Today's Hike: Sunrise Mountain Loop

The weather today was a brisk 58 degrees, cloudy with winds gusting up to 20mph. It rained in the East Valley but here in Peoria it was a nice day for a hike, so I headed over to Sunrise Mountain Loop to give myself the satisfaction of a 2 hour, full-loop excursion.

I wore my heartrate monitor for the first time on a hike just to get a sense of how my body operates and how difficult the hike really is.  If you remember from my informational post about this hike, (Sunrise Mountain Loop) there are three loops making up the whole loop. You can choose to hike in any loop formation and I choose to go with the longest trek I could, and summitted all three hills, all successively taller than the last.

The first hill raised my heartrate to a quick 171, the second hill brought me above 160 for quite a stretch before topping out at 176, then the last hill tipped the high points at 178.   My 2-hour hike ended up averaging a 137 heartrate and burned 961 calories. 

Definitely a good way to end my Thanksgiving over-eating-athon.

Here are some photos from my trek today:



Sad to see that the cairn I photographed in June is gone.  See the cairn: June post  



Trail Map from City of Peoria