Today’s Pic of the Day:
I love being outside and taking in sights and nature. Today Kev and I went on a hike to Flat Iron. Flat Iron is the top of the Superstition Mountains. We did this hike probably 20 years ago and I have been wanting to do it again for years. But this year I felt I was ready to do it with all the hiking I’ve been doing plus I lost some weight so I thought I’d be able to cause I knew it was a tough hike.
Let me tell you tough may not even be the right word. It was hard, it really was. In fact, I thought it was harder then hiking the Grand Canyon. It’s a hike that has a 3600 ft incline. It’s a hike that has lots of rocks. And I mean a lot. It’s a hike that you actually do a lot of rock climbing. And I mean a lot. It’s also a hike that for both Kev and I are now saying, we did it and won’t do it again.
We both said we didn’t remember it being so hard from all those years ago. We both remembered doing some rock climbing but thought it was for maybe the last few minutes til you got to the top. It was way more then that. More like 3/4 of the hike was rock climbing. But the whole trail is really all rocky. It actually got to the point where I wasn’t even enjoying it. Kev kept saying, just go ahead I’ll wait here for you cause I know you want to go to the top. And I really did want to go to the top so that I could say I did it as well as to know if I actually could or not. He was struggling cause his knee has been nothing him really bad. So I did go ahead of him and ugh that was annoying too. There really isn’t a “marked” trail cause it’s all rocks so you just keep climbing. At one point I was climbing and climbing and just got to a point where I stood there saying I have no idea where I am or where to go and I actually said a little prayer asking God to help me and just keep me safe cause I was getting a little freaked out. And out of the blue this girl yells at me from way over on another part of the mountain and says “hey.....the trail’s over here.” I couldn’t believe it cause I honestly didn’t know where to go. I was just gonna sit there and see if Kev came the same way and could find me, he was about 30-40 minutes behind me. So this girl kind of guided me to where she was and got me back on track to keep going. I made it to the top. Honestly I don’t know how, the end part to the top was major rock climbing but I made it. I sat up there for a while and ate a snack and then wondered if Kev was gonna come or if he just decided to hell with it and was just gonna wait for me to come down. I walked back over to where I came up the trail and all of a sudden I see him!! I was so happy.
Now we were up there and wondered what the hell did we just do? Yeah, we made it but now we had to get down. Let me tell you, going down was even harder. And even scarier. Plus it hurt Kev’s knee even more, and at this point it was swollen huge. I sat on my butt and just slid here and there to try and go down. There really was no other way to do it. Again, it was hard lol Kev was hurting bad and had to keep sitting down, which I was fine with cause I was stressing out so bad about falling.
Once we got down to a point where the rock climbing wasn’t as bad I went ahead again and wanted to get down before Kev so that I could get to the car and try to bring it closer to a different part of the trail so he wouldn’t have to walk so far to the parking lot. I may have saved him a 1/2 mile but every little bit helped by this point.
So we hiked Flat Iron. Been there done that. It’s pretty, don’t get me wrong. And you can see some awesome views but we definitely won’t be doing that hike again.
This is the start of the hike and that’s the mountain we were heading for.
