The view from the side of Granite Mountain
While most couples would enjoy a nice dinner and possibly a movie on Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend and I decided to go for a hike. A few of my friends thought the idea was kind of weird, but when you think about it, engineering students like me and my boyfriend are hardly typical.
Last weekend provided the first real opportunity to go hiking. I’ve been kept from hiking every other weekend this semester by inclement weather or newspaper production (as a section editor on the paper, I basically devote every other weekend to designing layout for our bimonthly paper).
Although I did have production on that weekend, we finished just after noon on Sunday and by 2:00 Sunday afternoon my boyfriend and I were standing at the beginning of the Metate Trailhead that leads up Granite Mountain.
Base of the trail
Granite Mountain is a majestic granite formation that is visible from most of campus, and the site of several close, beautiful hiking trails.
We only had about four hours until the parking lot would be closed at 6:00pm, so we set out to travel as far as we could up the mountain before turning back in two hours.
The weather was perfect. The sky was nearly cloudless, the breeze light, and the temperature a mild 50 degrees. We couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Granite mountain can be seen through the trees
The melting snow from this winter's storms created beautiful trickling streams around the mountain
The landscape was absolutely beautiful. Tall evergreens and smaller, bald deciduous trees lined both sides of the path. We marched along at a moderate pace, discussing our exciting hopes and plans for the future and exchanging childhood anecdotes.
View during the hike
We weren’t the only ones who had decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather on Valentine’s Day. Many other couples greeted us, smiling as we passed them.
One of the great things about hiking is that it is nearly impossible to be in a foul mood when you’re far from the stresses of real world life and surrounded by the beauty of nature and good company. Not one of the people that we passed was anything but pleasant, and it just added to the positivity of the trip.
When you are as busy and stressed as an engineering student in their junior or senior year of study, getting away from it all for a few hours on a beautiful hiking trail is nothing but a blessing. The Prescott campus is surrounded by beautiful hiking and climbing spots.
We didn’t quite make it all the way up the mountain, but we plan to return the next chance we have when the weather is beautiful and our weekend isn’t eaten up by production. As we got back into the car we turned to look back at the mountain through the trees and declared, “We’ll be back mountain! You may have conquered us today, but we’ll be back, and next time we’ll make it all the way to the top!”
The view of Granite Mountain as we reached our car
Don’t worry, we are not that crazy…it’s just like I said in the beginning, we’re engineers and therefore, a little quirky.
