These are the 28th and 29th days on the trail, and this is the last range before rim country. It is by far the hardest. I try to find something inspiring in every section of this trail (and there are cool places in this passage), but for the most part this is the passage all AZT hikers complain about. It’s got the steep ascents and descents of the supers and four peaks, but lacks the long, ambling stretch of dirt road on top. What’s worse, the Mazatzals have been savaged by forest fires, and the trail is choked with with brush that grabs at my pack and clothing.
Knowing I’m in for a tough couple of days, I start early. That moon from last night is still in the sky just before sunrise, and it glows softly just to the west over the corral. The first miles of the morning take me under the Beeline Highway, and slowly up the southern slopes of the Mazatzals. I don’t realize it at the moment, but by the time I hit mile 400 I’ve seen the last of the Sonoran desert (and completed half of the Arizona Trail). I’ve given up using topo maps, and am mostly navigating with a Guthook app on my iPhone that shows notes on water sources, key landmarks, and my position on the trail.
Although the days are mostly hot sun and manzanita, there are moments of deep shade and beauty. When the trail dives into deep canyons that the fires couldn’t reach, I pass through stands of tall pine trees. Many of these canyons have small springs called seeps where water trickles out from the slopes and crosses the trail. My favorite of these is Horse Camp Seep, not only because of the pools of sweet water on the slick red rock, but the images the name evokes of cowboys finding their way to this camp without an app or GPS. I might need to man up a bit.
By the second night I’ve reached the end of the range. I camp just 100 yards below a rocky ridge that opens up dramatic views of the Mogollon Rim to the north and beyond. Family history on my mothers side is concentrated in that country. Soon the trail will pass by ranches, cabins and canyons that I’ve always heard spoken about but rarely if ever put in any kind of context.
As the sun sets it gets chilly for the first time in weeks. The last light shines on the ridge, and I can barely make out the San Francisco Peaks above the dark green line of The Mogollon Rim. They are white with snow from a storm that passed trough Flagstaff just one or two days before. It’s hard to believe I’m seeing them (Google maps assure me that’s them) after all this time in the desert. The Peaks represent a bit of a spiritual goal of this trip, but I have more than a hundred miles of hiking to do before I reach them.
The Arizona Trail 