{"id":364,"date":"2013-04-10T18:09:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T18:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/?p=364"},"modified":"2013-04-10T18:09:19","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T18:09:19","slug":"arizona-trip-part-1-picacho-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/arizona-trip-part-1-picacho-peak\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Trip Part 1, Picacho Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just completed a week-long vacation in Arizona. The main purpose was to get another night at Kitt Peak National Observatory for their Advanced Observing Program. I’ll blog thoroughly about that later, but I wanted to share some pictures and thoughts from the other stuff I did. You may click any picture for a higher-res version. (Warning: Some of the hi-res files are huge).<\/p>\n

The last time I was in Arizona, I was driving from Phoenix to Tucson, admiring the view, and trying to find a place to stop off for some pictures. About halfway, I saw an awesome-looking mountain on the right side of the road, and decided to pull over. It’s called Picacho Peak<\/a> and is absolutely gorgeous.<\/p>\n

\"Picacho1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Picacho Peak is on the left. Not seen here is a small peak further to the left. You can’t hike to the top of it, but you can hike around it and get nice views of the desert. It’s only about a mile. The peak itself is at 3,374 feet and is either a 2- or 3-mile hike depending on which trail you take. We decided on the Hunter Trail, which was about 2 miles. The other trail (Sunset Vista) is longer, but less strenuous. It follows a gradual slope up the right side of the mountain.<\/p>\n

The first part of the trail involves hiking up to the mountain face. This is quite challenging as it’s basically a “path of steepest ascent” climb.<\/p>\n

\"Picacho<\/a><\/p>\n

From here, you hike around the rock face to the saddle point between the two larger peaks.<\/p>\n

\"Picacho<\/a><\/p>\n

The next part was very challenging. You climb down about 300 feet around the back side of the mountain using cables. I decided to turn back once I got to the bottom of this drop, mainly out of exhaustion. I don’t do a lot of hikes, so I wasn’t incredibly well-prepared for this one. I wish I had done it before going down 300 feet though, cause going back up was very strenuous. My friend made it to the summit. Here are some of his pics:<\/p>\n

\"Picacho<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Picacho<\/a><\/p>\n

While the hike back down was easier, once I got to the saddle, I was still very tired. My legs were very wobbly! Wish I could’ve gotten to the top. We were needing to leave to head up to Kitt Peak and I didn’t want to slow my friend down. He figured he could make it to the top pretty quickly, and he did.<\/p>\n

The next post will be about the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just completed a week-long vacation in Arizona. The main purpose was to get another night at Kitt Peak National Observatory for their Advanced Observing Program. I’ll blog thoroughly about that later, but I wanted to share some pictures and thoughts from the other stuff I did. You may click any picture for a higher-res […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7qGdg-5S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joebohanon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}