do -- journalism. Just for kicks, I asked them if they wanted to go rock climbing, and only these two were nuts enough to come with me!

We were supposed to meet at the parking area near the Village at 44th and C-back at 6 a.m., but they were a half-hour late. I didn't mind, but they paid for it later as the temperature rose. This was before the bad heat of this week and a week before my hike with Greg. And, naturally, I picked a crag that's in the shade for most of the morning. Still, conditions were less than ideal for newbies. The heat was the least of their worries, though.



I sent Bryan up Rappel Gully, a 5.4R, after setting the top-rope. He gained about 25 feet before asking if he could come down. "No way," I told him, gently. "See if you can get a little higher."

He dutifully advanced three feet, then turned around and said, "Can I come down now?"

"Okay, I relented. "I'm not going to torture you."

I think that was the not just the end of the climb for him, but the end of his rock-climbing career. Heck, I know it's not for everyone, and the guy showed spirit getting roped up and climbing as high as he did.

Adele proved to be a budding Lynn Hill. She topped out on the Gully in decent time, cruising the vertical crux at the end after a few words of guidance from me.

After I pulled down the rope I asked her if she wanted to do something bigger and more adventurous, and to my happiness, she was game.

I looked around. There weren't a lot of great options for us, considering that I couldn't put either of them on belay while I led. Although I let her belay me on top-rope up Rappel Gully to make it quicker for me to take down the anchor, I didn't have the same confidence in her when it came to leading. Nothing against her -- but with an untrained belayer, that could be even riskier for me than free-soloing because of the possibility she'd pull me off the rock accidentally.



I decided to free-solo the first part of George Route and take her up that.
To my chagrin, the free-solo turned out to be much trippier than I recalled from my forays up there three years ago, when I was looking for the spot where those two dudes got rescued. Near the top of the ascent things get kind of blank, and I was happy I had my rope with me. Unfortunately, I also totally forgot that at that first ledge, there's absolutely no decent pro possibilities without a rack of gear, which I didn't have. All I'd carried up was one end of the rope and a couple of slings, but there was nothing to sling. Not a huge deal, since I could always downclimb the route, but it was slightly embarrassing to realize I couldn't do what I'd intended.

Plan B: I knew from my previous trip up George Route that there was a bolt anchor with chains at the top of a cliff just west of where I was, still along what is basically George Route. That was a little further over than I thought and once again, the free-soloing was unexpectedly risky. Fact is, I was in much better climbing shape three years ago from my weekly gym routine, which is no more. But I got there, found the anchor, set up a TR and rapped down.

Adele boldly climbed nearly to the top, stopping only at about the 70' mark where the crag got very vertical. From the ground, it looked like at least 5.2 at that point. Bad me -- sending a newbie up on something I'd never climbed before. Ah, well, it was just a TR. But there was a catch -- the whole way up, as is typical for uncleaned Camelback routes, Adele was stepping on loose holds and gravel that would come raining down on me. Then, a biggie: One of her main footholds exploded about 50 feet up, sending a baseball-sized rocks toward me. One whizzed within a foot or two of my head. Scary! (And exhilarating! Honestly, it was the highlight of my day, though I did feel a bit lucky. Had one of those caught my unhelmeted skull, I'd be typing this from a hospital room, at the least.)

Adele proved herself to be every bit the adventurewoman she claimed she wanted to be. I hope she continues a "career" in the mountains.

Summer's Here

Summertime -- and the living is easy.

Unless you're from Chicago, you've never before experienced real Sonoran heat and you're crazy enough to follow a desert rat like me up Camelback.

Our friend and co-worker Greg exclaimed, "This is harder than I thought it was going to be!" about halfway up. (I mean the Echo Canyon side, of course. All hikes to the summit referenced in this blog will be from Echo unless noted.)

Funny, because he's half my age and in better shape, overall. During one of our many, mandatory stops for rest and water on the way up, I told him I still had no doubt he could kick my ass at one-on-one b-ball.

I had found the going remarkably easy and, much to his chagrin, couldn't help continuously commenting how cool it felt.

We'd started at 2 p.m. on June 4. The temp about 105. But this was a classic dry-heat day. My guess is 2-3 percent humidity. Best of all, it was breezy. With wind chill, I was feeling like it was about 80-85. Gorgeous. And I've been hiking a lot lately, so the whole way up I felt like a coiled spring. Normally, on a beautiful day like that, I wouldn't have stopped once. That day I probably would have topped out in just over a half-hour. Still not prime form, but a good summit time for me. Instead, we pushed it near the 70-minute mark. And poor, Greg -- he just flopped to the rocks when we arrived on top.

He did well for his first time, actually. He's leaving for Minnesota in another week.

I'll be here, though -- my home for the past 34 years. The Stern family crossed the border from New Mexico, on our way out from Queens, on July 4, 1977. Nearly two weeks passed as my parents searched the Valley for a decent apartment and a possible home site, and in the interim my sister and I experienced Phoenix heat like I've never experienced it before. We lived in our family's tent-trailer in the Pony Acres Trailer Park near Apache and McClintock, (which, by God, is still there -- though catering to a slightly less middle-class clientele now), without the slightest trace of air-conditioning at night. Back then, the heat-island effect wasn't as pronounced and the nights were slightly cooler. But only slightly. We spent our days sitting in the trailer park's not-quite-cool pool and felt truly comfortable only when going inside the park's clubhouse or in stores or the model homes my parents kept touring.

That was my first summer.

And here it is now, my 34th.

The mercury is expected to rise to 113 later this week, NPR told us this morning at about 8:30 a.m., when it was 92 degrees out. No more cool hikes up Camelback until September.

That's just fine with me.

Parking Problems

Camelback's in the news again, but this time not just for disaster, (though a 63-year-old hiker did die there last week.) The Arizona Republic says today that the parking situation is getting much worse.

Last July it became apparent that the mountain was getting more crowded in the summer. Things have changed since the shot I took of the parking lot in August three years ago -- now it's rare to see it this empty unless it's over 110.

I chatted with some rangers a couple of weeks ago who were directing traffic around the parking lot and back out -- no one is allowed to wait for a parking spot, they say. That began a month or two ago, although I waited in a typical line about three weeks ago; the rangers said that's cause they're not there all of the time. This time, they had signs out and didn't let anyone stop while all the spots were full. I asked if they had a limit on how many times you could go back in to check, and they said there wasn't any, but they made it more difficult by putting vehicles back onto McDonald before you could go back up Echo Canyon Drive.

I had biked up, an option the rangers appreciated. Parked the truck near the shopping center at 44th and Camelback Road.

The Arizona Republic article suggests that people could hike elsewhere. One commenter on the article states that people could simply walk around their neighborhoods, to which a smart-ass replied that he's too frightened to walk around his neighborhood because he doesn't own a gun.

Fact is, Camelback is unique. There is nothing like it. Piestewa comes close, and the parking lot is huge. But the trail is narrow and it doesn't have anywhere near the beauty of Camelback. It's like Wickenberg compared to Sedona. The trail on Camelback, often made up nothing but boulders, is way better than Piestewa. Beyond Piestewa and Camelback, no other standard mountain trail in the Phoenix area is as steep and long. Siphon Draw comes close, so does the hike to Tom's Thumb in the McD's, and Brown's Trail on Four Peaks. But who's got time for that?

Anyways, I hiked Camelback today. Tons of people. An absolute zoo.

I took three months off of running and hiking, from December to February, but have begun to get back on the mountain. Plantar fasiciitis. I think it's getting better.

I've been enjoying the spring on Camelback and have seen a few chuckwallas, including a baby. The chucks are clearly thriving despite the hordes of hikers. I shot this picture of a good-sized chuckwalla last week.

Watch Out for Bees on Hart Route

The bees on Hart Route attacked some climbers in November, something I noted in Valley Fever a few days after it happened. Yeah, I couldn't help but wonder again what I'd have done back in April if the hive had been aggravated by my free-solo climb.

All's well that ends well, of course. The climbers in the November attack weren't badly hurt, and I got a blog post out of it in which I published two of my own pictures, including one of the beehive. Sure, it's a crappy photo, but who else got that shot? No one!

On the day of the incident, as I mentioned in my NT post, I'd been climbing up on the Headwall and talked to climbers near the Monk. I put the picture I took there through a new iPhone app that mimics a "tilt shift" effect. I love how it turned out, and, to be honest, it's the real reason for this post tonight.

But, as long I'm here, why not show you a couple more photos:



Camelback Rainbow -- shot in my driver's side rear view.

Finally, here's a shot of a whole bunch of hikers on the summit. Seems to me that this fall (now winter) has been more crowded than usual, and I snapped this a few weeks ago.

Camelback Livens the Spirit

The weird thing is that it really looks like this sometimes.



The shot was "Posted by Julie ... at 2:56 AM" according to the Web site ScottsdaleDailyPhoto.com. One of the commenters notes that it looks like Mars, which I think is true. Reason No. 1,000,001 why I love Camelback: The way the pink rock of the Headwall turns into a glowing, reddish orange at sunset. No other mountain in Phoenix compares, as far as I can tell. Papago appears to have the same geologic mass of red, and it looks beautiful during some sunsets, too. I just don't recall this same effect -- though perhaps I've not as observant of the rolling lumps of conglomerate that make up Papago.

Next up we have a shot by "Bill," who writes a blog called Endurance Event Training:



The perfect shadow of a pyramid-shaped mountain captured in this picture tickled my fancy. But I also like how Bill, an accomplished athlete who rode 1,700 miles on a bike in 30 days this past summer, praises Camelback for its ability to give him a good workout on a 110-degree day.

Bill made the hike on September 10. Five days before, members of the "Galat Family" tried to slog to the top in weather that was nearly as hot. The family was on a furlough from their work in Africa as missionary doctors. It's so fascinating to see life through the eyes of people like Dr. Galat, thanks to the Internet. Especially interesting to me is to see how physical struggles in the context of a quasi-wilderness setting can be spiritually enlightening to people in a way that sitting on the couch watching the boob tube isn't. Yes, deep thought occurs during workouts in the gym -- there's a certain boredom, or rather, a lack of the constant over-stimulation of modern society, that is inherent in exercise regimens -- but combined with the natural ouevre of a mountain hike, seems to bring out a deep-seated, ancient survival mechanism in people. Especially when it's over 100 and hiking Camelback isn't something you do often. I've seen some of these religiously oriented bloggers take the same tack as Galat, translating their perceived risk of this hike into a confirmation of their particular faith. I mean, here we have a father and health care worker taking something one of his kids said about the strength of their family on the hike and he ends up quoting Corinthians and immersing himself in "truths" like "for when I am weak, then I am strong." Camelback has the power to grab hold of your soul, at least metaphorically speaking, and I think that holds true no matter what your beliefs -- or lack of belief.

Camelback Hikers Brave the Summer Heat, but Not Always Successfully

Camelback's been in the news and mentioned in blogs quite a bit in the last few days, so I thought I'd catch up.

First off, several notable mountain rescues occurred due to the heat. This enabled me to mix business and pleasure by publishing a blog post in Valley Fever about the incidents, and a follow-up making fun of a local TV reporter. (Sorry, Kevin!) The news coverage of the rescues also spurred message threads like this one. I'm hoping the 13-year-old kid whose parents took him up the mountain without enough water is okay.

Seeing these incidents and the community's response to them, as heart-breaking as it may be to see anyone hurt, gives me confidence that liberty still rules the day. For all this talk about the feminization, wimpification, or whatever you want to call it, of modern society, the freedom to roam on our local mountains -- up its steep cliffs and in all conditions -- trumps notions of perceived, relative safety. It's 105 degrees and you're 73, from much-cooler Wisconsin, and aren't packing enough water? Nobody's going to stop you at the trailhead and tell you not to do it.

The firefighter interviewed in the Channel 10 report on the rescues, Captain Tony Mure, (they spelled his name wrong in their caption), says "I don't care what kind of shape you're in -- the human body cannot tolerate this kind of heat and this kind of exertion." That's simply not true and plenty of people who work outside prove him wrong every day. (Tony's a good guy -- the authorities often take a scolding tone with the public when it comes to these things, to try and warn people away).

I've hiked Camelback dozens of times in temperatures of 110 degrees or higher and only once did I feel like I'd made a mistake -- (4 p.m. hike, 117 degrees). The trick is to sweat a lot, which results in a "wind chill" (ha!) factor of much less than the air temp. This is difficult to achieve when the sun is directly above, so most of my 110-plus hikes have NOT taken place between, say, 10 and 3. Most often, those hikes were in the evening -- after 6.

Hiking in the sun, (even outside the hours of 10-3) requires extra precautions, like packing 2 bottles of icewater instead of one and wetting my shirt before heading up. Sunscreen is mandatory, naturally. Some people wear long-sleeved shirts. Once, while hiking at about 4pm on a 110-degree day, I ran into a guy coming down in full camo gear, long pants and long-sleeved shirt, with undershirt, calf-high boots and a backpack stuffed with unknown gear. This guy has the audacity to stop me and say, "Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Are you wearing sunscreen?" I told him I was, and asked him why he was dressed up like that. He said he was training for officer candidate school.

Meanwhile, plenty of people besides me made it to the top this summer without nearly dying. My next featured post is from a blog called "Daily Nuggets." The picture is of the blogger's "cousin Rob" making it to the top; my screen capture includes their text as well.



I also like this one from "DaSmith Foursome" blog. They met for their Father's Day hike at 4:15 a.m. (that's their picture below). Whoa! That's early. You go, girls. They all made it to the top.

I failed to summit the first time I hiked Camelback, I must admit. I was 18 and unfamiliar with mountains back then, though I was in better shape than I am now. The defeat was 100 percent mental.

I'd been by myself, huffing and puffing up the steep trail for a while, thinking I was getting somewhere. After I cleared the headwall area, the summit still looked very far, far away. I went a little further, and it still looked far away. I realized the only thing holding me back from cool comfort was a decision. And I made the wrong decision -- I decided to turn back. It had been warm, but not that bad. I'm pretty sure I'd brought a water bottle, but I forget what my water situation was that day. Probably not good. Still, I have no doubt now that I could have made it.



Anyway, my search this morning for mountain rescue photos led to a cool January report by Channel 3 I hadn't seen about rescues. The anchor keeps referring to dramatic scenes of firemen climbing the Headwall and of a helicopter as similar to a Hollywood stunt. I hadn't heard about the accident, in which a climber on the Monk fell 25-30 while rappelling, fracturing both legs. Holy ouch, Batman! I took this screen-grab of the shot of a helicopter next to the Monk.

One last note today: As the oppressive heat of July wears on, much as I love it, the green hills of the "other" Camelback Mountain featured in many Internet sites this summer makes me wish for a vacation there. I found a "SummitPost" posting from 2006 recently in which somebody crowed about the "great-tasting blueberries and rasberries" they picked, as well as the "amazing views." That sounds pretty good.