This hike was a sortie to find out how long this hike would take for an average Muleteam member. The Muleteam is a hiking club in Bisbee, Arizona, with whom I developed my love of hiking, and met met my good pal and hiking partner Ira. On February 27, I will lead a Muleteam hike up the Silver Peak Trail to the summit. This is by no means an easy hike, and I figured if I nearly doubled the time it took me, that would be doable for even the slowest Muleteam hiker. Tune in next week to see if that turns out to be true.This is my second hike up Silver Peak. My first summit was in December of last year, a little over two months ago with my hiking buddy Ira; that is when I concocted the idea of leading a Muleteam hike up here. As I scouted out this hike I also took a few pictures of the views from West Portal Road and South Cave Creek Road, closer up.
This was, foolishly, a solo hike. This place is too remote to be hiking alone. Generally, one never sees another hiker, and the few bird watchers one runs into are birding only in the first half mile or so. With no recording of this hike, I can only surmise it was a similar pace and time from Ira and my future trip up in February of 2018 while we were training for our Grand Canyon hike later that month. we zipped up and back in three hours, so doubling that, I presumed the Muleteam could do this hike in five hours, and definitely under six.
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View from Portal Road.
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View from Cave Creek Road, where the trailhead is.
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Most of this trail is reminiscent of trails I've been on in Colorado, and Mt. Wrightson in the Santa Ritas south of Tucson: Not a lot of rockiness, but steep at times none-the-less.
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Never forget one is at elevation and in February, so always be prepared for snow.
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A little shed remaining from when this was a fire lookout, until the Republican-led State of Arizona stopped monitoring fires. Brilliant.
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Actual steps up tha last little bit, to the remains of the lookout platform and extant cistern.
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