Poop-Out-Point! (22 Aug 2021)

This, ninth week into my journey to hike the Grand Canyon in October 2022 we for the third time attacked the Mystic Canyon Trail in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The Mystic Canyon/Upper Monroe Trail is a 9.2-mile trail. The first ~

1.4 miles of this trail is very steep and very hard the elevation change is 1,000 ft. At the top of this first part of the trail is a point and marker aptly named “Poop-Out-Point”. This time we made it to Poop-Out-Point! So, I am feeling pretty good about that accomplishment. After reaching Poop-Out-Point, our goal for this hike, we decided to continue on and went about another .6 miles to the trailhead and marker leading up to “Punk-Out-Point” we went the easier trail off to the left and continued on for a bit, before stopping for a little rest, snack and water, before turning back and headed down. It was a nice overcast day for a hike and cool for this time of year. Punk-Out-Point will be our objective for next week and at some point, we plan to hike the entire 9.2 miles. This is a good local trail to train on in preparation for our Grand Canyon hike next October.

I did not forget to activate my “All Trails” app and altimeter so I was able to track our progress we started at 1,249 ft elevation and reached 2,126 ft elevation in about one hour. The total trip, including our rest break took about 2 hours.

On this trip I felt little fatigue or muscle soreness either while hiking or afterwards. So my muscle building exercises are beginning to take shape.