I recently completed a hike from Catalina State Park to the summit of Mount Lemmon, an exhausting trek of 14 miles with 7000′ of elevation gained. Two appropriate (and not mutually exclusive) responses are:

  • “Wow, that’s impressive.”
  • “What made you do that?”

I’ll try to explain.

On Mount Lemmon. We started from a park in the flat area behind the rocky peaks.

My college course in Mathematical Modeling studied “arms races”, and why they are both inevitable and unwinnable. I won’t bore you with the details (because I don’t remember them anyway), but trust me that the reasoning is sound. When one country increases its capability, rivals must respond in kind or risk destruction.

Many rivalries have less dire consequences, such as “keeping up with the Joneses”. When your neighbor has a nicer car or better landscaping, your social standing suffers slightly. How much that matters to you is your choice, but you can opt out at any time.

And of course, physical fitness can be a competition if you choose to make it one. “You’re doing that hike? I want to do it too.” Which is how I ended up doing something truly enormous with my friend Zak, even though he is much bigger, stronger, and above all, younger than I am. (Also, he’s not afraid of bears.) Zak wanted to do an all-day hike that would test even his abilities. He came up with a literal marathon: 26.2 miles climbing a large mountain, and then returning again. He estimated that it would take him 14 hours, which meant that I would need even longer.

So I said no. I’m not stupid.

We started in the dark. This is Catalina State Park, just before sunrise.

Well, actually I am kind of stupid. It’s possible to drive to the summit of Mount Lemmon, so I agreed to do the still quite challenging half-marathon, and have someone drive me down. Zak arranged for a friend to be at the top to aid the full-marathoners, handing out snacks, refilling water, adding or subtracting extra clothing that they did or didn’t need, and driving them down if they decided that the full marathon was not in the cards.

The date was set, a Saturday. Zak and 3 similarly young and fit adventurers (Mia, Helen and Brandon) were going to do the full up-and-down hike, while Kami, Suzan and I were doing the half. (Kami accompanied us the day we needed Search and Rescue, but she has since apparently forgiven me somewhat.)

As the date approached, Saturday’s weather was unpromising. The people in my group were all able to reschedule to Friday, so we did that. Zak’s crew couldn’t change their date, so we ended up with our events on different days.

I’ll skip the blow-by-blow of the trail, and instead just give you some photo highlights.

Upper Romero Pools.
Campsite in Romero Canyon. A lot of what looked like mountain lion scat here.
At Romero Pass. I’ve climbed a few of the peaks visible from here.
Suzan, Larry and Kami looking proud, and happy that we’re done.
My phone clocked the elevation gain above 7000′. I’m going with that one. It felt like 7000.

The full marathoners all did better than Zak’s target time. Although it did rain on Zak’s group, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. We followed and cheered them on via Facebook messenger. They got the most epic picture.

Brandon, Zak, Helen, Mia. Note Zak’s “lemon”-colored tank.

Will I keep trying to hang with people who do things like this? Yes, probably. As I said, I am kind of stupid. We’re already trying to figure out the next one…