Team Building

About a month ago Marlo Lancaster (Girls Head Track Coach) brought Higley High Student Councel on a hike to Flatiron. They all made it and she made it sound like lots of fun. All the kids sounded like they had almost died but they are prone to exagerate. Last year she wanted to bring the track team on this hike as a spring break work out. So on presidents day we drove out there to look at the trail and Jami and I decided we would really like to take the trek. It took us a while to line up childcare (thank you mom and dad) so this past Sat. we finally got to go. I actually went home sick the day before and should not have gone on this hike but I really wanted to go with Jami and who knows when everything would line up right again. So we dropped the kids off and got to Lost Dutchmans Park around 10:30. It was a popular day to go hiking as all the wildflowers were begining to bloom. It was really pretty. Jami and I were so excited to just spend a day together. (We comented a few times during the hike how nice it was to just have peace and enjoy not hearing kids, cars, or anything. It was very nice.) The discovery trail that brings you up to the siphon draw trail head was about 0.7 of a mile. The trail description mention that the hike should be 4 miles round trip or two additional miles if you want to go all the way to the top "Flatiron". The description mentions that the trail is not well kept and only experienced climbers should go to the top. The wildflowers were pretty and I will attach a few picture of them to the blog later. Jami and I were cruising for the first little bit. It really has a pretty good incline all the way up but we didn't notice it going up. The trail was pretty good but covered in loose rocks. In this first picture we had hiked about a 1.5 miles and were still feeling good.

This would be considered good trail. The arrow points to where we ended up. Any picture we show you can not describe how steep this hike was. Jami does not call it a hike she said we went rock climbing. She was right about certain parts. I found it interesting that the description said that you can hike up to siphon draw before it gets difficult but nowhere on the trail does it tell you that you have made it to the draw and you are begining the flatiron part of the trail. The same problem occured when Marlo told us that there is this really hard part were most of the student councel kids didn't go up and they stopped. We didn't realize we had passed this really hard part until we had already climbed up the mountain. Jami did really good but I could tell her legs were getting really tired. The last half mile of distance is basically straight up. It was pretty funny. When we took this first picture we were discussing how we should do this hike once a year. About another half mile up the trail Jami said maybe every five years. At the top she said I have done it once and I will never do it again! I can't blame her. The only reason I think she made it was because I bribed her that we would get pizza after we were done. It really was beautiful at the top. Jami got nervous whenever I was even within 15 feet of the edge. Our sandwiches were delicious. Going down is where we started having some problems. Jami's legs were jello and she had to sit to step down on most of the rocks. If you have done this hike you realize that this would take a really long time. She kept marching along and did great. We met some really nice people on this hike. I wasn't sure if Jami would ever go with me anywhere again by the time we were done but once we got some pizza and gatorade in her, her mood drastically improved. I will try to attach more pictures later when blogger is working a little better.