Camelback Mountian Trek

After a great night at the Wagner's, I decided to take Johns suggestion and made plans to head to Camelback Mountain to do the climb. Camelback is a very popular place and once I had carved out some time in the day and headed over the parking lot was a full as I feared. The car in front of me was waiting at the beginning of the circle right next to the sign that says you are not allowed to do that. I sat for a while and after a few minutes a car came out and he had his space. I came up and sat for a bit and two girls coming down pointed to their left. I figured they were pointing to an empty spot and as luck would have it, there was. I quickly parked grabbed my pack and headed up the trail.

The trail starts up as steps leading up the hill and very quickly turns into steep rock strewn climbing. This first picture is from a few hundred yards up the trail looking down to the full parking lot.

It was just about noon as I headed up and it was quite hot. There were lots of people heading up and down. Some kids that looked like they were having no problems at all and some teens that would just buzz right past me as the jogged/trekked up the trail. I would try to keep a steady pace, stopping to rest every once and a while and constantly drinking water as the sweat poured out of me. I had to take this picture to get the cactus in the frame. The views were already spectacular and kept getting better as I got higher.

At one point I stopped to rest and drink and I looked down and saw this little guy looking up at me, so I took his picture. After that I saw quite a few lizards and on the way down saw a huge iguana. Some of the trail was so steep there was a hand rail that you could use to help you get up and down. It was quite a trek. Just when you thought you had reached a summit, you would see another climb that was hidden a short time ago and the climb would continue.


I got to one point that was about 3/4 up to the top and had to sit for a bit and rest. I took this self portrait as a memento. I was pretty tired at this point, but determined to get to the top. By now, even though I was constantly sipping water, I was feeling the effects of losing so much sweat. The climb up was exhausting as you were constantly using your legs and hands to get a little higher, seeking good places to put your feet; sometimes fairly easy rises, sometimes large ones that took some good leg work.

I could see the summit by now and was more determined than ever to get to it. The last leg was just as hard as the rest, but before long, I was at the top. There was a nice breeze and I sat for a bit, drank the rest of the water I had in my first bottle and then started the trek down.


Going down wasn't as fatiguing as coming up, but it was a constant set of squats as I would bend to get low and not slip, then I would lower my legs using my hands to support and then move to the next drop. After a while I knew why I had seen some of the hikers wearing gloves. The rock of the mountain is a rather rough granite that would start to wear on your hands for a while.

I was able to get down 15 minutes faster than coming up, but the whole hike was a good 1:45 with a distance covered of about 2.4 miles or so. The elevation gain was 1,264 feet.

It really felt good to do this hike and even though I was shivering with dehydration, I felt good after the hike.

All night long my legs complained about what I had done to them and in the morning my quads, calves and even my heels were very sore. It was quite a good workout.

I thank John and Candy for recommending this hike. It was certainly better than sitting in a conference that covered stuff that I had not interest or involvement in. I would love to be able to do something like this on a weekly basis. It would be such a good workout.