Accident, Videos and Others Internet Finds

My quest to troll the Internet for memorable stories about Camelback continues:




Clint McHale

I found an accident in May to be particularly troubling. It was hard to tell why the guy decided to climb, why he got himself into his predicament and why he fell. The rest was history -- I shouldn't have, but I did listen to the 911 call on one of the TV news sites. Horrible. The victim's distraught sister turned to activism: she wants the public to better understand that hiking and/or climbing can be dangerous.

I agree with her completely, and that's one of the reasons I enjoy those activities. Hiking and exploring Camelback sure beats stomping a treadmill at the gym in front of a TV screen. While it's riskier to venture out of one's home or other "controlled environments," the rewards are well worth the gamble. Not that it's much of a gamble, as long as you keep your head.

Having already injured a heel, elbow and knee, I don't need any more broken bones or severed ligaments. Making a fatal mistake -- yikes, that's gotta be out of the question. But I do take some risks at Camelback, and feel the better for it.

Why do people exceed their limits on Camelback in such an extreme way? Perhaps it's the ultra-urban location, right in the middle of the metro area, as accessible as a major museum would be in Boston or D.C. Still, climbing into the unknown at Camelback with no equipment, not even rock shoes? Camelback climbing requires the utmost caution, with extra attention paid to the rock conditions and route-finding. Only the victim and the survivor know for sure what went wrong.

I asked Adele, the NT fellow I took rock-climbing last month, if she wanted to write up something for Valley Fever based on the police report that had just been released. Here's what she wrote. The report, which I got back from her, has the GPS coordinates of the accident site, so I've been thinking about going there to scope the place out and see if it's a recognized climbing area.

360 View of Trailhead Area

I played with this for more than a few minutes. The picture quality is outstanding and I like how you can sweep up or down.

Iron Legs

The following video has some fairly ballsey stunts, including running down the slickrock section about halfway up the Echo Canyon side.




Cough, Cough

In this next video, a couple of dudes toke up on the Bobby's Rock trail, just east of Bobby's Rock over a saddle. Nice few of Phoenix from that spot. Judging by the insane amount of hacking these guys do, this is either the best or the worst dope they could be smoking. "If we fall here, we could die," one of them says.


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Leaps of Faith

This was one of two videos I found featuring BASE jumpinghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif off a wall in Camelback. Seems almost suicidal to me. Too much could go wrong.

FYI, these jumps are from the big wall just south of Bobby's Rock, and they land in front of Bobby's Rock. Karabin's fold-out guide describes the BASE-jumpers launch zone as a "Huge 300' foot wall." I think it's much bigger, possibly in excess of 500 feet, which is considered a minimum safe height by most BASE jumpers.

Karabin's guide also notes a Karabin first ascent on the wall called Three-Star Nightmare, (also seen on www.rockclimbing.com), which he only gives two stars.





Subject: Camelback

The level of detail in the next video gets a bit mind-numbing, but I liked Mr. Bennett's amateur videography and his glowing review of the hike. He thought it was at least twice, if not three or four times as challenging as Piestewa Peak. I don't agree with that and would say it's more like 15-25 percent tougher, having many times hiked both in the same week. Echo Canyon has a few sections that are steeper than anything on Piestewa, while Cholla presents scrambling opportunities near the top that Piestewa doesn't offer until it's final thirty feet. Bennett's Thailand interlude is mildly entertaining.



1.27 Miles - My Hike Up Camelback Mountain from David Michael Bennett on Vimeo.



Tough Hike

This one is so-so, with a guy who claims to be afraid of heights hiking Cholla Trail. One thing I found amusing -- at the end the main guy shows off his Vibram Five-Finger shoes and confesses that wearing them wasn't a good idea.

The video appears to be a promotion for a T-shirt company. I'm leaving this one on here for one reason only: To let you know these guys suck. I gave them money for a T-shirt but they didn't send it or respond to e-mails.

An Early Start, and More Dogs

Starting the trail at 6 a.m. felt like cheating.

The temperature was supposed to be 117 on Saturday, though I don't think it ever made it quite that high. For some reason, the lows hadn't caught up to the extreme heat the Phoenix area suffered last week. The days had all been in the 111-114 range, but the mornings were still nice. It was probably about 85 when I began. Beautiful. But not the intense challenge from the week before.

Still, it was probably going up a degree or two every few minutes. I'd parked at my usual spot, 44th and Camelback, and biked in. Gotten up at 5:05. Not typical for me. After the slow-moving death march from last week, though, I needed a break from the ultra-heat.

Funny, but my theory about getting passed during the particularly hellish days still holds up. Last week, when I started at 11 a.m. and the parking lot was less than one-third full, I got passed by three guys and a gal. There were very few people on the trail and I passed maybe five. On Saturday, just before 6, the lot was overflowing and the trail thrumming. I passed 30 or 40 people who'd started at roughly the same time before first saddle, plus quite a few more on the way up. All told, I was passed by only three dudes. My theory, of course, is that the extreme heat brings out a much great proportion of the hard-men and women who are stronger climbers than I am.

Since I wrote that last story on dogs I was more attuned to canines on this hike. There were four dogs being treated to the early-morning hike, which honestly was nothing like "cool" but was refreshingly nice by comparison. The first one was a Yorkshire Terrier. It's owner, a Hispanic girl about 18 or so, was encouraging it to climb the steepest portion, the first handrail section.

"Is he going to make it?" I asked with obvious skepticism. The dog was already panting heavily.

"We're gonna try!" the girl replied.

Near the top was a thirty or forty-something, in-shape woman with what looked like a small Collie mix. I passed them, but they were making good time.

"How's he doing?" I asked the woman.

"He's fine. He's a professional," she said. And it looked like she was right.

Another small, well-muscled mutt and his owner passed me going down. Near the top, there was a big, mostly black, overweight dog -- looked like a Rottie -- panting heavily and on its way down. A couple with the dog looked concerned for its health, but it had made it pretty far and there was no turning back. I was a little worried about that one.

Then, about halfway down, I ran into the woman with the Yorkshire Terrier again. This time, the poor thing looked like it was about to have a stroke. A middle-aged guy, who was possibly with them, told the dog's owner, "He's done." The girl seemed to understand and I assume she turned around at that point.



Top picture: Late sunrise with haze/brown cloud from summit. Above: Looking the other way at downtown Phoenix. Below: Took this one about a week ago. I love this angle of the mountain, looking south near Tatum and Lincoln.

Dog Tired

Most dogs I've seen on Echo Canyon Trail seem to do quite well. The little ones amaze me, the way their tiny legs move so quickly up the stairstep-like rocks. Camelback must be like Mount Everest to those guys. If it's true that dogs take after their owners, evidence of that old saying can often be found on steep trails like Echo.

Other dogs, including some I've seen on Camelback, are mismatched with their owners. They're the couch potatoes -- or just old -- and their owners more resemble human chihuahuas. I use that breed as an example because chihuahuas have a lot of energy, but they're not all that smart.

One day last year, I saw this sad-looking black dog looking extremely peaked at the top of the mountain. After I arrived at the summit I spent a few minutes watching as the dog's owner tried to get moving down. The dog was simply done hiking. Or so it thought. Of course, it was just halfway. It had no intention of walking any further. The guy at the end of the leash coaxed his animal repeatedly, getting it up and moving a few feet at one point. But it just plopped back down like a sack of rice. The man pulled on the leash, gently, for a few more minutes. Then he picked up the dog, straining as he lifted it by the chest and butt. He draped it over his neck and began hiking down the gravelly summit area, moving slowly because the dog was obviously pretty heavy. At that point I began heading down myself and didn't see them again.

A couple of years ago in late June I noticed a similar situation and blogged about it in Valley Fever. I mentioned that the mutt weighed about 85 pounds, causing a reader to say he/she didn't think that was too much for a Golden Retriever. I'm not sure what it weighed, but it looked fat to me. The same reader also took me to task for the crappy picture, which I'll reproduce here because no one can stop me.



The worst, though, is something I haven't taken a picture of but might someday: Ultra-hiker parents taking their non-ambulatory infants to the summit and back in a baby backpack. This drives me crazy and I never did that with my kids. I realize that it's too easy to be critical of other people's parenting skills and I'm not perfect, but I think taking a baby up Echo Canyon trail puts the child at too much risk. The incline means a misstep and trip puts you on the ground with much more impact than on level ground. Even though those backpacks have shoulder straps, the child's head could strike a rock, causing a concussion or breaking its neck. And speaking of neck, infants have heads that are too large for their bodies -- they aren't designed for constant bouncing on serious hiking trails, and I can't help but think their necks are straining too much. Looks like it, anyways. True, I've never heard of a kid dying or getting hurt in this manner in all the years I've been observant of Camelback news, but I can't help but think this behavior isn't wise. I felt the same way once upon seeing a woman rollerblading on a beach boardwalk with her infant in a front-loading baby bjorn.

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.