Humphreys Peak (DPS) Arizona State Highpoint

This was the second peak on a long haul DPS road trip to eastern Nevada and northern Arizona to pick up Wheeler and Humphreys.  See the writeup for Wheeler the previous day for how we got here.

I'd been by Humphreys before during a Turktacular but weather prevented us from attempting the summit.  Now that is was summer time it looked to be a pleasant half day hike before we had to haul back home to Orange County.

It was still dark when we crawled out of our sleeping bags and drove the rest of the way along the bumpy dirt Fire Road 151.


We'd been warned to expect a lot of people on the trail and sure enough there were already a few cars there and several more large groups arrived as we got ready.

"We should accept the fact you're probably going to die."

We had another long drive ahead of us so we were motivated to set a good pace.


The trail starts out in heavy forest before eventually emerging on a ridge.  It's short and went pretty quickly.  We were about 3 hours from cars to summit.


Our only hiccup was I missed the trail after the saddle and we briefly went along the ridge and the loose eastern slope before noticing some of the people we passed earlier walking along a rather clean looking trail.  Oops...



The summit was nondescript but boasted an impressive view.  Coming from California the green out in Arizona is always refreshing and unlike the previous day it was almost completely clear giving us a awesome view.



We also had cell coverage off an on (using AT&T) so we did the logical thing and tried to play Pokemon Go.  Flavor of the minute and all of that.


And as it turned out the summit of Humphreys is actually a pokestop but it appears to have been placed about a quarter of a mile north of the actual summit.  Jen was quite incensed.  We did manage to catch a few random Pokemon along the way and amused the passers by with our antics.

Looking over at the ski resort on the way down from the summit

We made our way down chatting with random folks along the way.  People aren't lying when they say this trail gets busy.  We saw everyone from trailrunners to rather overweight folks carrying tiny bottles of water and everyone in between.  And it's hard to blame them since it's like Mt. Baldy for LA folks except 2.5k higher and even prettier.  It was probably the most fun I had chatting with random folks on the trail since I did Half Dome during the pre permit free for all days.


Down in the parking lot we chatted with some local volunteers and enjoyed a celebratory beer for having gotten both our peaks before starting the 480 mile drive home.  (This is a very good thing since Plan B was we'd have to drive all the way back out here the following weekend.)


The Arizona segment was really scenic.  Then we crossed over into California...


Which true to form was brown and currently on fire.  Also there was a 2.5 hour delay along the 40 due to an accident we only just managed to dodge by driving through Amboy.


But on the plus side we had an excuse to stop by Cafe Jimenez in Barstow and you could mostly not smell the smoke outside.

In the end we'd done 4 states, 2 peaks, 1,628 miles in three days.  And now I had just 5 DPS peaks remaining including the one I had my list finish party scheduled on.