So...how did you spend your Christmas?

Anyone looking for the tradtional unwrapping-of-presents photos? YAWN you won't find them here. Those aren't interesting to anyone but family, so here's something better, or at least....warmer.

Jeff and I were going to go skiing at Christmas, but he really was not excited about it. To me, 10,000 feet, crisp air, pine forest, and come on...SKIING, well there's not much that beats that. Except in order to go skiing, we'd have to leave my parents house in warm sunny Phoenix and drive 2 hours north to their house in cold (yet sunny!) Flagstaff. Jeff wisely suggested hiking the valley instead. He's a smart boy, he knows that as long as I'm outside doing something active, I'm happy.

We both decide we want to climb Piestewa Peak (was Squaw Peak before the Iraq War). That's the "big one" in the area...elevation gain of 1200 feet, lots of tourists. I saw that it was only 1.2 miles one way, and decided that wasn't nearly enough. So, I mapped out a hiking itinerary of my own. Three hikes, two happy hikers (HA!), one day without kids.

Hike #1: South Mountain
Knowing I wouldn't have a willing partner for a decent warm-up hike, I chose the less strenuous but still moderate one mile Kiwanis Trail at South Mountain Preserve for a "get ready because Piestewa Peak will kick our rear" warm up hike. This is a popular park, but still vast enough to enjoy secluded trails. Here's a picture of me contemplating the trail. Actually, I'm killing time while Jeff gets his water ready. The trail wound back and upwards through a canyon filled with cactus, scrub brush, and palo verde.

No charge for beautiful city views, either.

Yes, those are power lines. The West IS in the 21st Century as well, you know.

Hike #2 Piestewa Peak

Sufficiently warmed up from our 2 mile moderate hike at South Mountain, we headed to the middle of the city to tackle Piestewa Peak. I still call it Squaw Peak though. I guess that comes from living there for 24 years. See that picture I took from the car? That's it. Doesn't look tall? It is. You can even see the trail zig zagging up the side of the mountain. Still don't see it? Here's a bigger picture for you.

Yikes. Neither of us, in our combined 50 years of living in Arizona, have done this one before. But it's such a big tourist attraction, we figure it couldn't be THAT hard (wrong!!!). The trail stats out nice and paved, and I'm thinking, ok, this is great. I can do 1.2 miles of PAVED switchbacks. Well, looking at the picture again, I guess it's not really paved. But it's not South Mountain sand, either.

So we plug away, enjoying the city view grow with every turn of the bend. I think it's planned that way....you see more city with every turn to take away from the fact that you also see more mountain above you with every turn. Just when you think you're near the summit, you either see a sign that says you've only gone 0.6 miles, or you look up and see that you are in fact NO WHERE near the summit and that trail you see waaaaaaaaay up there, well, it's waiting to kick your butt.

Pretty soon paved gives way to just rock steps:

Which in turn gives way to "ok this sucks" rock steps:

Which then gives way to "how the eff am I going to get up THIS?":

Yes that's the trail!!!!!!!!! YES! See the little head in the upper right corner? That's a guy at the top of the mountain. But who cares....LOOK AT THAT SKY!!!! Beautiful!!

So, 90 minutes after we start, we reach the summit. And Oh My God was it worth every rump-kicking step. You can see everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Here's just a few shots:

Looking south...the lower mountain on the left is South Mountain, our warm up hike.

Looking east at the 4 Sisters (part of the Superstition Mountains):

Looking west with a zoom lens at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale (UPiG!)

Here's us, about ready to fall off the top of a mountain. This was a few rocks down from the very tippy top. That can only hold one person at a time. The guy taking our picture was standing at the top.

A few more shots:

After catching our breath and taking in the view, we figured we'd better head down. I wasn't too worried about the trip down, because coming up was relatively simple for me. I still have some sort of cardiac health left over from my gym rat days, and I still have pretty strong thighs, so I figured hey, going down couldn't be THAT bad, could it?

WRONG. It was that bad, and worse. First off, I quickly discovered that my thighs are so strong because they've sucked every bit of strength and energy from my calves and ankles. Secondly, I live in the midwest. I am no mountain goat. How can you get down that trail without falling and twisting your ankles many times, including your surgically repaired previous twisted tendon? Well, if you're Jeff, it's a piece of cake. For me, no way. I had to make that above picture extra large so you could get an idea of what a straight-down hill sand and rock strewn trail looks like. That and you can get a good idea of what happens if you fall, take a misstep, or lose your balance.

And while I'm trying to stay alive going down this trail, there are people RUNNING past me. Not jogging, RUNNING?!

Obviously, we made it to the bottom. This is what one kicked Bristol Bootie looks like:

But HA! We're not done yet! No siree, we are not quitters. It's time for our cool down hike!

Hike #3: North Mountain
After Squaw Peak did us in, I insisted that we finish off with a short cool down stroll around North Mountain. I picked a nice 1/2 mile trail marked "easy" and figured we could do it a couple of times. So we collapsed into the car, made a mad dash to the Golden Arches for a Diet Coke, had an energy snack, and made our way to North Mountain. I wish I could say something exciting about this hike. It wasn't. It was a stroll to stretch our muscles and try and get our bodies to stop hating us. It was so uneventful, we left our camera in the car. This picture here of North Mountain was actually taken from the top of Piestewa Peak. Ha ha, see I was savvy and planning in advance. Smart girl.

Well, that's it. We knocked off our 3 mountains, headed home, gathered the family, and went to Red Robin to eat our weight in food and replace all liquids with beer. Ahhh........

Oh, and did I mention that my sister-in-law used to hike Piestewa Peak EVERY DAY AFTER WORK?!?!!