Pinnacle Peak, January 2014

We hiked Pinnacle Peak with Mary Ann’s sister and niece.

This is the first time that we’ve hiked Pinnacle Peak. I don’t know why it took us so long to finally do it. It’s a bit of a drive to north Scottsdale from our house, but not bad;  it’s about a 40 minute drive. There is one trail, which is well groomed and capable of handling a lot of people. We went on a Saturday morning and there were a lot of people there. The parking lot was full so we had to park on the street. When we got to the trailhead there were some volunteers there from the Audubon Society showing three captive birds: a Red-tailed Hawk, a Great-horned Owl, and a Turkey Vulture. The hawk and owl are the same ones we saw at Veteran’s Oasis Park (in another post).

The trail was challenging for me because I’m in such bad shape. It’s a good motivator to get to the gym more often. The trail is 1.75 miles one way, and then you must follow the same path back – it’s not a loop trail. It kind of reminded me of hiking the Grand Canyon; I think this trail would be a good preparation for hiking the canyon. Pinnacle Peak trail has an elevation change of 1300 feet in 3.5 miles, which is quite a bit of climbing! The Grand Canyon (which I’ve hiked twice) is 4380 feet in 9.5 miles. Doing the math, PP is 371 ft/mi, and the GC is 512 ft/mi.

It wasn’t a trip for birding, but I did take some bird photos. We saw a number of Cactus Wren along the way. At one stop there was an American Kestrel roosting on a Saguaro cactus. I heard a Canyon Wren but didn’t see it.

Here are some photos:

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One Comment

  1. Aaron
    Posted February 5, 2014 at 3:05 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for doing the math, I was about to pull out my abacus to crunch some numbers so you saved me a lot of time.

    Always a positive spike in my day seeing your posts. Thanks!

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