Hitch #2 - Pinnacle Peak

I spent the last two weeks camping at McDowell Regional Park and working on Pinnacle Peak Trail located near Scottsdale, AZ. It was a front country hitch, meaning we “car camped” rather than hiking into our site. McDowell Park was beautiful, had a porta potty at our site, and had hot showers a mere three miles away! Every night we fell asleep to the sound of howling coyotes and wind rustling our tent.

Pinnacle Peak is a city park located on a decaying granite mountain in the middle of a community consisting of multi million dollar homes. Our job was to repair a one and a half mile trail that is hiked by over one thousand people everyday. The people who hike Pinnacle Peak range from trophy wives to retired couples who winter in Arizona and everyone in between. On Pinnacle Peak one sees more fake boobies in one day than many people see in a lifetime. Many people went out of their way to ignore us, others went out of their way to make rude comments toward us, and a few were genuinely nice and interested in what we were doing. Despite or maybe because the number of people, lizards and birds were plentiful near the trail.

Because Pinnacle Peak is made of decaying granite, we had to bring in material to repair the structures that keep the trail from eroding off the side of the mountain. This meant we spent most of our time carrying hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock up the trail by using buckets, rock hauling backpacks, canvas bags, rock nets, dollies, and our gloved hands. Individual rocks weighed upwards of 400lbs. Once we had a decent amount of material, we started building the rock walls ad erosion control structures that were needed and soon we were out of rock and hauling once again.

It was a hard and amusing two weeks. I am sun burnt, have some sort of allergic reaction on my face, and decided to shave my head on a whim (sorry Vonnie the beautiful haircut you gave me had just grown out too much). I definitely look the part of a homeless person, which is okay because I am homeless. Life is good.

Don't forget to click on the picture of me on the right to see more pictures of what I'm up to.