“You should climb Black Mountain,” Gary said. “It’ll be fun!” Gary said.
And thusly did we find ourselves halfway up what appeared to be a mere blip of a mountain but is actually a 1,300-foot elevation gain over the course of a 1.1-mile trail. That’s not hiking, friends. That’s basically rock climbing.
Still. We climb up mountains all the time. Two weeks ago I went up Bear Butte without stopping to rest or breaking a serious sweat. I’m in SO MUCH better shape now than I’ve ever been. It’s awesome.
But I have a cold. God only knows how I managed to avoid COVID for a year and get a cold the day after my second vaccination, but there you have it. And it turns out that having a virus that affects your breathing also affects your ability not to embarrass yourself on a steep-ass mountain. We were lapped by a teenage girl. We were lapped by a couple who’d gotten up early enough to play a game of tennis before starting this hike at 8:30 (I know because they stopped to tell us so while I was gasping for breath about a third of the way up). We were lapped by a solid dozen wiry old men. I am not comforted to know that they probably climb this mountain every day.
My only consolation is that we were NOT lapped by the two non-fit, middle-aged women who started twenty minutes after we did BUT IT WAS TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.
I got myself to the top by stopping to rest every time my heartrate hit 150 (at which point my brain thought I was dying and I couldn’t have kept going if there had been a bear chasing me) and then promising myself I only had to go another ten feet before I could rest again. I usually made it a few more feet than ten. Usually. Dustin, of course, is the most supportive and patient of all hiking partners and he didn’t abandon me even a little.
Gary was right about one thing, though. The view from the top was stunning. This is volcanic country, and these hills and mountains jut up with freaky suddenness from an otherwise flat, flat landscape. From the peak of Black Mountain, many of the other volcanic outcrops looked like big piles of dirt someone forgot to clean up, but most are unmistakably mountains.
The trot back down the mountain was altogether pleasant, with our toes only getting lightly squished into the tips of our boots. We rewarded ourselves with breakfast burritos from Big Earl’s Greasy Eats, and what could be better than that?
Climb this mountain if you ever come to Cave Creek, I say. It’ll be fun.
Thither & Yon 