South Mountain

South Mountain

South Mountain is your basic run of the mill paved hike through Phoenix's largest city park, and the World for that matter.

The summit is 2,303 feet to the top and overlooks the city. It is a great vantage point to see a Monsoon storm come rolling in.

I was off to a late start with this hike. The park shuts down 1 day a month to all vehicle traffic, so I decided to hit the trail at 9am instead of the 5am start that I wanted.

Well, in AZ, the summer really starts in March, it was about 98 degrees about time I got to the top (5.5 miles) in 2 hours. I had tried to conserve water and actually ran out of water on the way down with 1 mile to go.

A few weeks later, I saw that a family from Alaska had gone hiking through and a teenager from their group actually died from heat stroke. The family were all in a state of heat illnesses due to running out of water. Use caution when coming though here in the warm months.

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