Disco Inferno

Well. I think I've outdone myself this weekend! I foresee this post being pretty long and detailed... so beware! But oh man, do I have a story for you.

This weekend has been pretty tame, and Sunday we went to the Inner Basin to do some easy day hiking. The San Francisco Peaks here used to actually be one big volcano that blew its top a long time ago, and now there is a basin you can hike into. We planned on going about ~4 miles round trip or maybe more if we felt up to it. The hike was really pretty because there were trees besides ponderosa pine in the basin! I'm not sure what they were- birch? sycamore?

The hike through the Inner Basin.

At about an hour into the hike we saw snow! I was really excited to see snow in June! A little further into the hike, I saw this neat mountain to our left. I turned to the rest of the group and asked if anyone wanted to climb up it. Only two other people agreed. The other four decided they would continue on the Inner Basin Trail and if they got back before us, would just leave because we had 2 cars. So, together myself, Teresa, and Eric decided to hike off-trail literally up the side of a mountain...

We're about to climb up there... Sounds like a good plan, no?

The first part of our epic day began with scaling this mountain, which we would later find out was called Fremont Peak. At the time, the hike didn't look too bad, but as we started to ascend, I quickly realized it wasn't nearly as easy as it looked... The hike up consisted of three terrains. The first was the brambles. This was a little painful, but easy. The next was the loose rocks. This was by far the worst and slowest. Every step forward you would slide backwards. It was steep and hard to ascend quickly. It looked as if there had been a landslide recently so that's probably why it was so loose. Plus, underneath all these small rocks was snow! If you slipped enough to move the rocks, you could see snow under them. Loose pebbles on slippery snow = a slow and tiring hike. Eventually we made it to the third tier of the climb: the big yet still potentially loose rocks. This was probably the easiest, but most dangerous. There were lots of big boulders stacked on top of each other, and if you stepped on an unsteady one, you would cause a huge rockslide below. Yeah, okay, not much of a problem for one hiker, but when there's two people behind you... At one point I dislodged a huge rock and saw Teresa's life flash before my eyes as it barreled down towards her about 10 feet below me. Luckily she is nimble on her feet and jumped to avoid it. #1 of near-death experiences (you can tell this is going to be a good story now!).

The view about halfway up Fremont.

Ok, so about 3/4 of the way up this peak, I see a big cloud to the east. Whatever, a big cloud. Weeeell... about ten minutes later we all sort of realize this isn't really a cloud.

Hmm... That's a suspicious looking cloud. Bottom right is where we saw huge flames!

Turns out it's smoke. From a huge forest fire, that's... oh, I don't know, about a half-mile or mile from us. Uh-oh! Well, our options were this: go down the way we came up or climb to the top. I think we would have killed ourselves going down those boulders and loose rock, so it was up we went. Besides, there were less trees the higher we got. Finally we get to the top of the peak. WOWEE! As we look down to the east, we see some scarily huge flames billowing over the ridge below us (sadly I didn't get any photos of the flames). I guess this qualifies as #2 of near-death experiences, even though we weren't ever in thaaaat much danger.

Luckily, the wind is blowing away from us, but we still don't know what to do. I called 911, but kept losing signal. As I'm trying to call in, I notice a bottle behind a rock- as I look at it, I realize it's a message in a bottle! I opened it and everybody who had made it up there had left a message. There were no trails up to this peak, so only really crazy/masochistic people would have written in there. In the panic, I didn't have much time to read them, but Teresa left our names and date and 'NAU REU 2010'. On my third 911 call I get through long enough to ask what we should do. The operator asks where we are. We had no idea what peak we were on (there are 4). She asks which fire we're near. My first thought was 'There's more than one?!' Oops- did I forget to mention that there was a small forest fire south east of Flagstaff on Saturday? Well, in the panic I had just assumed it was the Hardy Fire from Saturday, but if I had thought, then it would have occurred to me this was a different fire as we were 15 miles north of Flag. Suddenly Teresa says to me 'We're on Fremont Peak!'. Turns out someone had written it down on the message in the bottle! How neat! We were partially aided by the proverbial message in a bottle! We were told to climb down the mountain on the side opposite the fire (no duh), so off we go.

The hike down was, when I start thinking about it, pretty rough. But in the heat of the moment, we just wanted to get the heck off the mountain as quick as possible so all the adrenaline was dulling the rough terrain. Today I have lots of cool battle wounds from rushing through the pine forest. At one point I fell into this crevice in between some boulders. My foot got stuck under a rock in a really painful position, but after some panicked shrieking the other two got it off of me. #3 of potential near-death experiences, but I wouldn't have died, just hurt myself. Lucky for us, Eric is an experienced hiker, so he was leading us the most promising direction in hopes of finding a trail. Surprisingly, the snow was the worst thing to hike on: it was incredibly slick and even when I made footholes, I still occasionally slipped.

Smoke, Fremont, and Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Finally we found a trail!! Hooray! Later we would find out this trail was the Weatherford Trail (5.7 miles). It goes two ways: up Agassiz Peak or to Schultz Pass, where the fire was. Hmm, hard choice which way to take it, eh? Unfortunately it was out of the way, but it was the only trail in the area. We hiked up and up Agassiz, but we were making really good time with all the adrenaline. Eventually I saw a sign up ahead (we had no idea where we were or where we were headed). I ran up to it, read the sign, turned around, and started laughing. Turns out we were at a 'dead end'. The trail ahead was closed, although we didn't know why. Well, what else could we do besides continue on? So onward we went, climbing ever higher. We found out why the trail was closed pretty quickly. Parts of it were covered in a thick layer of snow/ice! Climbing on the snowed-over parts was pretty frightening. You had to be really careful not to slip. One wrong step and... well, it was a long way down. You had to lean over and brace yourself against the snow with your hands as you walked, so after we made it across, my hands were numb. Reminded me of the times when Sarah and I would see who could stick our hands into a bucket of ice the longest, except worse! (I always lost)

Snow/ice traversing. This makes it look way easier than it was.

The snowed over trail we just crossed!

Ok, so a little more snow traversing, and at last we find a real sign! Woohoo! We found out we were on the Weatherford trail that would eventually take us to Humphrey's (the highest point in AZ). We saw two hikers ahead, sitting down and taking photos of the fire. We were so happy to see other people! At least we knew we were headed the right way! We stopped to talk to them and we told them about our crazy story. Now, this is the kicker: Monday morning at work I received an email with a link to a blog about the fire. Turns out it was written by one of those guys we met! What luck?! The guy, Dan, works at Lowell! Here is a link to his blog... I thought they guys looked familiar, but I was certain it was the hikers we met when he wrote of the 'trio of students'.

~12,000 feet. The Snow Bowl below!

So, now we are on our way down to the Snow Bowl! It's a long ways down, but at least we know where we are, and the other REU students who didn't go up Fremont with us are going to pick us up at the bottom. It should all be downhill (pun intended) from here, right...? Well, about 10 or 15 minutes down the descent I begin to feel a bit funny. I had had a headache for a while, but I thought it was just from the adrenaline and the quick pace we were keeping. As I went further and further down the trail, I started to feel progressively worse. My head hurt somethin' nasty, and at some point I started feeling a bit light-headed and my fingers were getting tingly like when they fall asleep. Turns out I had altitude sickness! This made the hike down pretty slow because I had to keep taking breaks. We were low on food and water (this was supposed to be a 4 mile hike after all) so this didn't really help either. We passed more hikers on this trail, so that was encouraging. Finally we made it to the ski lift that takes people up the mountain! From here we just walked down to the Snow Bowl parking lot! We were so happy to see everybody else! Woohoo!

In summary: we stared at 9AM and finished at 6:30PM. I'm guessing we hiked about 15 miles throughout the day. At our highest point we were at 12,000 feet, starting from 9000 in the Inner Basin. Who knew forest fires could cause such a ruckus?! After we got some water/food/jackets, we all went back and showered/decompressed. As celebration for such a day, all the students went out to a local restaurant called Beaver Street Brewery and ate good food. It was a crazy and long day, but quite an adventure! It's taken me a long time to write this in free moments at work, but three days later here is my recounting of the event! This article is out of date now, but we are those hikers they refer to... I had to call the Sheriff back when we got back to let him know we were alive! (Search and rescue kept on texting me throughout our hike to see where we were or if we needed help out). Teresa's car is still in Lockett Meadow where we parked in the Inner Basin, and we're all crossing our fingers in hopes that the fire doesn't get there. She is currently on her way to pick it up hopefully!

This is the path we think we took...??

The state of the fire as I write this: 14,000 acres have been destroyed and the fire is at 20% containment. It's been determined that an abandoned campfire started the fire. No sign of rain this whole week, so hopefully things will slow down on their own and with the help of the firefighting crew. Last night some southeasterly winds came in and now some of the smoke has settled on the city. You can smell the lingering scent of smoke outside now.

PS- I can't get the photos to enlarge when clicked on... I've spent forever writing this, so maybe I'll fix it later!

Picture this: we hiked the pointy peak third from left!