Cupcake Mountain sits above almost all the other mountains if you're looking west from Lake Havasu City. It is huge and we were told we should try hiking it! One girl told us there was a little off road driving, but I didn't realize how much. We left around noon on a Sunday after eating at the Red Onion, which is amazing!
We left for the hike and saw that it was about an hour and a half or so, which we knew. Once we got closer to the hike we saw that we had to take a left down a dirt road. We thought, okay maybe 20 minutes or so like this. Well, soon we began to realize it is over 8 miles down a 4 wheel drive road to get there. We were at about 6 miles in and realized there as no way we could make the 5 mile hike and drive back in daylight.
We decided to go home and we went back the following week to conquer the hike. We left Lake Havasu around 10:30am and the 8.5 miles down the dirt road alone takes a full hour. We were prepared though! When you see the trail head, there are a few parking spots at the tower down the road on the right. The hike in is almost a tease because as you climb one mountain you start to see Cupcake and find that you still have so far to go!
The trail begins to open up to a field of cacti also known as chollas (pronounced choya). It was all fun and games until a small part of one of them got stuck to the inside of my left shoe. As I lifted my foot up I heard Aaron yell, but it was too late and it jumped over to my right calf...and oh my gosh did it hurt. I'm glad I wore leggings since they helped to pull it off and then we had to take one needle out of my leg at a time... Then while we were trying to take the cacti off Aaron's shirt he used to take it off my leg, it jumped to his knuckle. Then, he knew it really did hurt.
Once you get through this field, it is all rock climbing after which is pretty strenuous.
It is all worth it at the top!
We enjoyed our snacks and video chatted with some family too. The views are amazing at the top so we soaked it all in. The way back down is killer on the knees!
The way down is nice since you can see all over Lake Havasu rather than the way up where all you can see is how far you still have to go! Round trip, the hike maybe took us 4 hours including hanging out at the top. The hike is hard, but the drive to get to the hike is probably the worst part about it. Driving back felt like it took forever!
I thought it would be a good idea to try and move one of the chollas out of the trail while we were hiking down, and it ended with it being stuck into the top of my middle finger. When we got home, this was still in my finger...
My finger was throbbing! Once we showered up, we celebrated by going to Fiesta Mexicana for dinner. Their Apple Chimichanga was amazing, along with their margaritas!
The following night, we headed out on the razors with Greg and Wendy, and a few other people from the condo. There was a Pyrotechnics show that entire weekend, so we parked up high in the desert to watch the fireworks!
Cupcake Mountain was a hard hike, but totally worth it. Probably will not be doing it again, due to the drive, but it's definitely a challenging hike for those who are interested!
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