March 7: Temporal Gulch

Posted on by michaelhard

Day 6: Rain Coming

Everything about the day was perfect, except for the storm coming in.

On March 7th Chris and I woke up, walked a few steps down the street to The Gathering Grounds for pancakes, then hiked out of town. Past the Wagon Wheel Saloon, past Velvet Elvis Pizza, past Patagonia High School and 7 miles up a dirt road to the Temporal Gulch Trail Head for a picnic lunch with my parents. They had made the 90m drive from Tucson to bring us fresh sandwiches and hear our war stories from the trail. Mom whimpered when we showed her pictures of one of our campsites – somehow it looked more desolate in photos. We talked, watched two cowboys drive a herd of cattle down the canyon, then said goodbye as they took Chris back to civilization and left me to keep hiking solo.

Steep hike up Temporal Gulch
Steep hike up Temporal Gulch

After they drove away, I hiked north through Temporal Canyon. My goal, spending the next night in a mining cabin in Kentucky Camp, was 16 miles away. I wanted to put in at least 4 miles in whatever last hours were left of the afternoon. The trail was a dirt road that climbed at what seemed an impossibly steep grade into the Santa Rita Mountain Range. Mount Wrightson started to loom in the distance.

By 5:30 I crested a saddle at 6000 feet and decided to call it a night. Wrightson loomed overhead to the west. I scrambled about 50 yards off the trail to a (somewhat) flat spot amongst the rocks and junipers, set up my tent and even got a little campfire going. It didn’t seem desolate at all – actually very cozy. My tent was well positioned to get the earliest rays of sunshine in the morning, assuming the rain forecasted for that night ended early.

Cozy fire before rain starts later that night
Cozy fire before rain starts later that night

 

 

 

 

March 6: Patagonia

Posted on by michaelhard

Day 5: Enchiladas and Beer

Chris and I strolled into Patagonia early the next afternoon. We were hot, dusty and grimy after 4 1/2 days of hiking since the Mexican border, but we knew we had beds waiting for us at the Stage Stop Hotel in town. The trail ended 3 1/2 miles outside of town, but as we walked down the two lane highway, we were as happy as two kids walking home from an afternoon of fishing.
Patagonia is tiny even by Arizona standards. Its initial reason for existence was the mining boom of 100 some odd years ago, and now about 900 people live scattered around the valley in homes new and old. The writer Jim Harrison lived here until he died a few weeks ago. If you know his philosophy about life, you’ve got a good sense of Patagonia. It’s a good place. Good vibe. There’s maybe 3-4 restaurants, an RV park, a school, some shops, and the Wagon Wheel.

After checking in, cleaning up, and dropping our packs, we went right for beers at the Wagon Wheel. I’m sure in the light of day it doesn’t seem like much, but that night it was the best damn bar in the world. We traded stories with a Canadian couple also hiking the trail, who told us among other things that they had run into Mexican refugees above Bathtub Spring the night after we had camped there. At 2am in the morning they heard steps and whispers, and when they poked their heads out of their tents three figures stopped and a voice tentatively asked in English, “No problem?”. “No problem,” they said, and the figures went on their way.

 Sleeping in a bed was as nice as I thought it would be, but both Chris and I woke up the next morning with sore backs anyway. We grabbed pancakes at the Gathering Grounds restaurant next door, said hi to he labs on the ATV, shouldered our packs and started down the road again to met my parents 7 miles out of town at the Temporal Gulch trailhead.