Mile 608. It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning after the various evening thunderstorms this week. Tortoise has been eyeing the knoll towering over his new Hurricane office for some time, which he has now learned is called Sullivan Knoll. He decided today would be a good day, not necessarily to climb it, but to go up and down the various residential streets, get in some hills, and see if he could find the trail up. Most of the streets simply end in a fence.
He did find the access and once he did, found it was reasonably within the length of his typical walks. You can see it on the map below after all the pictures from the top and along the way. It is a fine walk, but if you do it, be sure to take good walking sticks. The grades up reach 22% and down are 24%. Mix in small loose rocks on the trail, and you'll want those sticks!
The views from the top are unobstructed in every direction, and worth the effort! Today Tortoise was accompanied by a walking thought by Russell Nelson ...
Cheerio!
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| This is what 22% looks like up close. You can clearly see this path from the highway as you drive past. It doesn't look that steep from that vantage point ... |
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| Clearly the trail is about to get steeper. Tortoise was thankful for the youthful training he got from his father's skiing lessons. Plant your feet sideways and lean into the mountain to keep your footing. One step at a time, Lou managed not to fall coming down. |
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| The gate around the corner from the end of the pavement on Panorama Drive was open. No signs were present, so Lou felt safe proceeding. Hopefully it will be open when you try it too. |
Today's walk was 3.58 miles, done in 1:35:01 hours at an average pace of 26:33 minutes per mile. This route had an average tortoise rating of 1.8, earned by climbing 796 feet in the 1.79 mile uphill portion, an average grade of 8.4%. Average elevation was 3623.
Here are the overall stats so far for 2016:
608.74 miles walked, compared with Lou's goal for this date of 598.73.
42,119 total feet climbed so far in 2016, compared to a year-to-date goal of 36,848. Lou hopes to climb more than the 61,316 feet he climbed in 2015 -- but in less time each day than his 1:07:04 hour per day average in 2015. So far in 2016, Tortoise's walks have averaged 58:04 minutes each.
His average pace so far in 2016 has been 17:56.1 minutes per mile, compared with his 18:25 minute per mile pace in 2015.
Lou has walked 389 consecutive non-Sundays since his 8 missed days May 2-11, 2015. Overall he has walked on 492 of the 501 non-Sundays in 2015-16, a 98.204% consistency rating.
And now for today's walking thought:
"Be we reminded that a perfect body is not required to achieve one's divine destiny. In fact, some of the sweetest spirits are housed in frail or imperfect bodies. Great spiritual strength is often developed by people with physical challenges, precisely because they are so challenged.
"Anyone who studies the workings of the human body has surely 'seen God moving in his majesty and power.' (D&C 88:47) ...
"Yet some people erroneously think that these marvelous physical attributes happened by chance or resulted from a big bang somewhere. Ask yourself, 'Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?' The likelihood is most remote. But if so, it could never heal its own torn pages or reproduce its own newer editions!"
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