THOMPSON PEAK! Miles: 9+. Time: 3 Hours, 45 minutes. Calories: LOTS!

I DID IT! I made it to the summit of Thompson Peak as planned and returned safe and sound to talk about it and post photos! Unfortunately my Internet and GPS connectivity there wasn't very good so my Runkeeper iPhone app didn't accurately record my distance and calorie statistics, but at least I know how long it took me. 

I parked at the trail head in Fountain Hills and started from that point at 7:53.

The trail was mostly unpaved and easily walked - quite a contrast to the rocky surfaces of Camelback Mountain that I encountered last week. There was lots of great desert scenery.

Further on, the trail started to get steeper, and in the very steep parts, it was paved. That's because this is a service road used by vehicles to get to the transmission towers at the summit. 

Here's a clearing with a great view of Scottsdale and Camelback Mountain (where I was last week) in the distance:

Getting closer to the summit:

5 minutes from the summit, there is a warning sign about excess radiation levels. I decided to snap a few photos as quickly as possible before rushing back down.

The first direct view of the buildings and towers at the summit. THE END IS IN SIGHT!

The locked and fenced off area containing the buildings and transmission towers at the summit:

A couple of close up views of the main tower with great views of the McDowell Mountain Ranch area of Scottsdale in the background. The Arizona Canal runs diagonally across the picture in the background.

Looking down on to some of the "lesser McDowells" from the summit:

I swear the descent seems more physically challenging than the ascent - and the trail seems to go on forever!

Great views along the descent, with Four Peaks in the distant background to the left:

Anyway, that's it for today. This was definitely a sufficient workout for today, and I'm going to use what little muscle strength I have left to hobble to the Jacuzzi for recuperation and rejuvenation. Went out for a little lunch to replenish my energy first: 

NO - scratch that - I'M JUST KIDDING! This is a heart-friendly blog.

I really came home and had soup and veggies. I promise.

2,282 Calories, 33.9 Miles (A Late Entry)

In my last post I promised an update when I hiked Camelback Mountain. But I never promised when!

Well, I actually did that first hike the day after my last post - on May 15. So why has it taken me this long to finally write about it? Was I so tired it took me this long to recuperate sufficiently to type again? Or was I procrastinating? Or just lazy? Or too busy doing other things? I'll let you speculate.

May 15 actually turned out to be a triathlon for me - a run, followed by hiking Camelback, followed by a bike ride, and the above calorie and mileage count is the sum total of all three.

For the run I did 4.63 miles through the local neighborhoods before sunup, taking about 51 minutes and burning 672 calories. But that was nothing special and I'm sure you're more interested in hearing about Camelback, so I'll get to the point.

Wow. The first thing you need to know about hiking Camelback is that there's a bit of a preliminary hike involved as the nearest parking is a third of a mile away - with a respectably uphill walk all the way to the trailhead. So when you start, you're already well warmed up. The trail actually starts out deceptively easy at the beginning, but then gets progressively more challenging as you go on, due not only to increasing grade but increasingly challenging terrain, with rocks and uneven and potentially slippery surfaces. 

On Sunday morning when I did this hike, the trail was CROWDED with other people - which I expected and which I had planned and hoped for (all the better to have several other moving bodies on there to scare away any rattlesnakes or bobcats from my path - or to be aware of my disappearance if a slip sent me down one of the steep dropoffs). 

What was really interesting to see was the wide variety of styles employed by all these other hikers. Most people moved along with a steady speed and reasonable caution. But at the one extreme was a smaller percentage of more hardy souls who actually jogged up and down these slippery rocks with the same nonchalance that might have been expected had they been on level asphalt. A large number of these were teenagers obviously still blissfully ignorant of their own mortality. 

Finally, at the other extreme was an old fart in gray hair, a first-timer, who proceeded with all the alacrity of a snail swimming through a pool of molasses, occasionally down on all fours to carefully steady himself against any possible slippage, and spending half of his time moving to the side every time one of these joggers-with-a-death-wish approached.  Yep, "the snail" was none other than yours truly, and it didn't bolster my confidence one bit as I watched a helicopter rescue some other hiker from somewhere on the other side of the mountain. But on the bright side, all my diligent caution paid off and I'm still here and alive to blog about the experience, and to post the pictures I took of the elements I was up against:

I'd like to say I made it to the summit, but that is an achievement that is probably going to require the experience of many more hikes before I feel comfortable enough attempting it. If I ever do. As it is, what I did accomplish was a more than ample workout, and trained and developed muscles I previously didn't even know I had. Even though I only made it probably about two-thirds of the way up this Beast of a Camel, I did still capture some impressive views of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale:

All in all, the round trip hike took a total of an hour and 35 minutes, and when I got back home I replenished with a quick lunch before heading out on a 3 hour, 8 minute, and 32 second marathon bike ride almost down to Tempe (1125 calories, 26.63 miles). Hey, it wasn't as bad as it might sound - after all, it did use different sets of muscles!

My next goal is literally a bit more lofty - and I hope to meet it tomorrow and then write about it (but note, once again, I'm not saying WHEN I'm going to write about it!) See those mountains in the background of the second picture above? Those are the McDowells. And see the highest peak in the middle of those mountains? That's Thompson Peak. I'm going to try to get there tomorrow morning. I ran pretty close to that area earlier today while on my now-almost-routine 9.5 mile Saturday morning run. I've researched The Road To Thompson Peak over the last couple of days, and learned that it's a 4.5 mile road (over 9 miles round trip), and I'm planning to walk that road to the top tomorrow morning. On the bright side, it's allegedly a vehicle-quality unpaved but relatively smooth road. There shouldn't be any back-breaking boulders to scale. And if there are any bobcats or rattlers they should be relatively easy to spot ahead of time. Walking, the round trip should take me about 3 to 3-1/2 hours. Wish me luck. And stay tuned for the statistics and the pictures!

(Oh, and Mom? The top of Thompson Peak is LOADED with cell phone towers. And I'll have my iPhone with me. So if a bobcat does come after me, I'll be sure to call and let you know). 

37.74 miles, 2749 calories!

Nope, those aren't the statistics from my run. They're the combination of the run AND the bike ride I took today. The run was 2 hours (and one second!), 11 miles, and 1626 calories. From that you can figure out the bike ride (which took 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 44 seconds).

I had another great night-to-sunup run in some of the the hilliest parts of the McDowell Mountain Ranch. It's great when it's 75 degrees and no shirt is required!

Then for my bike ride I went down to the Camelback Mountain area of Paradise Valley which was an additional extreme uphill cardiovascular workout (but the downhill return was REALLY fun!) This time I discovered the eastern approach to the trail up Camelback Mountain. I don't know if it's rideable by bike (I doubt it) but I'm definitely going to be returning to attempt a hike up that trail sometime in the near future - and when I do, you can be sure you'll be able to read all about it here first.

But for now, my energy supply is temporarily depleted. So....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Trounced!

...that is what happened to the reckless spenders formerly on the board of the Desert Shadows II Homeowners Association tonight. 

Tonight was our annual meeting, and for many years these meetings have been relatively serene events. In fact, for the first seven or so years in which I lived in this community, they were attended only by three or four board members, myself, and maybe an extra lone straggler or two from the neighborhood.

That was before the quarterly assessments started drastically rising over the last three years, to a level that now is about double what it was previously. 

What a change! No yawning tonight. This was a room full of one heck of a lot of super-angry people, peeved not only about assessment increases but what they perceived as over-zealous regulation. A lot of the dialog was definitely not rated "G." At one point the property manager felt compelled to move across the room to a seat next to the exit door out of concern for her personal safety. (And no, Mom, it wasn't me who said or did anything that you wouldn't have approved of. There were at least 10 or more who were far more vocal than even I would ever have been, and they said it all for me and then some. But that's not to say I wasn't silently cheering to myself as the crowd laid it on).

In the end, the people spoke. Two extremely unpopular board members, one of whom didn't even have the decency to show up at the meeting, were soundly defeated and ousted, replaced by newcomers who were also very decidedly opposed to the ever-increasing assessments and draconian oversight trends of late and who presented some of the best arguments of the evening. 

If the effectiveness of their actions over the next year comes anywhere close to the effectiveness of their words tonight, we will now be in much better hands. Democracy was in action tonight, and at least for now, justice appears to have prevailed.