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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Arizona Trail 