False Summits

It was 62 degrees and pitch black outside when we piled into the rented jeep this morning.

4:30 AM

There was plenty of time to catch the sunrise from the peak of Camelback Mountain near Phoenix.

I'd checked our route ahead of time on the Alltrails app, but only as far as the location of the trailhead and the distance.

I did not check the elevation.

Turns out, it was 1,500 feet over just 1.3 miles.

I'll save you the math; it's pretty damn steep.

As in crawling up portions of it with both hands and feet.

This trail is right in the middle of Phoenix and super crowded, so there were a lot of other hikers around us, many of them huffing and puffing due to the rapid elevation gain.

"We're almost at the top," I heard some of them say early on, but we'd not been on the trail nearly long enough to be approaching the top.

Instead, we were getting close to "false summits."

Per Wikipedia, "In mountaineering, a false peak or false summit is a peak that appears to be the pinnacle of the mountain but upon reaching, it turns out the summit is higher. False peaks can have significant and discouraging effects on climbers' psychological states by inducing feelings of lost hope or even failure."

From years of backpacking before the advent of portable GPS, I know these well; trails in the Appachalian mountains are full of them.

On long days, whenever you turn a switchback, you think you're at the top when you often have miles to go.

On those days, to say it's discouraging is to put it very lightly.

When we started, people were already coming down the trail. Most of them had gotten there earlier than us, hit the peak, and were returning to the parking lot.

But at least one I saw had turned around after reaching another false summit.

Expecting to be at the top but not yet making it, she gave up.

Turned around.

Went back home when she was so damn close.

I hated to see that, but I've been there myself.

So, I know how disappointing it is to put in 95% of the effort only to miss 100% of the reward.