June at Home

June Weather

Many areas in the western US don’t experience their hottest and driest summer weather until July or August. They can still recieve Pacific-generated storms and expereince cold and wet weather well into June. But Arizona is distinctly not part of this regime. Instead, we have a reverse summer. Winter actively feels like spring throughout it’s entire duration, and spring fades abruptly to summer in May, which generally brings the first hot weather and no precipitation (of course there are exceptions). 

By the time June rolls around, rain is not expected in the slightest, nights are warm, and every day is hot. In Flagstaff, that means the high 80s and low 90s. Humidity is low and the sun is intense. Streams and reservoirs are as dry as they get, waiting to be revitalized by the monsoon. Monsoonal rain patterns hit Arizona in July, are most active in August, and can persist into September. This is a glorious time of year where the intense heat of the sun is usually canceled around noon by huge clouds, which eventually produce thunderstorms. The intense monsoons in Flagstaff mirror and rival those of the Colorado mountains, meaning that our late-summer weather is quite interesting, and less hot. So, June is the hottest and driest month.

My history with June

I grew up in Phoenix, and as someone who loves to be outside I always despised summer. Then, I moved to Flagstaff, expecting my relationship with summer to be immediately healed. Monsoon season was indeed exciting and pleasant, but I was generally disappointed by how hot summers still felt in Flagstaff. With the intense sunshine and lack of surface water, temperatures approaching 90 are far too hot for many recreation options. Summer felt more like surviving than thriving. Throughout college, I became surprisingly more deeply ingrained in my hatred of summer - especially June.

Then I finished college and began being presented with opportunities to spend large periods of time outside of Flagstaff for summer. I spent 2019 and 2020 summers doing forestry work in the San Juan mountains of Colorado. I spent 2021 and 2023 working as a backpacking guide in the mountains of western Wyoming. These summers were incredible, some of the best times of my entire life, and totally changed my outlook. They showed me what summer is meant to be - long days, lots of water for swimming and paddling, and high elevations with genuinely cool temperatures. I now love summer! As long as it’s done right.

In 2022 I took a break from “away guiding” and stayed in Flagstaff for summer. That June was one of my worst months ever! I got terrible G.I. sicknesses on the first day of both my work trips, two weeks apart. In between those, our backpacking trip to Colorado got derailed by a forecast the group wasn’t fond of. We went to the Uintas instead, got snowed on, and bailed. Then monsoonal weather began in Flagstaff ahead of normal, bringing more but less intense rain than normal, making July and August lovely.

June 2024

Even in my previous “away summers” I generally spent June at home. And they were typical Junes - hot, dry, with not a lot of exciting time outdoors. 2024 was shaping up to be another round of the same, but I was eager to try a different strategy. This year, I would make seeking shade and water my ultimate priority. I had some new ideas for how to achieve this. We just moved to the east side of Mount Elden, which has a great deal of interesting routes for feet and bikes, and produces a lot of evening shade. I also had a growing list of non-technical canyons I wanted to hike through which were likely to have swimming holes! So, how did it go?

Well, the weather was generally nothing special. There was a notable exception - thunderstorms from tropical storm Alberto came on the 22nd and stayed until the 26th (really, this doesn’t happen much!). But otherwise, most of our days were in the high 80s. It was sunny, dry, dusty, and sometimes windy. Pretty typical.

Biking

In recent years, the Coconino National Forest has collaborated with many local groups (including the City of Flagstaff, biking nonprofits, and conservation corps) to establish a great network of purpose-built bike trails on Mount Elden and the accompanying “Dry Lake Hills”. This area (referred to as the MEDL) has always been the capital of summertime mountain biking in Arizona, but our trail network was actually quite lacking. All the “easy” trails were just walking routes that happened to be bikeable, and all the steep trails were unsanctioned, loose, and generally terrifying for average riders like me.

One of the first trails to be built as part of the new age was Big Bang - a great moderate trail with 1500 ft of relief. I’ve climbed Big Bang but have a better time taking easier routes up and descending it. I did this on June 1st with Nick and Daniel. The month was off to a great start!

My other rides in June all had a common objective: Full Sail. Full Sail was the newest release of the project, having just been announced in late May. It’s not a hard trail, but it’s a trail unlike anything Flagstaff has ever seen. It descends 1000ft in three miles, but is almost completely smooth. It has banked corners, friendly gap jumps, and a few optional drops - allowing riders to average well above 10mph. My favorite way to ride Full Sail has been to pedal my mountain bike to work in the morning, then after work climb to the top, descend, and take Little Elden home. Little Elden drops another 1000ft but over a more moderate six miles and has a great variety of super fast flow and moderately technical boulder garden. This makes for a 20 mile day and a very satisfied soul!

Running

Leading up to summer, 2024 had already been my best running year in a long time. My increasing awareness that trail running is great training for backpacking, super fun, and doable most of the year led me to pick it up in late winter. The location of my new home and work definitely helped - both are near trails that are rocky enough to be interesting but runnable.

As spring faded, my main interest in running was being able to quickly access a scramble that leads to the summit of Elden and run down. Called the “Elden slabs”, this route is something I had done in the past, but was excited to do a lot more frequently. It’s not entirely true to say that I moved here for the slabs, but I definitely moved here for Elden in general, and the slabs were a big portion of that excitement. It’s doable as a 5 mile loop from my door, has fun class 3 movement, gains 2300ft and then descends the same amount on a steep, technical trail. Best of all, this route has amazing views and evening shade! I learned how to time departure from home so that the entire climb would be shaded but I could still make it down without a light.

On a May morning on the slabs, I was introduced to some new neighbors, Nathan and Maddie. They are both great runners and after living here for over two years their excitement about Elden still exceeded mine! Nathan was telling me about a bunch of adventurous alternative routes he had done on Elden which got me super stoked. I thought, “wow, I need to convince this guy to show me the lines on these!”.

The next week we went out on a route I was super excited about, the “East slabs”. I had been wanting to explore this area because it’s the most striking feature visible from our house and looked like it might have some fun movement if one could brave the bushwhacking to get there. Well, Nathan and Maddie showed me that there is a pretty clean line through the forest! The scrambling was not as pure as the main slab, but it was still super fun.

Although it wasn’t mandatory, we went all the way to the true summit because Maddie was interested in “racing” the trail descent segment. As someone new to Strava this was foreign to me, but I do love running fast down technical trail, so I decided to try and keep up. I was able to keep up, barely, and we descended the 1800ft in 17 minutes! That was the most intense sustained effort I had maybe ever done. My legs and mental game felt really solid the whole time, but my cardio was pushed to the limit. I was blown away that I was able to do it, but pretty fatigued.

The next week, I got to go out again with Nathan, Maddie, and an older friend Dylan, to climb up “Middle Elden Canyon”. I was once again super stoked to go check out this route, because I had done it over five years ago as a contrived canyoneering trip with Daniel and my best friend from college, Kevin. It only had one rappel and I was eager to see how the rappel could be bypassed to make travel through the canyon a less involved experience. This one had a bit of a longer running approach and I was pleased by how good I felt. The climb up had super fun scrambling and I was stoked to get back into a polished drainage that had been seared in my memory. We topped out and Maddie wanted to race the descent again. I was too tired to do that again, having had a big week already, but she ended up shaving another minute off of her time. The previous descent had been my limit, but pretty reasonable for her.

I also did some smaller (<45min) runs throughout June, many of them with Joelle. I’ve always known that it’s a great, simple way to get out for a little exercise, but having endless trail access one minute from our house has made it a lot easier.

Snow play

Our season total snowfall was mellow compared to 2023, but it was still on the high side of average and a lot of it came rather late. So for June of this year, a substantial snowpack was held in the Kachina Peaks. On the 2nd, we decided to go up Humphreys and see how much there was. I brought two pairs of running shoes that I was eager to test with my new Leopard strap-on crampons. There was a lot of snow on the upper trail, but it was all well packed and eventually we made it to the summit. I jogged down to gain extra time and glissaded all the way to the bottom of the cirque, then used my crampons to climb back up. It was a fun time!

Later, on the third weekend of June we joined some friends for a little party campout on the north side of the peaks, and went up Abineau the next day. Daniel and Ben brought skis, but I opted to just bring my shoes, axe, and crampons to play with. I enjoyed climbing the long avalanche gully, staying on good snow all the way to the top. We found perfect corn ski/glissade conditions up high, and then traversed into the bowl for the runout, We lapped a couple sections and totaled about 2000ft of sliding.

I was really glad to get these days on snow in, because I had been thinking a lot about running shoe/crampon compatability for PNW adventures. It was useful and very fun!

Canyon hiking

I always knew that the real gems of June in Arizona were wet canyons, but after giving up canyoneering in 2022 I was sad to lose that as an option. But in the time since, I had realized that there were actually an amazing amount of non-technical hiking adventures to be done. Basically, all the most major drainages that flow off the Mogollon Rim could be through-hiked without any special gear. We had previously done a top-down hike of the West Fork of Oak, but now I had a few more on my list.

The first of these was Woods Canyon. At about 15 miles (10 of which would be boulder hopping) I knew it would make for a long day and wanted some capable partners. Dylan and my new friend Matt ended up being great fits. The streambed of Woods was choked with medium-sized basalt boulders for pretty much its entire length. Once we got to the Coconino narrows things got interesting with a long mandatory swim. This had been described in the guidebook as the coldest pool in Arizona (literally, he called it the “pool of liquid ice”), so I brought my drysuit. The other guys brought no suits, and ended up doing just fine. After that the canyon opened up into a paradise of red-rock pools which were much warmer and provided some jumping opportunities. It was amazing! Usually the exit hike could be a ridiculous slog in June at about 9 miles of full sun and potential for 105 degree temps. But we were lucky this day with a high of 95, and even luckier with the periodic pools of water that lasted all the way to the end! Hiking with wet clothes is such an amazing way to stay comfortable in heat. This was an awesome day trip for early June and I’m so glad I got to do it.

The fourth weekend of June was the last one I had free in Arizona for a while, and Joelle and I really wanted to plan an overnight to West Clear Creek. I worried that an out-and-back trip would result in low motivation to go more than a few miles, and I really wanted to find an ideal route. But the roads around WCC are super rugged, many of them undriveable in my Rav4, so any shuttled trip seemed terribly contrived. I really wanted to make a loop by walking forest roads but the way the ridgelines are would’ve made those roadwalks like 12 miles. Then I found the ideal option. Willow Valley is the primary fork of WCC, so it really serves as the very beginning. The canyon also makes a sharp turn here so it was possible to hike six miles of canyon and only roadwalk four. Perfect! We ended up gathering a big group of Joelle, Daniel, Amy, Andy, and Tia. Luckily we could all fit in Andy’s truck which made the 1.5 hour drive feel very efficient.

We dropped into Willow Valley just above where the Kaibab limestone begins to form vertical walls. Immediately we were rewarded with an awesome limestone bridge spanning a tributary canyon! A mile of boulder hopping brought us to the Coconino narrows, which were stunning as usual and served up 3 mandatory swims. Luckily the water temp was borderline comfortable and we all had a great time jumping into the pools. Daniel and I even found a nice 20ft jump! More dry boulder hopping brought us to the beginning of the perennial spring flow, which produced nice clear pools, some of which were amazingly huge! Usually we were forced to choose between swimming or bushwacking, walking on algae-covered boulders in the stream, or bushwacking. This made for slow travel, but we all had a great time. Just when we were beginning to think we might not make it to the Clover confluence, we stumbled upon an absolutely phenomenal campsite, but two people were already there. We were getting worried because we had seen literally zero sleepable ground so far, but hope was restored. Soon, we found a mediocre but useable campsite and decided to use it because storms were threatening. Right after we setup our tents the rain started and ended up continuing for five hours! 

The next day we had a short walk to the Maxwell trail, but we enjoyed our remaining time by swimming and relaxing in the sun. Maxwell was a steep and sunny but short climb, getting us to the rim quickly. Then we walked the road back and drove to get mexican food for dinner! A really nice weekend!

Despite all the fun I had running and biking this month, these canyon hikes were really my biggest highlights. I think its because they feel like true adventure - they take longer to complete, and the terrain is so wild and raw. Swimming is a huge perk too! My list of ideas for next year has already grown significantly.

Celebration

June first was a Saturday, so we got five weekends this month. Maybe that’s why it was so good! The fifth weekend of June would be my last weekend in Flagstaff until late September, so we decided to finally plan our housewarming party. We had been intending to have one for a long time, and it was never convenient, but we really wanted to do it. We had put a lot of work into our home and thought it would be fun to gather a large group of people who generally didn’t know each other to hang out. Joelle invited most people, and I then invited a bunch more, which brought our total to an accidental 60! Luckily only like 25 showed up, which was the perfect size for our home. My parents came, as well as my brother Miles, sister Holly, and both of their partners, all from Phoenix. So they got to meet a lot of our friends, which was cool. After the party a lot of us went to seen a Tow'rs concert at the Orpheum. We’ve loved the music of Kyle and Gretta for many years and are lucky enough to be able to call the friends (I think) thanks to our time at the Commons. It was cool to share the experience with so many people!

Conclusion

This year’s June was totally awesome, definitely my favorite one that I’ve ever spent in Arizona. It probably even rivaled June 2021, of which we spent half in Wyoming! Some aspects of the conditions were special, but mostly I think I was able to enjoy it because of a shift in strategy. I think I could enjoy any June just as much by applying the same mindset going forward. Learning to have a good time in Arizona during what I once thought was the worst month of the year really reinforced our decision to commit to living here by buying the townhouse. I still look forward to escaping Arizona summer for many years to come, but it's nice to know that I can make the best of it if I have to!