picacho peak

so one of the things the girls were most excited to do in az was climb a mountain. they've never had a lot of mountain climbing experience, as the average rise anywhere near dallas is best described as a "little hill," but i thought we found a pretty good one for their first mountain. it was also fun to see my aunt and her family again, we don't see them nearly often enough since we moved away from az!

picacho peak:

this is the view from the highway, we hiked up to the little saddle on the right-hand side of the peak there
the hike officially continues up to the peak, which paul and i did about 6 years ago, but it would have been really hard for the kids (especially since we forgot the baby-carrier), and impossible for our cousins' dog.



first we did a little quick-hike to this cute little cave for the kids to play in



the boys got a little ahead of us :)



i was really impressed with afton and rayna both, they both hiked all the way up with only the occasional assistance, and afton refused more than a couple hands' up, she really wanted to do it all herself! rayna stayed relatively close to me, but i was still impressed (amazed) that she did so well!



pause for a cousin picture. this is at the base of the big rock, just before the last climb to the saddle, if you look in the first picture, you can see a large tan rock face just under the saddle, pretty cool, huh?!

   

enjoying the view and some snacks at the saddle. they climbed over 900 verticle feet, and i think it was just over a mile, each way laterally.

 

our climbing buddies! thanks so much for coming with us, we had a blast, and we appreciate your help and encouragement too!



the view from the top... and you can see our car, especially if you click on the picture to make it big, we've got the tan spot on the top of that loop :) it was also a great climb for watching trains go by, afton gave up counting train cars pretty fast, but i think we saw 12 seperate trains that day!



malachi really wanted to come down teh mountain by himself... he didn't really believe me that he was too little, and got very frustrated with me when i tried to help him, but rayna needed to use the bathroom, so we were in a little bit of a hurry
(he and i ended up being last down anyways)



it was pretty cool to see how far up we'd gone when we got to the playarea at the base of the mountain too. that's our saddle the sun's peaking through



and rayna loved this cactus the best, she said it looked like a man :) two eyes, two arms. (sorry i missed the front view, we were driving past when she pointed it out)