My goal every year is to do this challenging hike in under two hours, or even better, beat my best time of 1:55 from December 18, 2019—almost precisely three years ago. Last year my time was 2:09, but with 0.2 additional miles; the previous hike before Covid and my year off was in January of 2020, with my brother, probably not as indicative of my hiking as much as his. That hike clocked in at 2:07.
During most hikes I am there primarily for the hikes themselves, and only casually care about pace, unless it's out-of-bounds for some reason. One reason I really wanted to check on my endurance this year is that my first two hikes were sub-par in terms of how fatigued I got and how slow I was moving. Part of that was the nature of the hikes (two fairly brutal outings), but there is also the fact I hadn't quite acclimated to the elevation. So I was rather pleasantly surprised by my time today.
Another thing I was surprised at was the trail warning signs I saw, warning of attacks by "highly aggressive" colonies of animals...
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| ...of the insect class and the Apoidea superfamily. Luckily, this is December and they're taking the winter off. |
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| My destination front and center. |
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| Pontatoc Canyon, in the background, is another challenging hike in the area, but not nearly as scenic. |
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| My halfway split gave me some hope my time would be under 2 hours. |
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