Skookum Traveler: Humphreys Peak (AZ)

With a week off from work, I flew to Tucson on June 27 and drove to Safford to take care of some things at my dad’s house. That night I camped near Theodore Roosevelt Lake, a couple hours’ drive to the north. The campground was spiffy, but the ground was hard as pavement, which prevented me from driving in the tent pegs to hold up my borrowed tent. I gave it up and spread my bedroll on the picnic table instead. I immediately zonked out, only to be awakened at 2 am by a family of coyotes singing and yapping nearby. A little too nearby. I swear they were not even fifty yards away and the racket went on loudly for half an hour or more. A more distant band of coyotes joined in the chorus. This made it difficult to settle back to sleep, as each little noise in the brush was imagined to be a hungry coyote loping around my campsite. It’s funny how a wall of nylon fabric might have negated the imaginary threat. Sheepishly, I crawled into the back seat of the car so I could get back to sleep.

8. Humphreys Peak: Up early, I made a beeline for the Humphreys Peak trailhead a few miles north of Flagstaff. My mid-morning start up the trail was not ideal, since afternoon thundershowers were in the forecast. And because Humphreys Peak, at 12,637 feet, is the highest point in Arizona, it is also an obvious magnet for lightning strikes. From the 9,300-foot trailhead, I trudged as quickly as the thinning air would let me. A day and a night at 2,500 feet above sea level was not much acclimatization. But the weather held and I marched up the easy grade to treeline. Here, the trail steepened and the clouds darkened. Thunder began to roll across the valley from ominous clouds to the west. I kept on.

At the summit ridge, the thunderstorm had moved only nominally closer and I kept a sharp eye on things while I continued upward. After several false summits and a couple of internal discussions with myself about aborting the hike, the true summit finally came into view. The storm was closer now and a cold wind started to blow, but I hurried to the top and was greeted by a fabulous view and a dense swarm of tiny flies—the worst I’ve ever encountered. Between the bugs and the advancing storm, I spent maybe 90 seconds on the summit before trotting back down the rocky trail to safety, spitting out bugs, rubbing them from my eyes and brushing them off my sweaty arms and neck. The clouds churned almost overhead but remained slightly west of the peak. Several parties after me kept on climbing, while several others with higher IQs than me turned back. Strangely, the storm seemed to dissipate a couple hours later and I did not hear any thunder coming from Humphreys Peak. I’d happily summited my eighth peak (of Sixty). As the first higher mountain of the year, the test reaffirmed that the legs and lungs still functioned at altitude.

Miles (RT): 7.0 miles; elevation gain: 3,300 feet

Cumulative mileage and gain: 21.1 miles / 8,790 feet