On the Res

Once again...slacking with this thing. my bad. Picture of me on the right at Crazy Jug Point, in the forest. We went there last weekend after taking the forest road back from Fredonia. Cool drive and a really nice view point. Attempted to climb down to the peninsula outcrop but I chickened out. steep scrambling, wearing chacos, about to get dark... I was cool getting half way and watching Jesse and Jake do it.

Anyway...halfway through the week on the North Rim. I may have met George Hayduke the other night (at least the guy that Edward Abbey based George Hayduke off of) which excites me very much.

This past weekend we went down to Marble Canyon to meet Addy, then made our way down to the Hopi Reservation. Addy was going to run in the 37th annual Louis Tewanima race. Louis Tewanima was a Hopi Indian who got shipped off to the Carlisle Indian School in PA and started running track there. He competed in the 1908, 1912, and 1916 olympics... won the silver in 1912 and actually set an American record that wasn't broken until about 60 years later by another Native American, Billy Mills broke it. So every year on the Hopi Res they have a series of runs to commemorate him. Pretty cool. Louis Tewanima didn't understand competitive running so his coach would basically point out the guy in first and Louis would run and beat him

"Me run fast good, all Hopi run fast good" -Tewanima.... All Hopi run fast good because it was a tradition that they would wake up every morning and run toward the sunrise to pray. And damn those Hopi are fast.

Anyway, somehow Jesse thought it would be a good idea for us to run too... a 10k. We were both rather ill-prepared for it to say the least. I ran in my hiking boots and Jess ran in his Chacos... but we finished. Jess might have been able to win a medal if he didn't wait for me at the top of the gnarly last hill (running uphill in sand, and then basically running up these 2ft stone steps...killer). But we finished! Addy came in second in our age group which was pretty awesome... I think 4th or 5th overall for the women.

Checked out some Hopi Butterfly dances afterward. Beautiful...

Headed into Flag and hung out on Sunday. Got lunch and wandered about with Addy and her Dad. Jess and I went up to Snowbowl and camped for the night... Then climbed Humphrey's peak in the morning. Hymphreys is the tallest peak in Arizona, about 12633 ft to be exact. Picture on the left is the trail signs for humphreys. It was about 4.8 miles to the very top. Super windy at the saddle where that photo was taken. Miraculously it didn't hold up at the very top.. although they did have these little structures built as shelters against the wind.

I was feeling it at the top. Both the climb and the altitude. But we got there.... and I took a nap at the top haha. We also whipped out oysters, cheese and crackers for a little feast. Its nice to be done with crappy hiking food and now we can feast.

Picture of me on the right at the very top. Cool Climb but definitely a challenge... and probably not the best idea after running a 10k hopi trail race...