Day 9: 23 March, 21.8 miles today, 165.2 miles total, Coronado National Forest
The morning wasn’t nearly as cold as I’d anticipated—in fact the chilly temp had somehow held more or less constant since afternoon the day before. I started shortly after dawn in the hope that I could hit the snow while it was still firm enough to support my weight; it was still cold enough to see my breath, so I left camp wearing my base layer, which is almost always a mistake, especially on a climb. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later found me hiding behind a rock while I peeled my sweaty thermals off my bod and re-tied my hiking shorts with renewed determination. I wanted to get as far I could manage before taking a break, which got me to a nice sittin’ log at the upper campsite before I stopped to gnaw on a clif bar. It was noticeably cooler at 8,000’, but the camp up high was way, way nicer, with fire rings, a large wood cabin, even rocking chairs.
I started down the north slope at 1000, hitting solid snow right away. For the most part it held, but I am not a featherlight human under the best of circumstances, and I postholed repeatedly as I made my down. The thing about punching through snow that has melted and refrozen a few times is that it’s crusty and crunchy, and any hole you make in it is jagged. I can usually post hole once or twice and be fine, but after a while it starts cutting up my shins, so that my leg was a bloody mess by the time I finally got below the snow line.
The changes in ecosystem were drastic as I headed down, from lush pine forest at the peak, to rocky shrub beneath the snow, to desert savanna on the valley floor—sort of the opposite layout of a place like western Washington state, where the mountaintops are barren and valleys are heavily forested. I made it down to a healthy flowing stream for lunch, and then for some fucking reason decided to go 12 more miles.
The afternoon turned into a slog, one of my own pointless design. I saw a man’s penis at one point—a bald, clean shaven fellow with a beer belly under his tight blue tech shirt, he had real power-dad energy. We’d been leap-frogging literally the entire day, me and him, and his friend, and Ghost Sole and a couple of young, fit hikers, so it wasn’t really like he had an excuse not to check whether someone was coming when he produced his dong in preparation to urinate. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, and I admit to staring at it through my mirrored sunglasses for several seconds before he noticed me bopping up the trail and finally angled his body away from me.
The afternoon was exhausting. I tracked over rock-strewn hills for hours, beating back my fatigue without ever seeming to make any forward progress. My feet were pulp with several miles left to go, but I plod on and on until I got to my goal: a sandy wash low in the valley. Once I’d made camp in the dwindling light and consulted the guide, however, I realized that I’d basically forced myself into doing a short day tomorrow, making today’s effort kinda pointless. But whatever, I was finally done. I was completely worn out, looking forward to a hard, deep sleep. I ate a fast, fast dinner, and crawled into my bag.
Day 10: 24 March, 16.8 miles today, 182.0 miles total, Pusch Ridge Wilderness
While camping on Mica Mountain, I’d done everything I could to keep warm at night, and it had proven to be a bit too much. I’d actually been uncomfortably warm, and had opened up my setup a little bit to let in a draft. I’d assumed that the night in the wash would be significantly warmer, since I was so much lower in elevation, so I half-assed my sleeping bag situation. The pounding, throbbing ache in my feet kept me awake for a while, and when I eventually drifted off I was awakened by the cold. I assumed it was my imagination for a long time, before it finally dawned on me that it was actually really cold. I added a couple layers, but never got more than a few minutes of sleep at a time for the rest of the night.
My alarm went off a bit before dawn, but I couldn’t manage to rouse myself. I ran my hand up the wall of my tent, and felt that it was coated in ice—my condensation had frozen overnight. Eventually, as the rising sun took the edge off the chill, I managed to convince myself to get up. I packed my wet gear away, ate breakfast, and was walking back from my morning cat-hole routine when it started raining.
I had two possible goals for the day in mind: one tent site partway up a giant climb up Mount Lemmon, which would leave me 10 miles away from the trio of buildings known as Summerhaven, and another at the top of the climb, which would get me closer, but would likely make for a colder night. Figuring that the nearer site would be more likely given my later start, I decided in any case that I’d play it by ear, and started a long walk up to a pass at the border of the Pusch Ridge Wilderness area.
I had cell service at the pass, so I spread out my wet gear to dry in the now intermittent sun while I had an early lunch and chatted with Sean Meadow, back home in Pennsylvania. It was great to be able to talk for the first time in days, but eventually i had everything dried up and packed away, and I had to get walking again. Leaving the pass, I entered the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, a massive mountainous canyon that looked transplanted straight from the Colorado Rockies—with a smattering of saguaro sprinkled on the slopes for good measure. The trail became steep, rocky, and hard to follow. It was like I was back on the CDT.
The climb, once it started, was hard. The trail wended its way up a steep drainage, crossing the stream at its heart over and over and over and over. I was moving slow, realizing as the sun fell behind one of the rocky ridge lines that I would need to push hard just to make the nearer tent site—but the scenery was spectacular, grand on a scale unlike anything I’d seen on the AZT thus far. Climbing through a canyon is a humbling, awe-inspiring, heart-opening experience…and it’s exhausting as hell. I made it into camp a bit before true sunset, and was surprised to see all the hikers who’d passed me while I was having lunch set up all around. All of them were very fast, and I’d assumed that they would head for the higher camp. Maybe they’d also been worried about the cold at the higher elevation, as they must have gotten to this site hours before I did. I bundled up as well as I could, and luxuriated in being warm, dry, and horizontal.
Day 11: 25 March, 16.7 miles today, 198.7 miles total, Coronado National Forest
After packing up in the predawn gloom, taking care to make as little noise as possible so as not to disturb the other hikers sleeping until a more reasonable hour, I double checked my map to make sure I was heading off in the right direction and started hiking. I did not, as it turned out, head off in the right direction. I did get very lucky in that I happened to check my location at a point where the trail I was on was still running more or less parallel to the trail I was supposed to on—in another couple hundred feet, the two pathways would make 90° and start heading directly away from each other. I was also extremely lucky in that the canyon whose walls I was climbing was still more or less cross-able at that location. The walk down was easy, the stream was narrow, and the far wall, while made of loose soil, held as I climbed up to the AZT. I was out of breath, but no worse for wear.
The climb up Mt. Lemmon as the sun rose behind the mountains was steep, challenging, and spectacularly beautiful—easily worth getting up early on its own. The trail, while arduous, was easy to follow, and I was in a good mood as I finally got to the top of the ridge. That mood persisted as the trail began a running game of hide-and-go-seek that would last for miles and substantially hinder my progress. I wandered through a maze of worn rock and boulders, continually checking my location and correcting my trajectory. As the trail entered a rich pine forest, however, the game started to grow tedious. Every few hundred feet, the trail would cross the same stream, and picking it up on the other side took several long minutes each time. I managed to keep my feet dry most the way, but a slip in the last hour left me with wet shoes for the rest of the day.
When I started seeing day hikers, I knew I was coming up on a trailhead, and soon enough the labyrinth was behind me and I was walking a paved road up to Summerhaven, a tiny resort town about an hour and fifteen minutes from Tucson. The place was popping off, as it was Saturday, and I felt incredibly aware of the malodorous cloud that followed me as I placed my order at the town’s only proper restaurant and walked to the balcony to sit outside and charge my battery bank. I took care of a few things online, ordered a snack, and hung around for as long as I could, but I was getting antsy to get my other chores done.
I headed to the general store for a horrendously overpriced resupply, then, because I was already tired of the restaurant, moved on to the hallway outside the bathrooms at the local community center to finish charging my shit. It was incredibly awkward, just sitting there while confused tourists asked if I was waiting to use the toilet, but in the end it was the waning daylight that drove me out that place without getting all my gadgets up to 100% battery.
I talked to Sean Meadow on the phone as I made my way out town, but had to sign off when the route became too windy to hear. It was for the best, as I ended up practically running for the better part of seven miles, through overgrown trees and grass and thorns and cacti and shrubs. Even more demoralizing than the state of the trail was the fact that after I’d climbed down a ways, in ended up gaining all of that elevation back—when all I wanted to do was to get somewhere warmer than the town I’d left, somewhere out of the wind. That mission carried me into the sunset and beyond. Just as the trail was becoming too dark to see without a headlamp, I found a spot, flat enough, protected from the wind, and potentially low enough not to be unbearably cold. Once again, I was completely on my own, like it or not, though some sounds down the way did give me cause to wonder whether anyone else was in the area. I made camp, ate dinner, and went to bed, hoping for the best.
Day 12: 26 March, 24.4 miles today, 223.1 miles total, Middle of Nowhere
30 seconds down the trail, I spotted a pair of familiar tents. I’d camped within shouting distance of both Ghost Sole and the fit young couple and hadn’t realized it. I never did see them the rest of the day, however.
A single mile is so impossibly long. In the amount of time it takes you to walk it, you pass by countless micro-biomes and geologic strata, moving through such vast and varied worlds bordering one another that it always feels like you’re traveling much faster than you actually are. The amount of ground you can cover in a single day can transport you to completely different ecosystems. You can also walk for hours through a desert landscape that rolls by with such monotonous repetition it feels like the background to an early 8-bit video game.
I started the day on Oracle Ridge, a savanna-coated mound of loose, unruly rock and lonely, spiky trees. This dried-grass yellow desert was already a stark contrast from Mt. Lemmon, which had featured a robust pine forest. The even, sliding trail-surface made me anxious to get on to the valley floor, a brown desert coated in stones and chaparral. Once there, however, I was reminded vividly what hiking through the desert is actually like: distinctly uncomfortable and kinda boring. I passed the hours before lunch trying to find a place to dig a cathole that wasn’t completely coated in thorns.
I ate lunch on a shaded wash under interstate 77, then headed up a ride to a green desert, jeweled and precious in its endless procession of cacti, many of them beautiful, but all excessively spiny if we’re being honest. The afternoon passed in a haze of identical cactus-studded hills and thorny washes, the landscape offering no relief from circular train of thoughts set in motion by an email I’d received earlier that day. With its absence of comfort, or even a decent place to sit, the desert is perfectly built for rumination. The place sure is pretty, but dang there was a lot of it to get through. I made camp at the edge of wash in complete solitude, having not seen any sign of another human in hours. All the other hikers had gone into town while I had pushed on to this empty, barren place. What the hell was I doing out here?
Day 13: 27 March, 25.6 miles today, 248.7 miles total, Middle of Nowhere
In what was becoming a problematic habit, I had a hard time sleeping at first because of the pounding in my feet; then, when that throbbing ache finally subsided, I had a hard time sleeping because of the cold. I slept in fits, 20 minutes at a time, until it was time to start gathering my shit together for the day. The first thing I noticed upon sitting up was that the forecast I’d managed to download the day before had been more or less completely wrong: the predicted low has been only 37°F, cold but still at least above freezing. And yet the inside of my tent was completely coated with frost.
Worse yet, there was a block of ice sitting in my water bladder and the caps to both my bottles were frozen in place. After finally loosening them with my warm breath, I had ice-cold water for coffee and for brushing my teeth. I shook as much of the frost as I could from my tent, packed everything away, and started walking north.
Today was always going to be a slog. This part of Arizona is beautifully weird, baroque emerald, each strangely angled cactus its own facet—but I was also looking to cover as much of this identically-sculpted landscape as I could, and it very quickly became rather tedious. 25 miles of plants you can’t touch, can’t even get near, can’t hide under for shade. I was surprised over and over again how grumpy I felt about this lovely jeweled scenery before remembering I’d barely slept the night before, and being tired tends to make me generally pretty unpleasant. Even to myself.
I took a late morning break by a large open-topped tank of water, connected by pipe to a cattle trough a couple hundred feet away. The water looked murky and green, with a lot of large larvae of some kind swimming vigorously beneath the surface. When I drew from it, however, it seemed clear, and it filtered without any trouble. A young Arizonan on his first long hike came up, and we chatted for a while about the trail, until the concentrated cannabis pill I’d taken a couple hours before to help with my feet kicked in hard and made the conversation difficult to follow. I bade the youngster farewell and headed right off in the wrong direction, correcting my course as I eventually realized which way I was supposed to be going.
The southern Arizona landscape was desolate, no sign of human activity but the trail, the occasional rutted dirt road, and the rare SOBO. I stopped for lunch at shadeless spot with a broad flat area to dry out my tent, and in the burning sun, my sopping wet shelter was dry by the time I was done eating. I put everything away, hitched up my pack, and walked, and walked, and walked.
The sun was maybe 20 minutes from setting when I made it to camp. My first order of business, I decided, should be to fetch water from the nearby tank, so I started off down a dirt road and had walked down it for several minutes before realizing that the water tank I was looking for was at least a half-mile off trail. Fuck it, I thought, and turned around. If I didn’t brush my teeth or make coffee, then I’d probably have enough to make it to the next source. Probably. I made camp, polished off my cold-soaked noodles, and climbed into bed.
Day 14: 28 March, 21.4 miles today, 270.1 miles total, Kearny, AZ
The reflection looking back at me in the mirror was a hot mess: sunburned, pimpled, blisters slowly scabbing on the backs of my ears—the scabs from my burned lips had already fallen off, leaving them tender and raw. My calves were peeling from a burn I didn’t even remember getting. My left thumb had split open at some point, and it had taken a fair bit work to clean the accumulated black shmutz out of the wound. The little toe on my left foot was abraded and sore, I had only figured that morning, from keeping the laces across the toe box of my shoe too tight. You’d have thought I’d never have walked across a desert before.
But on the whole, by the time I found myself examining the damage I’d done, steaming fresh from a long, hot shower, I was doing well. Harried, seemingly as always, by the too, too tight timeline I’d allotted for this hike, otherwise I was feeling as good as a person can while they pound their feet into mush, grind their joints into angry, rusty hinges, and walk everyday until the moment they collapse into their tent only discover that they’d pitched it on a slope. I was out of shape, but feeling fast. Tired, but happy. Under pressure to make miles, but increasingly confident in my ability to get them made.
I had hiked fast the whole way from Mt. Lemmon, chasing the dream of a hotel room of my very own—my own bed, my own shower, my own sink, my own combination heater/air conditioner. I’d pushed hard the whole way, and on the last day was on trail before the sun was up, walking as purposefully as I could manage. I’d barely stopped the whole day, pausing only to get water, eat a quick lunch, and call the local pizza place I’d heard would give hikers a lift into town.
The conversation with the desk clerk was over so quickly that the kind old fella (who went by the trail name Dr. Pizza) who’d dropped me off the hotel hadn’t even pulled away when I left the lobby. They were full, the only hotel in town. The woman was apologetic, and offered me a room for the following night, though it wasn’t clear what exactly I was supposed to do in the meantime. I politely declined, then caught a ride with Dr. Pizza to a trail angel’s house.
It wasn’t everything I dreamed, but was everything I needed. Laundry. A sink to clean my trail dishes. Outlets to charge my electronics. I would be sleeping on the floor, but I would be sleeping indoors. I would wait in line for the shower, but when my turn came, the water was hot, and I had a clean set of loaner clothes to change into. The young hikers gathered on patio, smoking from the first bong is seen since vaping got big, gathering in the kitchen every so often for a round of shots. I was the square in the corner, keeping to himself while he hammered away at the keyboard on his phone. It was okay. Social ability would come, or or wouldn’t. In the meantime I would be warm and dry and clean. In the meantime I would be ready to get back outside and hike.
Day 15: 29 March, 10.1 miles today, 280.2 miles total, banks of the Gila River
For reasons I couldn’t understand, most of the young hikers staying at the trail angels’ house in Kearny chose to sleep in the back yard. That was fine with me, as it left more floor space open inside the house where, like, the heat and stuff was. I picked out a cozy looking spot next to a (legal) indoor pot growing set-up, and went about getting the rest of my town chores done. When I came back to my sleeping bag, I saw that, also for reasons I couldn’t understand, one of the more middle-aged hikers had made his bed right next to mine, eschewing all the available space across the rest of the entire house. It felt petty and unneighborly to object, so I didn’t say anything. “Don’t worry,” he said unprompted as we were getting ready to turn in, “I don’t snore.” I woke up repeatedly throughout the night to learn that this poor fellow had been horrendously misinformed.
The volunteer fire department across the street also (apparently routinely) set off an ear-splitting WWII era klaxon at exactly 2200hrs, but that only happened the one time, and our host had taken care to warn us in advance. What message that single, massive blast was meant to communicate I still have no idea.
In the morning, after leisurely waiting 20 minutes to pee, I packed up my gear and sat in the wan morning sunlight, drinking coffee and catching up with Sean Meadow. I cleaned my mug and double-checked that I had all my shit together before hiding a $20 in a notebook on the counter in which our host had been working on a shopping list. This had been a boom year for the population of AZT, and these people were already overwhelmed—with the mail bubble still a week or two out. I walked up the hill to the grocery store, where I bought a cartful of backpack-friendly food-like items, and spent a merry half-hour drinking complimentary coffee as I divided and repacked all of it. I ran across the street to the post office to ship 5 days worth of food ahead to my next resupply point, a marina with only a small convenience store, and was, I think, justifiably annoyed that I was forced to buy a roll of packing tape just to seal the priority mail box I was sending. It’s like selling someone a gallon of milk, but then at the last minute charging extra for the carton.
I ended up back at the pizza place, working my way through a calzone while charging my phone up to full. I ended up waiting around for a ride back to the trail for a while longer than was probably necessary, but at least I left town with a full phone and a full belly—perhaps the latter a bit dangerously so, as no sooner had Dr. Pizza driven away waving goodbye over his shoulder than I was hit with a profound need for a cat-hole, with no good options in sight. I made my way up the AZT, which followed an old sort service road before winding up into the mountains, when there suddenly appeared, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, an old port-a-potty. The answer to a prayer which I hadn’t even put into words. The inside was dirty—as in covered with literal dirt—but not gross, though the tank was dangerously close to full.
I wasn’t in top form, and didn’t make it quite as far as I’d hoped to before the sun started getting close to the horizon. I did make it to a wide, sandy wash with easy access to the Gila River. Comments in the guide from a couple weeks prior had mentioned an aggressive bull in the area that regarded that section of the river as his territory, but I didn’t see or hear any sign of him. I collected everything I needed, and made camp on a little rise just off the wash a few hundred feet up the bank. It was only after I was bundled in my tent, well after sundown, that something large and bovine started braying incessantly, not near enough to be a threat, but still not far enough away to comfortably ignore.
Day 16: 30 March, 24.9 miles today, 305.1 miles total, Tonto National Forest
Sleep didn’t come easily, partially from concerns about the potentially unpleasant bull, and partially because a (presumably) military helicopter kept making low-altitude sweeps through the valley came so close to the ground that it felt and sounded like lying on the tracks as a freight train rushed by overhead.
Eventually the helo stopped buzzing the valley and I conked right out, agitated bull cries or none. There was no sign of him in the morning; while I didn’t rush out of camp, neither did I take any more time eating breakfast and packing up than was necessary. By sunrise I was well on my way, as were the clouds slowly filling up the valley. I passed by the trio of hikers I’d ridden with into Kearny, predicting confidently that while the day would be gray and drizzling, it wouldn’t be any worse than that. Five minutes later it was raining, a downpour that would last the next three hours, as I made my way up a string of absolutely gorgeous peaks, red and orange faced cliffs rising sharply from steep green slopes. I felt carried up the trail by my giddy exaltation, and didn’t even care that the rain-wetted underbrush had completely soaked my shoes.
The rain died away as I came to the top of the climb. After a quick lunch on a saddle overlooking both sides of the climb, the clouds began to clear and I walked on as the mountains became hills and the hills became curves, with the looming hulk of Picketpost Mountain rising dead ahead. At a stream crossing I ran into Jupiter, a career hiker I’d met briefly on the PCT in 2018, when he failed in his attempt to yo-yo the trail (i.e., hike from Mexico to Canada to Mexico in one go) due to a broken foot (he tried again and succeeded in 2022). We chatted about the AZT and the GET while he filtered water. He was super down to earth, with an enthusiasm for the Arizona backcountry that was infectious. It’s just fun to meet people who have done what you’re doing and are genuinely excited that you’re doing it.
I hiked until close to sunset, finding a workable campsite more or less at the last minute. I couldn’t believe how tired I felt, nor could I quite decide whether the heat radiating off of my face was from sunburn or fever. It didn’t really matter, I decided. All that mattered for the next few hours was sleep.
