After camping next to Lake Roosevelt for the night, then picking my battery up at the visitors center in the morning, I tackle the next passage of the AZT. I want to ratchet up the mileage until I reach the Mogollon ranger station in 8 days. From there I’ll catch a ride to Phoenix and fly to Palo Alto to meet Chinita and Emma. Then back to Phoenix on May 1 and back to the trail to finish. Sounds easy huh? The goal now is as many miles as possible without breaking anything. I want to see if I paid a price for yesterday’s 20+ mile race through the Superstitions.
Heading for the bridge by Lake RooseveltI paid a price. By 2pm on April 20, I’m dogging it. Not even 10 miles into the day. The climbs are a bitch. The Four Peaks Wilderness is one of two remaining mountain ranges between me and the Mogollon Rim to the north, and the first 10 miles climb 3100 feet. It’s hot, it’s hard, and the whole mountain range has suffered from forest fires that have left miles of manzanita as the only vegetation. That night I sleep in a saddle amongst a thicket of manzanita. They are all blooming, and the sound of the bees is constant. They stop buzzing only when the sun sets.
The flowering manzanita (and bees)At sunrise the bees resume buzzing and I, after coffee, resume hiking. The top of the Four Peaks on this day is a much better story. I’m on top of the world. I hike 22 miles on a soft dirt road that twists and turns. I get amazing views of the desert far, far below, and I get the shade of boulders, pinyon and the occasional ponderosa pine. I run into two guys lost in the mountains in a side by side. They ask me for directions…
On top of four peaksWhen I finally descend from the Four Peaks, I spend the night in an abandoned corral at mile 382.6. Tomorrow I tackle the Mazatzals, but tonight I can take it easy. After dinner, the moon rises over the mountain slope in the southeastern sky so brightly it’s as if someone suddenly switched on a giant porch light.
The manager of the (now notorious) Copper Mountain Motel says his friend can give me a ride back to trailhead. Valente meets me and another hiker just after sunrise. As we drive west, drinking coffee from Circle K, I tell him Superior is a nice town and he shrugs. His dad used to work in the mine and he bets the mine will grow when the owners work out a land swap with the apaches. Until then there’s not much work and it’s easy to get into trouble he says. After we drop the hiker off, he takes me 4 miles further and talks about wanting to stay in his daughters life, and how he’d like to go back to school to become a mechanic. I like him.
Valente drops me off
After I leave Valente I head up Reavis Canyon into the Superstitions. The Superstitions are legendary mountains in Arizona. We went on trips there as kids in Indian Guides (kind of like Boy Scouts). We heard stories of the Lost Dutchman, who rode into Phoenix one day in the 1880’s with gold to buy supplies, and then went back to the Superstitions to work his claim but was never seen again. I now hike in the far eastern part of that wilderness. The trail follows the stream bed for a few miles, past corrals and stock ponds – some new some abandoned. It’s rugged but amazing.
Stone corral in Superstitions
By early afternoon I climb out of the canyon. When I get up top the trail merges with a sandy road twisting and curving with short bushes and shrubs on either side and a steep drop off to the west that makes it feels like a road by the coast. There is a great basin up here with pinyon and juniper and manzanita. I’d like to come come back here with my family. I had no idea this was here.
Like a coastal highway
Eventually the trail goes off the top into another canyon, and that night I camp at Revis Saddle. On top of Revis Saddle and beyond is another different world. I walk through broad green meadows with old trees that used to be farmed by the Revis family over a century ago. Revis used to supply produce to all the mining communities, but now the farmhouse has crumbled and the forest has reclaimed the land. It’s amazing that as a kid I only thought of the hot, dramatic desert walls of the western Superstitions but never even dreamed the eastern part existed.
Revis canyon
After I get off Revis Saddle it is a race to the end of this part of the trail down at Lake Roosevelt. The battery I use to recharge my phone has quit on me for some reason, and I ask my dad to mail my spare to the visitor center at Roosevelt Lake. He decides to drive it there just to leave nothing to chance. My dad. While I race the 20 miles down the remainder of the trail so I can make camp at Roosevelt Lake by dark, he drives the two hours to get the package to the visitor center before it closes so I can get it first thing in the morning. When he gets close he gives a ride to an Arizona Trail hiker who is hitchhiking to the lake. His trail name is Chow Mane and they have a good talk. When I finally make it to Lake Roosevelt just before sundown that night, I’m too late to see Dad (he left hours before to make it back to Tucson), but I know exactly where to get the package the next morning. Thanks Chow Mane.
The night after Alamo Canyon, I slept on a hillside overlooking a farm. A donkey brayed every hour, on the hour, all through the night. I awoke slightly bleary-eyed to a beautiful sunrise, got in 6 more miles on the trail, and then got picked up by Mom and Dad near a trailhead. They had driven up from Tucson to spend the afternoon with me in Superior. One of the best parts of this trip is spending time with them, and we talked and traded stories.
Sign post from the morning hike
We drove 6 miles into Superior. It looked cooler than Kearny, sprawled over the side of the mountain with a big chimney on one end of Main Street. It wasn’t a planned community, it just grew from the first mining boom in the 1870’s onwards. Most of the homes are territorial style or adobe, and the streets meander in that mining town way. We looked for a place to have lunch. We drove past Los Hermanos (with a hundred Harleys outside), a pizza place and a Mexican food place. Mom insisted that we find a restaurant with an outside patio for her two dogs, and I insisted that no such place existed in a town like this. We got to historic Main Street, and lo and behold, found a place with a patio.
Mom gets her patio
It was actually one of the funkiest little Arizona joints I’ve ever been in. Dollar bills signed by decades of customers pasted on the wall, Barry Goldwater for President poster behind the bar, full of people. We got a picnic table outside and all three of us ordered burgers with a huge green pepper laid over the top. Mom laid down on the floor under the table to make sure the beds for her dogs were ok. She wasn’t even drunk.
Notice the Goldwater poster behind us
After lunch they helped me shop for supplies. We were all a bit tired and the town got weary looking in the hot afternoon. After shopping, they helped me check into my room at the Copper Mountain Motel. As we drove up, a woman opened the door to the room next to mine. She had dyed black hair, tight denim cutoffs, a tank top and many tattoos. Behind her in the room was another woman, food and bottles on the table, and a baby on the bed. Mom was silent. I asked meekly at the front desk if I could change rooms and was told it was all they had.
Los Hermanos
As Mom and Dad drove away, I did laundry in the coin operated machines at the motel, packed all my new supplies in my bag, and got dinner at the bar at Los Hermanos. The bikers were gone. Just Norteno music on the jukebox and a few folks playing pool. The flautas tasted great and the beer was ice cold. It was a good rest day. Two days later, three hikers told me that they too had stayed at the Copper Mountain for their rest day, and they had watched a steady flow of clients go in and out of the room next to mine all day. Good old Superior.
After catching a ride out of Kearney, I start passage passage 16. The first few miles ramble directly west following the Gila river. Then at mile 16 the trail follows a side canyon north for 10 miles. It was the last part of the AZT to be completed, just finished about 4 years ago, and its creation opened up some of the prettiest areas in Arizona.
Bridge across The Gila
The Gila is a surprise to me. The trail goes up and down along the canyon. A railroad track parallels the trail across the canyon, and a few miles in we pass a cool old RR bridge. The trail crawls mostly a few hundred feet above the river, and the bottom below me seems choked with green trees . Occasionally the muddy brown of the river will show through. The Gila starts in New Mexico and flows west across Arizona before joining the Colorado and heading down into Mexico and Sonora. Before 1854, The Gila marked the border between the US and Mexico. The 265 miles I’ve walked to this point have been Gadsden Purchase country.
The Gila flows until November
I constantly see the river but don’t go down to it until Rincon creek at mile 16. I go down to the banks and fill my two packs with filtered water from the muddy stream. Once filtered, the water is cool and clear. I turn and head up the steep trail into Alamo canyon and pitch my tent on a desert shelf above the trail.
Sunrise on canyon walls
Early the next morning I can hear rocks falling where the big horn sheep misstep. The sun strikes the rocks high in the canyon walls above me. The air is cool and still. I’m hiking before 8 and hear Javelina snorting in the canyon somewhere. I run into a mountain biker named Kurt who is coming down from Picketpost Mountain as I head up. He started at 5am and we take photos of each other. A 5m stop at most but as with all AZT thru hikers and bikers it’s not rushed.
Rocks like this all up the canyon
A giant rock spire comes into view. I never even knew this existed until a few weeks ago. Snakes have this unnerving habit of resting on the trail with only their heads in the shade of a bush and the rest of their bodies stretched across the trail. I’ve been spooked by a few luckily they are not rattlers. I run into another Gila Monster (one of the most poisonous reptiles in the Sonoran Desert, they release their poison by chewing on you).
You rarely see Gila Monsters
I get to the top of the canyon sooner than I thought. The next ten miles the canyon was a gateway to another type of country: more rugged, rocks of red, dark and yellow. In one moment, I see hosts of yellow and white wildflowers a with gray petals. In another, I surprise dozens of butterflies: little ones with purple wings all around me. In the last few miles the trail circumnavigates the enormous Picketpost Mountain, and the clouds and fading sunlight create different vistas every hour. By sunset I’m past the highway into Superior and close to a spot where my parents can pick me up the next day for a rest day in Superior.
My 20th day on the trail is a rest day
After packing up, I had to hike only 1-2 miles before reaching the end of the trail. I soon looked over a little valley with the muddy brown Gila River rushing below me with big green trees, scattered houses and a highway that narrowed to a one lane bridge. It was the desert version of a New England village scene, with the Asarco copper mine standing in for the granite mountain towering over everything.
In this region, the copper mines dominate life and landscape. The town of Kearny was actually created in 1958 by a copper company when the growth of its open pit mine destroyed three other towns and they needed a place to move all of the workers. The mine if still the biggest employer in town, and even though Arizona still supplies most of Americas copper, there were layoffs at the mine last year.
Feeling free to do whatever, I walked a bit along the highway past mobile homes, adobe ruins and territorial style mining houses, then hitched a ride into Kearny 6 miles east. My ride dropped me at the laundromat. I spent the afternoon killing time, catching up on stuff and resting my feet. A few hours at the laundromat (with posters on the wall warning parents to keep their kids off the machines), lunch at CJ’s market (near an older guy having ice cream with his 6 year old great granddaughter). I wrote some blog posts at the Kearny library (where the popcorn is free but you can only use the PCs in one hour increments). They had to close early because it was library night. I don’t know what librarians do on library night but they were pretty fired up about it.
After leaving the library I trudged thru the residential part of town up the hill to the business district. The residential part was laid out in 6-7 big semicircles all radiating outwards from the business district. All the houses were small, tidy and looked as if they had been built at the same time by the same developer – a little western Levittown. The population is only down to 2000 from a high of 3000 in the last 60’s. I passed kids riding bikes on their way to baseball practice.
My motel was in the business district, which was one strip of highway about half a mile long with one story buildings on either side. The Pinal County Courthouse looked historic, the rest straight from the late 50’s and 60’s. The motel was on the far eastern end of the street, across from family dollar. Looking to check in, I opened the door to the side of the motel building and walked from bright desert sun into a dark barroom. A group of about 5-6 young, beefy, bearded guys turned to look at me and then went back to their conversation. Thinking I had opened the wrong door I went to the other side of the building only to realize that the motel reception desk WAS the bar, and the receptionist was actually Ashley the bartender. Kearney didn’t feel cozy.
My brother Chris drove up from Tucson to bring me some re-supply: new sleeping pad, water bag and (yes I give up) a small tent to replace the bivy. We got beers from Ashley and took them outside to a picnic table by the horseshoe pits. After a while, we ordered Mexican food for the restaurant next to the bar and the waitress brought it outside to us. We sipped our beers, ate our enchiladas and talked about life as the sun set and the air cooled. The group of beefy, bearded guys ventured out to the grass near us playing some type of balance game. They were nice guys joking pleasantly with each other and calling me sir when I asked about the game. The waitress from the Mexican place kept coming out to make sure we had what we needed, and when it got dark she flipped on the outside lights so the courtyard between the motel/bar/restaurant was slightly lit. Chris and I agreed that Kearny was actually just fine.
About 30 miles north of Tucson, on other side of Catalinas, the highway forks at the town of Oracle Junction. Route 79 heads NW up through the town of Florence and the Arizona state prison. Route 77 heads NE up through mining country and the towns of Winkelman, Hayden and Kearny. The two routes merge into other highways, bend back towards each other and meet again in the town of Superior. In the 2400 square miles of space between them, about 60 miles long and 40 miles wide, lie the Tortilla Mountains. No paved roads, no towns, no natural water sources. It took me about two days to pass thru that stretch.
Big stretch o’desert
The first day began with a bit of rain. The last traces of the storms that had passed up from Tucson over the last couple of days. As I passed thru a gate mid morning, I saw a women crouched down on the trail underneath a big umbrella. She was not happy about the rain; not happy about hiking solo. We hiked together for a few miles to keep each other motivated. She said she worked as a vet in Oro Valley and told me the coyotes I had heard a few yards on either side of me last night were probably yelping because they had found a kill. I found that a little unsettling.
The last of the clouds…for now
As the day wore on I let the other hiker get ahead of me. Her pace had picked up along with her spirits and she was too hard to keep up with. The Tortillas were mostly uneventful: flat, hot, dry. Towards the end of the day, however, as shadows lengthened, the desert floor turned to course sand, and the trail started to roll and twist like a lazy roller coaster. I love this type of desert: if something died and fell to the sand, it would be bleached bones in a day. Pure. The vastness is broken by full trees that stand alone every 300-400 yards providing great cool shade. Juniper? Pinyon?
Cool trees in a hot desert
About 2 hours before sunset, as the shadows lengthened and I started to despair finding a camping spot with any type of cover, I saw a shape looming. I thought it was a ranch house with trees, but as I approached it became clear the next few miles was boulder country. Great huge mounds of boulders on either side of the trail of the type cowboys would make a last stand in. I set camp in the lee of the largest pile and slept without the tarp, looking out at another starry night.
Where I want to make my last stand
The next day I walked 17 miles. As I keep going and build strength I’m starting to cover more distance. It was a long time between water sources. My final water before camping was drawn from a 300 gallon cattle tank. I ignored the bees as I filled my bags and I ignored the bee wings in the water when I drank. The final night I was again able to leave the tarp in the bag and sleep under the stars. Beautiful
Time to plan ahead and correct for few things: like what to do when everything you own gets sopping wet. When the last storm cleared yesterday, there was no happy sun to emerge and dry everything off. By 4:30 I had to set camp in order to be dry for the night – even though 2 hours before sunset. This time the tarp/bivy/bag combo worked out. By the time the rain cleared after midnight, the stars came out and life was good.
Drying out Miles from nowhereThis is getting old but…brilliant sun the next morning at 6am. I spread everything out across mesquites to dry from the day before: boots, tarp, yesterday’s clothes. Jed Clampett style. Hiking by mid-morning. I’m now hiking passage 14 of the AZT. Called the Black Hills, this is supposedly the most remote passage on the trail. No cars, no highways, no other hikers (in two days not a soul). Mostly that’s because of another no: water. I love the variety of the desert but this stretch is pretty desolate. Hawks constantly circle sometimes above sometimes below. To pass time I start listening to Dylan: album by album starting with “Bob Dylan” in 1962.
Water for the herdThe day ended near Bloodsucker Wash. I need water for the next 25 miles: daunting. About 1/4 mile off the trail I find an old corral: chute and all. I first braved the stock tank with the water float, then climbed the iron water tower to take it directly from the source. I had to hold the bag while bees buzzed all around me. Walked another 2 miles before stopping and tying trap beaten a mesquite and palo verde and laying out bag. The rain has stopped at least for tonight, and the stars spread out above me like a planetarium show.
Third day of my hike, jolted awake by bright sunshine around 6am. Last night after that beer I hiked a short mile to the edge of town, around a bend and down a fire road where I camped in a stand of pines. Actually managed to get the bivy/tarp thing down this time (looked it up). Dry, warm, full. Packed up and walked a quarter mile down the dirt road that takes you 29 dusty miles down to Oracle, then skirted left before the cattle guard to take the Trail. For the next 11 miles, I hiked straight down 3000 feet along the spine of Oracle Ridge.
The Ridge Trail
The north slopes of these ranges always seem less varied than the south, but the views are outstanding. To the east and right of me were views of the historic (and pre-historic) San Pedro valley. More on that soon. To the west and left the view stretched to Casa Grande. Where I was walking was what cars see as they approach Tucson from I-10 and Phoenix. I could see Picacho Peak lonely like a mini Shiprock standing in the distance. The trail is at times single track, at times a rocky road so steep you can’t believe any SUV or ATV could drive it (they do). By mid afternoon the trail leveled off in the rocks above the town of Oracle.
Luckily walked DOWN this
That night I slept in a casita at High Jinks Ranch outside Oracle. It was land once owned by Buffalo Bill Cody, who thought he’d strike gold here but….didn’t. Cody sold the mine just before WW1 and died penniless (his famous Wild West Show was seized by lenders), but one of the riders from the Show bought the claim and built a wonderful old house on it. It’s now a quasi dude ranch, B&B and historic site. Kelly, who is running it for a few months while she writes a book, welcomes hikers, but for peace of mind she very visibly carries a pistol in her waistband at all times.
Dad in the High Jinks kitchen
Out of the blue, Dad drove the 45m from Tucson to meet me. He just wanted to see me. Kelly let us drink beers in the old kitchen at the High Jinks. Old rooms of slightly different levels surrounded us: a kitchen with wood burning stove, library with Navajo rugs, dining room with wood floors and brook stone walls. We had the best talk about everything and nothing. We confessed that after spending time together we cried when we watched the other drive away. After an hour he drove away, back to Tucson, under the big sign for the ranch. I was happy. I cried.
Oracle rocks
The next day I had an early start worried about heat and water. By 7:30 I was walking again. The sun slanted under gray clouds and shined bright on the boulders. Oracle high country is the prettiest ever. I can see why Buffalo Bill fell in love with this place. I soon headed down into the San Pedro. It flows north from Mexico to here and then further until it hits the Gila. Dad says it has some of the greatest archeology sites in Arizona because people have lived here for thousands of years. There are sites ranging from Clovis hunting mastodons to 19th century ghost towns. The river appeared every hour or so a few miles in the distance as I parallel it walking north.
Thank you Trail Angels
By late morning, great grey clouds were angrily looming and whipping around. Always threatening but seldom more than a mist. Finally at noon they hit and I waited out a rain shower in an underpass drinking water left in public bin. When it broke I walked up Tiger Mine Road in the sun briefly then another squall. After an hour I was soaked thru then sun again. Blooms and rain smells all around me: purple hedgehog cactus flower, orange flames on tips of ocotillos, yellow roses on prickly pear, the sweet smell of creosote. In the distance mountains were obscured by mist but the sun was shining on me.
Storms came from the SSW
It continued like that all afternoon. Clouds rose up like battalions on the horizon, billowing and menacing, then crashed over me. I just had time to put on a poncho for 15m of rain, then the sun came out again and dried my pack and clothes. Then rinse and repeat. I’m wet but so happy. As Oak says, “The road to heaven is heaven”.
My second day on the Arizona Trail ended with a beer at 8000 feet. Let me rewind and catch up a bit.
On top of the Catalinas
All of my blog posts to date have covered the first stage of my hike, starting from Mexico on March 2 and ending 160 miles north at Molino Basin campground in the foothills of the Catalinas on March 16. Now after 3 weeks of R&R with Chinita and family, I’m picking up the hike (and the blog) where I left off. Dad dropped me off at Molino on April 7 at 7am (by far the earliest I’ll start this whole trip…thanks Dad, we hugged goodbye and I was off.
Dad sees me off at Molino Basin
My goal in two days was Summerhaven, 22 miles and 4000 feet above Molino. I was anxious – about how my feet were going to hold up, about sleeping in a bivy, about whether I’m going to complete this crazy hike. The idea of sleeping in the bivy (a large waterproof sack that fits over your sleeping bag and zips over your head) is going to be tested tonight. There’s rain and lighting in the forecast. It sounded fine on the showroom floor of the SOHO REI.
I swam in Hutch’s Pool: cold
The first day didn’t auger well – at all. It started nicely: walking thru an area that I used to know as “Prison Camp” and now called Camp Hirabayashi (kudos to Emma Hard for opening my eyes to the brutality of Japanese internment camps), Hutch’s pool (the best swimming hole in southern Arizona), walking upwards into the mountains beside the Catalina highway as the bikers zoom downhill (sometimes reaching 50-60 MPH). Morning was brilliant.
But by afternoon my worst fears seemed to come true. My feet hurt (plantar I suspect). My pack, which I had hoped to lighten by 3-4 pounds since last time, feels like a ton of bricks. That night, when I camped just below the saddle at Romero Pass, I was miserable. Dry and warm thanks to a light tarp I put above my bivy and pack, but I’m claustrophobic in the thing. On top of everything I can’t contact anyone because there’s no cell coverage when I though there might be. The hour between midnight and 1am, when the rain came down even harder and the first thunder rolled in, wad the hardest. Zen thoughts.
But, as always, the next day was great. I woke at dawn to find myself still alive (and dry). A great cup of coffee. What was best, my feet felt great. So far everything that hurts on one day works itself out the next as long as I don’t do anything stupid.
Wilderness of Rocks
The morning of the second day started straight uphill. Soon I walked through one of my favorite trails in the world: the wilderness of rocks. The trail plateaus and climbs gradually for 5-6 miles before Summerhaven. Huge boulders each one like its own beach for sunbathing. The trail dives into pines with little creeks. But mostly it’s literally wilderness – trail ducks in and around boulders of every size and shape. Giant clouds boom and loom. Heaven.
Finally: steps from that beer (and camp)
By 5 I get to Summerhaven road. I walk up the paved road surrounded by green, by water and tall pines. I stop at Sawmill Restaurant for that beer. A burger too. Charge my phone, fun texts with the family (Hanna Hard wins her age group in the Sabino Canyon Race!) refresh my water then head out before it gets dark. It seems crazy to leave a cozy place for the dark and rain but I’m I going to try a new way of tying my tarp.
As a sophomore at Amphi High School I would spend breaks in the school library, reading Arizona Highways and planning backpacking trips I’d take someday. A bit dorky. Now as I pass the trees on the trails I always dreamed about, I want to know what I’m seeing. I find this site in a few seconds and start studying trees. Still a dork.
On the morning of the 15th I wake in my camp at about 6400 feet. I’m on a forested ledge in the Rincons with a view south over the Tucson Valley and (further) the Santa Ritas.
A large alligator juniper stands right by my campsite. My tent is surrounded by great clumps of manzanita, with twisted branches of red smooth bark and the small green leaves and the white flowers that hang in clumps like little sleigh bells. As I leave camp and hike north and up, I can hear the rush of Chiminea Creek deep in the canyon below me.
By midday I’ve hiked 2000 feet higher – enough to cross Chiminea Creek closer to its source. Now there is snow in the shady spots and the louder sound of water pooling under falls and rushing over boulders. I walk under tall ponderosa pine, and the trail grows faint and crosses a bare forest floor covered with dry needles and cones. The sound now is wind filtered by pine needles 50-60 feet overhead. Sounds like summers in Flagstaff. When I crest the mountain and start on the north slope I see aspen (not yet leafing) and thick, green fir trees.
In the afternoon, the decent is rapid down the north side. The view is to the northwest and west – a whole new world to a Tucsonan. Due north I see the fertile canyons of Aravaipa Creek and to the west I see into the Gila Wilderness and New Mexico. I descend through boulders thrown around like giants playthings. The manzanita re-appears all around me. They are beautiful in both life (green leaves and red bark) as well as death (dry, twisted, grey and ancient). Scrubby little pines that could be apache pine or pinyon, and soon desert olive trees.
At the base of the mountains I cross Tanque Verde Creek. It’s full of clear, sweet water and feels like the border. Everything north of here is Redington Pass and, beyond that, the Catalinas. I make camp on the night of the 15th somewhere in the pass, setting my tent somewhere around mile 151 amongst the tall grass and mesquite trees.
My final day of hiking is spent climbing out of Redington Pass, passing juniper, sycamore and the occasional Cottonwood whenever we cross a perennial creek. Cottonwoods with bright green leaves that stand out so clearly in the desert: their roots are the only source for Hopi kachinas carved the traditional away. I pass horny toads, cattle, horses and roadrunners. Fittingly, the last mile is the hardest. The trail gains 1000 feet in a mile and crests above Molino Basin Campground. Cresting not only gives me relief from climbing, it opens up the next chapter in the trek. On the other side of the hill I see the Catalina Highway, snaking 20 miles up from the valley floor in Tucson to the Mt. Lemmon at the top of the Catalinas. I descend into the campground where Chris picks me up for what’s turning out to be the celebratory dinner of the AZT: enchiladas and beer.
The Arizona Trail 
