Hiking on South Mountain's Holbert Trail

This week's hike was at South Mountain park, right in my backyard! This was one of the few that I hadn't done yet and it was nice! A bit of a challenge with some nice Petroglyphs along the way.

The turtle and snake petroglyphs

The start of the trail


Desert Landscaping

My house is down there somewhere!

The Phoenix skyline from up here

So you can totally see the smog really bad from up here. Kinda gross! There were a few people on this trail but not a ton.

The trail from the side of the mountain

What a great desert shot

Nice view of the city

The trail

A window to the world

A view from the tip top

The main trail had an off-shoot that went up to Dobbins Lookout. This is the view from up there. It was another 700 feet of elevation gain or so, but so worth it! I hiked up to a point that most people drive up to!!

Another view from the top.

If you can see the little water tower in the middle of the picture, that's where I started from, approximately!

Off in the distance, you can see the Superstitions, where I hiked the last few weeks.

OK, so after I got through the up part of the hike, I was feeling really good when I turned around for the down part. Even though up to this point was about 3.3 miles with 1300 feet of elevation gain, I was feeling good! Maybe I got my second wind or something. My knees were hurting just a little bit but my lungs felt good and my legs were good. I had a bit of a bounce in my step as I turned back. I became....one of "those people" that run on the trails! I only ran for the parts where the trail was pretty solid and there wasn't much of a chance that my clumsy feet would trip over themselves, but I'd guess that I ran for maybe about a third of the way down! It was kind of cool having the wind blowing through my hair as I ran along the trail. In fact, it was so fun that now I'm going to see about getting some proper trail running shoes and a backpack that doesn't bounce all over the place when I'm running. A little way to combine something I love to do (hiking) with some interval training! Whooo hoooo! Killing two birds with one stone!

I ended up the hike back and the parking lot having traveled 5.68 miles with 1438 feet of elevation gain in just under 3 hours. Probably the longest hike I've done in awhile with a good amount of elevation gain. I was SWEATING!!! Went home and took a shower before heading out with a friend to do some shopping. Looking for an olympic barbell to add to my collection of fitness equipment. I really don't want to pay too much so I was checking out the used sporting good stores. Found a whole lot of nothing. Guess I'm going to have to keep checking Craig's List.

Ended up the day watching the Suns get beat by the Jazz. I really thought they were going to pull it out in the end, but a stupid mistake cost them the game in regulation and forced it to overtime. The Jazz prevailed in overtime. A very costly loss for us. We've gotta get back on it and start winning again!!

Tomorrow, I have a Dog Scout hike with my pooch. That should be fun! I'll post about it later.