Camelback

This week I was on a business trip in the Phoenix area. Not a whole lot to comment on, aside from the fact that it's shockingly hard to find a hotel room in the Phoenix area in mid-March. I was running into the problem of spring-training baseball, really spectacular weather (sunny and in the high 70's), and a couple conferences in town.

We finished up all our business by about 3:30 PM, so we hiked up Camelback Mountain near Scottsdale. Thanks to technology that keeps my cell phone out of my workplace, I can bring you these pictures from Arizona.

This is a view from the parking lot, you can't see the summit from here; beautiful scenery though.

"Hiking" is kind of a misnomer for this trail, it's actually more of a rock scramble in a lot of places. 1200 vertical feet in 1.2 miles. We're about a half-mile into the hike at this point. The next picture was taken from the peak visible in this picture.

Here's a view of Scottsdale, Arizona from the summit of Camelback Mountain.

By the way, the most impressive thing about this hike is the people who were jogging up the trail. Next time I'm out there, I'm taking some running shoes and trying it myself, probably will kick my ass, but it'll be fun to try. On the other hand, the next time I'm out there, it may well be >100 degrees, so maybe running in the desert isn't the best choice.