Call Me Starla: Elephant's Head

On February 4th I set off with Candice, Donnie, and Tyler to conquer "Elephant's Head". I can see EH every time I look out my back window, and I have been yearning to hike it for a long time. We had planned a trip last year but when I became pregnant with Little Miss Farrah I was too sick to make it so we cancelled.

Candice, Don and I drove part way to the trail where we met Tyler. We all hopped into his truck since the road we had to travel down to reach the trail supposedly required a high clearance vehicle. There are two ways to get to/ hike this trail. We for some strange reason chose the longer and harder way to get there and the longer trail to hike. That was our first mistake! We soon realized it was a good thing we had met him. It was obvious we wouldn't have survived this crazy road in my car.

Tyler was just getting off work after an over night shift. That made for some very fun conversation given his sleep deprived state. I won't go into specifics but there was a lot of talk about hot girls, Brazilian bootie work outs, and Tyler's marriage prospects. If you were there you know how it went, and if you weren't it's better not too:) I'll leave it at that!

After awhile it seemed like we'd been driving for hours. The road was getting increasingly difficult and we figured we were as close as we could get by truck.

Here we are ready to set off with the Elephant's Head in the background.

Everything started off great. Tyler was telling us all about his Border Patrol adventures and we were making good time. Plus we were planning our next GC trip which is always a delight as you know!

We knew we were looking for a less used trail that would branch off of the one we were currently on. We came to what we though was the trailhead and began to descend into one of the two drainages that separated us from EH. This is where it all went wrong. I like to call this photo "the beginning of the end of my legs"… you'll see why soon.

After this we lost the trail and it took a LONG time to find it again. We knew where to go because the goal was in sight, but getting to it was another story. We did some super intense bush whacking, which left us scratched up, hot, and frustrated. Tyler and I also got separated from Candice and Don. It took and hour or two of this before we finally reconnected with them and the trail. Trying to reach the base of the peak on the left hand side required us to cross two deep drainages and all through the most prickly and spiky terrain you can imagine. True "desert brush"

Tyler and I right before we got separated from the others. Can you see us? We are very tiny!

Candice Fighting her way through the brush.

We finally found the trail along with Candice & Donnie. Can you see him waving to us from the top of the ridge?

On the way back we were able to find the point where we got off course. If there is ever a next time we will be prepared. I'm not sure any of were thinking fondly of a second hike on this mountain at this point though! We finally got out of the brush and reached the second part of the hike. This was more of a scramble up the boulders along the elephant's "trunk".

At this point I knew I wasn't going to make it back in the amount of time I had told my baby sitter I would. Tyler had also gone into the hike thinking it would be a couple of hours and he could get home and sleep. I made some quick phone calls from the top of the hill where I finally had reception, and Tyler soldiered on through his sleepiness. I might add that his comments only got more entertaining the longer time went on:) After all this was worked out we carried on.

We finally made it to the top! It was actually a pretty fun little scramble.

We made some friends up there who gave us some fruit and chocolate that tasted delicious after our efforts. We didn't get a photo of them, but they kindly offered to take one of us all together.