Picacho Peak - Hunter's Trail

May 22, Saturday - Hiked Picacho peak - Hunter's trail with Rekha.

Picacho peak is an hour drive from chandler, AZ. Its in between Tuscon and Phoenix on I-10. Its also a diffficult hike with 4 miles RT and ~1700 elevation gain. The hike has lot of steep sections where you have to take support of chains to climb. Apart from the difficulty of the hike, I had another challenge on the hike, my friend Rekha is scared of heights while coming down, so I was responsible for helping her out. Given all this, we estimated that it would take 3 hrs for us to complete the hike. The plan was to get started by 4.30 so that we can start the hike before 6 AM.

5 AM - My husband, Pramod wakes me up asking that I havent left yet. I am lost in deep sleep (since we did not have good sleep the previous 2 nights because our son was sick). I had my alarm set for 4 AM, so what happpened?. I had it programmed for 4 AM but it was for sunday instead of saturday :(.

I picked up Rekha at 5.30 and we started moving on I-10. The sun was gradually coming up and by 6 AM I felt that it was rising too fast and it might be just over our head in another half hour.

We reached Picacho State Park by 6.30 and started the hike at 6.45. We started gaining elevation from the begining of the hike. There were some small steep sections while going up where the chains helped. The bright sun was definitely making the hike more difficult. After hiking for a mile we reached the saddle area.

This is where the fun begins. You have to climb down around 350 ft to get to the other side of the mountain and start hiking up to get to the peak. This downward descend was the most challenging part for Rekha. She freaked out a bit but then she came down gradually. I think after this she got over her fear and handled the remaining parts of the hike very well.

To get to the peak we had to climb up 3 really steep sections with the support of chains. The 2nd half of the hike offers a lot of fun :). It also offered a lot of shade through out, heat was not a problem in this part of the hike.

The view from the top is nice, mountains spanning all around. When we started the hike there were only 4 cars in the parking lot. But as we started coming down, we started seeing more and more hikers on the trail. It was interesting to see a family with 3 small kids doing the hike. Rekha and I were very totally impressed with them :).

While coming down we took our time, taking pics and enjoying the trail. It took us 3hr 45min to complete the hike, which seems like a long time. Rekha and I are good hiking buddies but we offer a bad combination in terms of speed because we slow each other down. I am very slow while going up and she is slow while coming down.

We were very thrilled to complete the hike, despite our late start and the worry about sun wearing us down. Finally I reached home at 11.30, it was a long day :).