Blind Musician, Adventurer, and Martial Arts Instructor
Well… I made it! The final number of miles hiked on the AZT was 782. It took me a bit longer than we had originally planned with a total of 57 days from start to finish. The 45 days of actual hiking gave us an average of 17 miles a day. Thanks to the help […]
Quick Video update from Blind Hiker Mike Armstrong after Day 2 on the Arizona Trail.
Well, we are heading out for the Arizona Trail Trek this Friday April 1st. No, this is not an April’s Fools Joke. April 2nd is our first day on the trail. This is going to be an amazing experience! We have trained hard and I believe we are ready. I would like to put out […]
Just wanted to make a quick post to remind everyone to keep an eye here on our blog and on Facebook as we ramp up for our hike across the Arizona Trail. While we are hiking the trail we will be making blog posts as well as facebook posts. So keep an eye out and […]
I just wanted to take a minute and thank everyone who supported Team Armstrong on Saturday by coming out to “Blind and Unplugged” with your help we raised over $1,000 that night. While this is a great start we have a long way to go before we raise our goal of $43,000 for the Foundation […]
Just yesterday Sensei Mike and I went on a quick little 5 mile training hike in the McDowell mountains to stretch out our legs and break in our newly donated Merrells at the same time (we love these boots!). As we were hiking we also came to the realization that we are approaching 2011 very […]
As the Arizona Trail hike draws closer Team Armstrong has been stepping up our efforts to prepare for the 800 mile trek across Arizona. We created a Training Hike schedule for the rest of the year (Schedule) and just last weekend we hiked the Arizona trail in Flagstaff. It was a great hike but also […]
I participated in another amazing hike on October 9th and 10th of 2010. This time it was a Rim to Rim to Rim hike across the Grand Canyon. This hike-a-thon was to benefit the Foundation for Blind Children. This forty-eight mile trek was a truly incredible experience, challenging my mind, body and will to succeed.
After our Kilimanjaro climb in 2009 everyone was asking, “What’s next?” There were several ideas suggested like; swimming to Alcatraz, climbing another of the seven summits, hiking the Arizona Trail, climbing Mount Whitney and several of us mentioned the Grand Canyon. After much deliberation it was decided that the next FBC hike-a-thon would be a rim to rim trek from the North Rim to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. This made the most sense because we have one of the world’s seven natural wonders right here in our home state. The date was set for 10/10/10.
Now are you wondering about that extra rim to rim I mentioned earlier? Well my team is in training for an eight hundred mile hike in April of 2011. The hike will run from the Mexico border to the Utah border on The Arizona Trail. We felt that hiking that extra twenty-four miles would give us a good idea of what to expect from our upcoming forty day trek across Arizona. We were not disappointed.
Team Armstrong started the day at about 7AM and found Mt. Humpreys to have quite a bit of snow on it, making it difficult to find the trail. We reached the summit (12,500 ft) after approximately 7 hours of hiking, and after taking a few shortcuts finished the hike at about 7pm; making it a 12 hour day. We are sore and tired but it was a great hike, the snow made it much more technical than usual.