Hiking the Desert: how to be safe and have fun
I gave this talk as part of BackpackingLight’s Trail Days Online event. Click here to access the event. My talk is at about 2:30 on day 2.
Tag: AZT
Trump border idiocy threatens the Arizona Trail
Building a border wall is worse than immoral. It is stupid and ineffective: most illegal immigrants arrive legally and then overstay their visas. A wall on the Arizona border will change nothing at all with respect to immigration. But it is destroying unique habitats, dividing Indigenous peoples, and imprisoning wildlife. And blocking the southern terminus Read More …
What is it like to feel like prey while hiking?
Seeing fresh lion tracks while walking through a narrow canyon alone is always a bit unnerving. Particularly when then tracks disappear and you no longer know whether you are ahead or behind the lion. I’ve had this experience a few times – in the narrow stretches of Mission Canyon on the PCT, and in Mee Canyon in western Read More …
My article on hiking the Arizona Trail has been published on TrailGroove
The article is a bit more coherent (I hope) than my trail journal. I wrote it before I did the northern half of the trail, so it just covers the spring portion of the flip-flop. Lots of good pictures in a nice layout – check it out.
AZT Mile 388, end of the flop
Some clouds rolled in last night and created a spectacular sunrise It was only the second day of clouds on the entire hike. Every other day the sun has blazed down on me in its unfiltered glory. Or not so much down, as the season is getting later and the sun lower, but *at*me, roasting Read More …
AZT Mile 396, last camp
I’m at the last ridge, the last lookout over the desert mountains and valleys of Arizona. The rough ranges receding are beautiful in their way, but also appalling. Any traveler would be dismayed to see how hard a road lies ahead. Wait — I’m a traveler. And I would be appalled if I were continuing on. Especially Read More …
AZT Mile 414, under Mazatzal Peak
Another hard hike. But just hard, not punishing and brutal. The climbs were 500 and 1000 feet, not 3500. And never more than two of steep, rough, overgrown and shadeless, whereas yesterday was all four nearly all the time. I’m camped under Mazatzal Peak, near the crest of the range. I’ll soon start the long Read More …
AZT Mile 429, the Mazatzals
Whipped. Beat. Exhausted. Dog-tired. I don’t think I’ve ever done a harder day of hiking. The 3600 foot climb up from the Verde River was hard of course. Hard is fine. What made it brutal was the rough trail, its steepness its roughness its utter shadelessness and its lack of water. Only 15 miles but Read More …
AZT Mile 444, Whiterock Mesa
Left Pine this morning feeling homesick. That seems to be what towns do to me. They are enough like home to make me think of home but are far inferior to my actual home. Which is no knock on Pine, as fine a trail town as one could desire. I was greeted with a parade Read More …
AZT Mile 466, under the Mogollon Rim
Another bitter cold start to the day from my camp in General Springs Canyon. The trail soon reached the Mogollon Rim, and thus the end of my hike in the plateau domain of northern Arizona. It’s been 300 miles of walking in mostly flat (with one Grand exception) terrain, all between 7000 and 9000 feet, Read More …