Saturday, June 19, 2010

Challenge to find challenging hikes

I was not very satisfied after my Pima Canyon hike. It got me thinking.

What makes a hike challenging for me - elevation gain. I have a sense of achievement when I climb a mountain vs walking on flat trails. The distance does not give me the kick.

One constraint I need to work with is time, I dont want to spend more than 30 min on driving every week to reach a hike, so that does not leave a lot of challeging hikes around.

We have Camelback, Piestwa peak and South Mountain. These places have trails where you gain around 1000 ft in 1-1.5 miles which currently is challenging enough for me.

Also I prefer to do different trails,. Though here in phoenix, any trail is desert classic :), not much variation in terms of views so I think I will just focus more on getting a good workout.

Looks like I would have to hit these trails again and again to keep myself satisfied. I might time myself against these trails on subsequent trips to make it more fun.

Any other ideas out there?

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