Humphreys Peak

May 14, 2026 / 12,633’

RT STATS: TOTAL TIME - 7 HR & 56 MIN, 10.65 MILES, AND 3,484’ ELEVATION GAIN

TIME STATS: 3 HR & 47 MIN TO SUMMIT, 23 MIN AT SUMMIT, 3 HR & 56 MIN BACK TO TH

RATING (HOW MUCH I LIKED THE HIKE): 7/10

Yay! This was my first trip out west with my dad since the September 2022 California and Mt. Whitney trip! This is also my first time writing on my website since then :) Why had I not done any hiking trips in almost 4 years? I got into road cycling in the spring of 2023 and did that for a couple years, so that effectively was my main athletic sport. I started getting back into running in July 2025 and then hiking again in April 2026. I told my dad I wanted to go on a couple fun hiking trips again, but with the condition that the trips this year have to be in between my school semesters. I started my master’s degree in Analytics from Georgia Tech while continuing to work full-time in January 2025. It is very time consuming, let alone the mental effort needed, and I consistently have been spending 20-25+ hours of course work on top of my full-time in-office engineering job. My summer semester started on May 18th, so that gave a couple weeks of time to go on a trip! Arizona was a new state for me to visit. Why did we choose Arizona? Middle of May still has a lot of snow/ice at the usual high altitude peaks in Colorado. Also (in my other post), we were going to the Grand Canyon as well! The Grand Canyon North Rim opened back up on May 15th and my class for the summer started on May 18th, so, thankfully the timing worked out perfectly for me!

I flew out of Greenville GSP on Wednesday, May 13th around 1 pm. I got to the airport way too early but I didn’t want to miss my flight! My connection flight was to Nashville BNA where I met up with my dad who was flying from Charleston. From there, our next flight was Nashville to Phoenix! There is a 3 hour time difference during this time of the year between South Carolina and Arizona, so, even though we landed in Phoenix around 4:30pm, it felt like 7:30pm! From there, we got the rental car and started to head up to Flagstaff where we would be spending the first night of the four night trip. It was so neat seeing Phoenix for the first time. It was completely flat and it was so exciting to me to see signs that said “Los Angeles” on the interstate—it feels like a different world out west and was amusing seeing things that you don’t ever see in South Carolina or on the east coast. In Phoenix, we stopped at an Italian restaurant called Anzio’s! It was pretty good—I got the lasagna (typical me). After that, we headed up to Flagstaff. The drive was maybe 2.5 hours (excluding dinner) from the airport to the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Flagstaff.

Since Humphreys Peak was all our plan really was on Thursday, we didn’t see to start super early (like some of the hikes I’ve done before or like Grand Canyon R2R lol). I woke up a little after 5am. We had to wait for the Walmart to open at 6am and for the hotel breakfast to begin at 6:30am. We got to Walmart just after it opened and got some snacks (Haribo gummy bears were all I ended up eating on the hike lol) and a pair of hiking poles for me (which I did not end up using once on either Humphreys Peak or R2R). We then got back to the hotel and ate breakfast. I had some of the egg white bites, oatmeal, greek yogurt, and cheerios…it was quite the variety compared to my normal breakfast of overnight oats :). Soon after this, we left for the Humphreys Peak trailhead. I had somewhat lost my aviators and we were heading back to Walmart so I could buy a new pair of sunglasses. Thankfully, I found my aviators in the one spot that I must’ve not looked at: between the passenger seat and the center console far down. It was only a few minutes total detour, so we were back on the way to Humphreys Peak.

There was a lot of traffic coming into Flagstaff from the North—the one-lane, main road up before turning onto North Snow Bowl Road to the trailhead. There really wasn’t any traffic leaving Flagstaff so that was nice. It was nice being at the trailhead so quickly! We arrived at the trailhead a little after 8am. The trailhead is located at the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort; however, at this time of the year, there is obviously no more skiing for the season. There were a few other cars in the parking lot. After getting ready and our backpacks packed, we started the hike at 8:26am.

The hike begins by walking through a open grass space (on a trail of course) for about a quarter of a mile before entering into the wooded trail area. The trail was fairly nice to hike on in my opinion. There were a few downed trees that you had to get over, but other than that, it was fairly simple. The elevation gain for the first 2-3 miles I thought was fairly gradual. It was of course noticeable that we were ascending but felt easy. There was minimal snow on/around the trail, but it was no issue.

Once we got above around 11,000’ is when the trail got noticeably steeper. I was wondering when we were going to start gaining more elevation as I was looking at my watch and calculating the distance to the summit and elevation gain still needed in my head. Side note: I bought a Garmin Forerunner 970 in March of this year as I want to get into trail running and back into hiking and I love this watch for hiking! I get to see a elevation that I am currently at, the total elevation gain, the total elevation loss, and a detailed map/compass that is a nice reassurance to have. Anyways, I don’t know if the X picture below shows it well, but this is the portion where it started getting steeper and looser.

2 hours and 27 minutes/4.21 miles after starting the hike, we got to the saddle. My watch recorded the saddle as 11,792’. Therefore, from the saddle to the summit, it was approximately another 850’ elevation gain. I will say that the remaining portion of the Humphreys Peak hike did surprise me (in a good way!) in terms of the terrain. From the saddle onwards to the summit, there were definitely portions of simple trail, but then there were some elements of hiking up talus/scree and some lower-level route finding. There were occasional wooden posts that served as general guides to “a” route (I say “a” route because, as I know well, there are oftentimes multiple different lines (all of different difficulty) that you can seemingly take to get to the same location. I enjoy that about route-finding on hikes and climbs—it adds to the interest. Above the saddle is when it started to get fairly windy, so I put back on my Northface and my warmer gloves. I am very thankful I had these.

3 hours and 47 minutes/5.36 miles later, we made it to the summit of Humphreys Peak. It was so neat and exciting to be back on top of a mountain again. We were the only people on the summit—this is always nice! We took some pictures and stayed on the summit for about 23 minutes before heading back down.

You always need to be careful on mountains, even seemingly “easy” mountains, so it was important to continue paying attention when descending the loose scree and talus. This was literally my first time since White Mountain Peak (September 3, 2022) hiking on talus, but it felt completely natural as I have done it so much previously before my hiking hiatus and therefore was no issue. There was one spot where I could’ve taken a better initial path down the talus, but I was able to move back over to what it appeared to best “trail”. Note: even though I use the word “trail”, this is not a maintained trail above the saddle in the talus.

We got back down to the saddle at the 5 hour and 23 minute mark. I didn’t take many pictures on the descent after this point. We finished a little bit later than I had expected, but just under 8 hours after beginning the hike, we were back at the trailhead!

We soon left the trailhead and drove up to Tusayan! The next day (Friday) would be a “rest” day before hiking Grand Canyon South Rim to North Rim on that Saturday. We got to the Tusayan hotel around 6pm and then went to dinner after. If you have been to Tusayan before, you know that it truly is a TINY town and there are not many food options. We went to this Mexican restaurant called Plaza Bonita Restaurant. It was okay! Ok, so on to my next post, I write about Friday and Grand Canyon there!!!