50 Hikes in my 50th Year: Hike #41 Mt Humphreys Flagstaff AZ

Hike #41

Date: June 13, 2014

Location: Flagstaff AZ

Hikers: Me & Tina

Directions:

Take I17 North to Flagstaff. The the junction of I40 stay straight on AZ-89 ALT N and head into the town of Flagstaff on Milton Road. (you will no longer be n a highway road) Follow and take a left onto N Humphreys St/US180W. Turn left on North Fort Valley/US180W. Follow 7 miles Northwest on highway 180. Look for Mile mark 222. Turn North into Snowbowl Road. Continue 7 miles up the road to the ski lodge. Restrooms/Water/Lodge & Food open.

Mt Humphreys - Trail
http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gDfxMDT8MwRydLA1cj72BTJw8jAwjQL8h2VAQAzHJMsQ!!/?ss=110304&ttype=recarea&recid=55108&actid=91&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=110000000000000&pnavid=null&cid=FSE_003741&pname=Flagstaff+RD+-+Humphreys+Trail+%2351

This trail has been on my list since we decided to hike the Grand Canyon again. Not something I had to do but thought with the high altitude it would be good training for steep and for Tina to test out her lungs. It is Friday the 13th although I never thought about that til now. There were no black cats out there.

Facts of Mt Humphreys - Highest Mountain in Arizona and the 26th Highest in the lower 48 states. The summit is 12,000 feet. It is part of the San Francisco Mountains. The Mountains are a strato-volcano. The Peak was named after General A.A. Humphreys, the US Chief of Engineers. The trail begins at Arizona Snowbowl. The ski resort is in Flagstaff.

This hike is approx 9 miles. It has a 3,443 elevation gain.

Another opportunity to burn a vacation day. We started our drive from Phoenix at 6:30 AM on Friday. Both Tina and I are off. We hit QT and head up North. The drive was great. No traffic and we made it to town for a pit stop by 8:15.

View of our Challenge from Flagstaff

We hit the trail right at 9:00 AM. The trail head is located in the lower lot of Snowbowl under the Hart Prarie. Lodge. Snowbowl is open in the summer and offers chair lift rides. It is fun to see the area without snow on the ground.

Info on Snowbowl:
https://www.arizonasnowbowl.com

The trail starts flat directly cutting across the Hart Prairie ski slope. I have a picture of Ricky up there on that same chair lift. Little Greener now. It is flat but we can already feel that we are going up and the elevation is 9,300 and as a flatlander you can feel it.

The prairie disappears quickly. We are now in the Forest.

Fully Loaded

We hit the woods and for about a mile we climb thru the trees to the signin box. The trees are crazy. A lot of trees have fallen down. You can hear them all creaking. Eery!

Tina signs us in and off we continue.

The trail is rocky. Not bad but you must watch your step between the rocks and the roots of the trees. I decided to use my poles for this hike. First time this season. It is worth it for balance. If you have knee or balance problems this might not be the hike for you. I like showing these pictures because sometimes trip reports can be deciving by how little detail is provided and you are surprised when you get there.

We can see glimpses of mountain ranges through the tree's. We continue up the trail as we can definitely feel the elevation increasing and the switch backs heading up.

We did not see many people. A man and his dog. Two 20 something year old girls and a young couple. We occasionally passed each other as we stopped for a break and they did. A few runner types were coming down too.

We continued through the woods. As we continued the wind was picking up. It was pretty breezy even in the woods. It is cool too. Although we are sweating it is probably in the low 50's. Now me being the planner I had been watching the weather all week knowing that it was supposed to be Windy on Friday. As the week progressed the MPH increased. It is supposed to be 35 MPH today.

Snow bowl Trails Mid Point

We stopped for a quick food break. Not really knowing how much further we decided to have a snack before we hit the saddle. Snacks make us SMILE

We saw some boy scouts and their leader taking a break. We crisscrossed with the younger boys.

We made it to the sign before the last switch back to the saddle. There we met two guys coming down. They said the winds were too much for them. They did not even hit the saddle. They turned around before it. ROTT ROW (say it like Scooby Doo). Tina and I decided that we would just keep going and the saddle is probably going to be our goal.

We rounded the next switch back and hit more people that said they were not going to the summit either. They turned around at the Saddle and hid behind a rock that blocked the wind but they did not do the summit.

The last part of this climb was quite a challenged. Wind whipping! (I recall the one Grand Canyon trip when David Malone had to pull me into a rock as we descended the South Kaibab trail. The wind was blowing us around. We later found out that the winds were clocked at over 70 mph.)
This is not that bad but for where we are it is not the best conditions to be traveling on top of a summit.

To Summit or Not? Saddle it is!

We made it to the Saddle. Yeah!! As we saw some people coming down from the Summit and they said the wind was incredible. We looked ahead and saw we still had more to go~ aka the Three False Summits. We called it good!

The Views were incredible. SNOW!

We sat looking into the bowl and watching the birds fly. We could also see the top of the chair lift and all the trails to snow bowl. It was hard to really look around and explore because the wind and dust were ridiculous.

Yes, Tim that is SNOW!

We hung out behind the rocks. We took pictures and ate our sandwiches. The boy scouts showed up. The two leaders decided it was too much for them but sent the boys up to the Summit. There were other boys ahead of them. Of course Tina and I being Mom's were thinking...really you are staying here and sending the boys up there. HMMMM.

Anyway. We chatted with the two leaders and found out they were a Troop from Mesa and had been camping in the area for 5 days. We shared hiking stories since they were looking for 10 mile hikes in the valley. Tina shared her camping stories growing up.

Humphreys Summit

We took some pictures for them and them for us and off we went. Scared to come out of the rocks and getting blown away. Joking! We knew we just needed to get under the tree line.

We made it!

Tina did this Video at the Top.
Listen to the Wind!

We thought going down would be speedy but in reality you still have to watch your footing between the rocks and the tree roots. We chit chatted and headed down. We passed a few families with young kids. Not many though. We hit the sign in box and knew we were almost done.

Almost Done

We were in the Clouds!

My phone battery was down to 10% and I did not want to lose my MapMyHike tracking so as we hit the open area of the ski lift I saved and and restarted the tracking. The wind was still whipping as we headed to the car. CRAZY!!

We did it. Maybe not to where we thought but we were both good. No failure here. We were smart and did what was right for us.

We headed up to the Agassiz lodge, changed clothes and checked out the ski lift. Our legs were so dirty. We looked like hairy apes, there was so much dirt under our sweat pants. The badge of a warrior. HA.

One Stop in Town for a cold drink and back home.

It was a great day and as Tina said her bucket list for this is done. One and Done! Not something either of us care to come back and do again but we can say we did. Here are stats for the day. Including the weather report of temp, winds and wind chill. Who Knew!

Add these two up and we did just a little over 9 miles in 4 1/2 hours. Keep in mind this is to the Saddle not the Summit so your distance will be longer.