It’s 1:00 PM in Southern Arizona and I’m 16 miles into my day. Even after crushing over 6,000 cumulative feet of elevation gain over Mount Mica the day before I’m pushing myself to get to the base of Mount Lemmon so I can tackle another 5,000+ feet tomorrow morning when it’s cool instead of arriving at the mountain in the hottest part of the day. I got a bad tip about water and I’m quickly running out as the heat breaks 80 and the bright Arizona sun beats down on me. The direct sunlight bakes me like I’m in an oven and I’m starting to feel sick. Sun poisoning has leached strength out of my legs and I’ve been leaking fluid from my calves for almost three days now. It’s been hours since I’ve seen shade and standing in front of me is a 1,000-foot ascent and descent up and over Molino Basin before my next supposed water.

You could say I wasn’t doing great on March 18. In fact, I can confidently say that March 18 is in my top three worst days of hiking ever, but I didn’t make it that far without enjoying some of my time as well. Actually, despite the dehydration, heat exhaustion, and general notsogreat-ness I was feeling on that day, I had felt nearly invincible the day before. This was day 10 of a nearly 40-day long journey through the Arizona desert on foot, and I would like to share that journey with you.

South Terminus

On March 10 I hopped on a plane leaving Asheville headed towards Tucson. Flying West before Sunrise extended the length of time those first rays of light hit the window beside me. I watched the night sky explode in hues of orange and soft pink. The light provided form to the black landscape below and mountains arose from the darkness glimmering with morning dew. This was the last I'd see of my mountains and of the rainforest I call home.

I arrived in Tucson having eaten nothing all day and itching for my first steps in the desert. The shuttle I hired picked me up and we set off heading South on roads with no turns and across land so flat I could see for fifty miles. Massive orange mountains spotted with shady-green brush shot up from my periphery. Their size reminded me of Montana. This was a sign I was out West again, but what really tells me I'm not home anymore is how open these wild places are. Instead of valleys there are massive plains that stretch further than the eye can see. The flatness is broken abruptly by mountains leering three, four, and sometimes five-thousand feet above me casting shadows as large as my hometown. The scale of everything makes me feel insignificant and small, and that is precisely how I ought to feel in the presence of these giants. Giants, not as old as the mountains I hail from, but still standing with their crowns pointed toward the clouds. They are bulwarks residing steadfast over their domains for longer than Man's entire history.

After pulling off the highway we spend nearly twenty minutes bouncing about on a loose gravel road. Clouds of dust affix themselves to the windshield as we rise into Coronado National Forest, and in what felt like a single moment we pulled into a parking lot, the driver wished me luck, and I was left alone in a world totally foreign to me. At the time I had nearly twelve pounds of water on my back as well as all the gear and food I'd need to navigate the desert and all the challenges it offered.

I began walking towards Mexico paying particular attention to the way the dry desert air felt as it swept through my lungs. Strong winds blasted against my body, often choking me with the drawcord of my hat while it tried to whip away and off my head. I could hear nothing but sheer gale forces thrashing about the air around me and puffs of orange and grey moon dust encircled my body. Somewhere in the winds I felt I heard whispers. It was as if the desert itself was declaring a challenge for me to rise to. How would I handle the heat? Would I have enough water? Would my recently damaged knee hold out as I tried to walk 800 miles? How would it feel to be completely alone in this vast, empty landscape on the most difficult days? All this and more rang through my head while I dropped off the Southernmost mountain and approached the Mexican border wall.

This felt dystopian and cold. One segment was nothing but barbed wire cut into strands that stood at chest-height and separating me from the south terminus. The wire shot East infinitely as if it a great hand were stitching the earth back together from some cataclysmic accident where the ground I stood on had separated from where the terminus stood a mere five feet away. Riding this line parallel to the wire was a looming wall that blocked out the sunlight where I stood. It casted a black shadow which stretched on for miles. A fella seemingly in his early forties began pulling up in his border patrol vehicle. I was already making my way back up the hill, but I gave him a wave and called down to him. “They say we’re not supposed to be here.” I called down to his open driver’s side window. He asked if I planned on illegally crossing his border. “Nope, I’m headed north.” I shouted through the desert wind. “Whelp, can’t say I care then.” From his position I suppose that was fair enough.

I walked north for five miles or so and set up camp inside a small tree-surrounded bowl on the side of Miller Peak where I would be protected from the wind. My evening was spent listening to music, video chatting with friends who were encouraging about the journey ahead, and watching the sun fall over that black, looming wall in the distance. In the morning I would crest the north side of the mountain and I knew this was the last time I’d have to look at that wall.

Mica Mountain

Jim’s trail angel camp was a needed blessing during a rough morning. 123 miles into hiking the trail and other than sun poisoning I was feeling good. This was the driest year in all of Arizona’s recorded history, so I was surprised that morning when I found myself getting pelted with snowflakes. I was surrounded by hundreds of saguaros, and as the snow kept falling on top of those stalwart cacti they began cloaking themselves in white. Specks of untouched, vibrant green shone through places where the snow hadn’t yet begun covering the cactus, and among all the things I had seen so far this was by far the most beautiful.

This was one of two campfires I had the entire trip

I pressed through the snow moving efficiently so I’d stay warm. I wanted to keep moving, but in retrospect I should have placed my gloves on immediately. Suffering a hypothermic experience during a thunderstorm back home a few years ago means my hands will sometimes stop working with me after they’ve been exposed to the cold for too long. I would shift my trekking poles from one hand to the other, swapping my off hand in my warm pockets so that I could try to get feeling and motion back in them as the snow kept falling, but it wasn’t working. I did try to put my gloves on at one point, but my fingers were so numb I didn’t have the strength in them to open the tabs on my backpack. Not my shining moment for sure. I decided that if I just pressed on I would hit the trail angel camp everyone had been talking about and surely I could get warm there. I was at mile 120 so the camp itself was only three miles ahead and I could deal with anything for three miles.

I charged through fields of cactus and snow breathing in as much of its beauty as I could. My hands were going back and forth from stinging or numb by this point, but I was genuinely enjoying myself. I might as well have been a kid again with how wide-eyed I was when going around every bend. It was all so beautiful, and what’s more it was all mine. Maybe only for that morning, but it was still all mine.

I reached the camp and immediately Jim went to shake my hand. I felt how weak my grip was and I asked him where I could go to warm up a bit. He turned the heat on in his truck and insisted I ate some breakfast and I certainly wasn’t going to say no to either of these things.

We sat in the car sharing stories. He told me about why he started angeling for the AZT and about this rollover gate project (consider giving a few dollars so he can get the trail outfitted with gates. Label the donations “Maintenance and Development” and in the comments note that you’d like it to go to Southern AZT rollover gates) he had been working on for a few years.

As he went to attend to the camp I bathed in the warmth. I decided to give opening my back another try, but my hands just wouldn’t operate. Never before had they responded so severely to cold. After fidgeting unsuccessfully with the pack for a while I managed to work the buckles open with my teeth and I adorned my gloves on in the same fashion. After ten minutes of huddling in the car’s heat I regained mobility in my hands and made good use of my time offering myself up as an assistant to Jim’s camp. I wiped snowmelt off the tables, set the chairs out to dry, unloaded groceries from the back of his car, and did whatever I could to show my appreciation for his hospitality.

The evening came and went with about fifteen new hikers arriving at the camp and sharing our various tales of adventure across the campfire. Some of them were world travellers and some were on the first trip of their lives. Two girls the same age as I had spent the previous season serving as wilderness firefighters and decided to tackle the AZT together as labor-bonded friends. I spoke far more about my dreams than my previous endeavors and it seemed to resonate with everyone at the fire that night. I told them about far away trails and adventure routes that no one had yet completed and the world of polar expeditions which I hoped to be a part of in the coming years. This evening my eyes were set on one thing and one thing only, however: Saguaro National Park.

SNP is one of the only two places on the AZT where you are required to have a camping permit, but instead of stressing where I would sleep the next night I took that as a personal challenge to clear the whole thing in one go. This was a popular challenge among a handful of AZT hikers as Mica Mountain, the primary obstacle residing within the park, is the first major challenge on the trail. It boasts over 5,000 feet of elevation gain continuously rising out of the valley floor and cresting at a height of 8,668 feet. Combine that climb with the fact that the first half of the day has no water access and you get a pretty wild ride. What the elevation profile doesn’t communicate, however, is how the mountainscape would be affected by the previous day’s snow.

I left camp at 7:00 tossing back a couple of pancakes Jim was kind enough to make us hikers that morning and then took off like a bullet towards the mountain. I worked hard to keep my pack as light as possible but long water carries always feel heavy when working up a mountain. Sections of the trail caked up my boots in areas where the sand was soft and wet and it weighed me down like terracotta moon shoes. I’d kick the muck away and move forward only to repeat the cleaning process once or twice every mile. It wasn’t a lengthy process getting the muck off, but I was hungry for miles and impatient with the minor setback. I hit the base of the mountain and didn’t take even a moment to look up at the task ahead. I charged forward up the rockscape and began traversing a series of boulder-laden switchbacks that made the initial going more mild. I eventually worked my way through all the proper switchbacks and began a segment of calf-exploding upward ascent towards the spring about two-thirds up the mountain.

The desert sun baked off the sweat I’d normally find myself drowning in back home but it also beat upon my already sun-poisoned legs. My calves would occasionally cramp and scream as pus-ladened bubbles burst onto my skin and leaked hot biological goo down my sand-covered legs. I suppose a boy who has never left the rainforest should have taken better care of his sun-protection regiment, but I assumed bathing in high spf sunblock every day was enough. Either way, there was nothing I could do to address the issue at the time, so the only option available was to keep moving forward.

I reached the spring and ripped my clothes off giving no care to the folks on horseback riding by or the college class taking their studies onto the mountain as I laid in the cold bubbling creek. I threw my head bank and drank directly out of the mountain feeling better than I had in days. The midday sun was now bearing down upon the mountain in full force and I knew I had more hot walking ahead of me so I drank as much water as I could stomach, filled my bottles back up, and kept on towards the summit… but I was wrong.

While the mid-layer of Mica Mountain is just as exposed as the rest of the desert had felt, the top third was covered in pine forest. I mean, it was a partially destroyed pine forest due to the wildfires from the previous season, but enough trees remained where the majority of the snow had still remained. Hundred yard sections of calf-deep snow meant I would often sink and slide when I walked up the mountain, and this made the going more difficult in the steep sections. I had a long belly-laugh about the situation I found myself in where I was all but naked swimming in the spring two hours ago and was now chilled by the shady, snow covered mountain top. The desert is a truly bizarre and varied environment. A totally different world from the one I’d grown up.

Sunburned and smiling as I approached the summit

I crested over the mountaintop and began descending through that same snow on the north face. The overlook resembled the Lion King’s pride rock where I stood in amazement at just how big these places were from over a mile above the valley below. I could see infinitely through the long spans of desert at the base of the mountain. I wouldn’t place a single foot on Mount Lemmon for two whole days, let alone what little daylight I still had left to finish clearing SNP. It was truly a moment of awe, but a moment is all it was. Night would fall soon and I still had to get down in order to complete my goal.

Footprints appeared to me in snow that was sometimes more than three feet deep and I followed them down the same mistaken path they’d all taken. I was straying off-trail without any guidance and I needed to correct my path or else I’d be navigating the same situation under the light of my headlamp. This wasn’t worst-case scenario by far, but it’s certainly not anything I was interested in doing. I tracked my GPS route back to the trail and returned to my descent taking slowly sections of snow-packed trail that coasted along the cliff edges. I worried constantly that a piece of snow might shift and I’d have to react quickly to ensure I wouldn’t fall into the ravine that was growing blacker by the second. All was well when I cleared out towards the edge of the forest, however, and I had just enough daylight left to see my four favorite words of the day engraved on the back of a sign: “Leaving Saguaro National Park”

I approached the gate beside the sign, breathed in my success for the day, and signed the hiker registry with the comment “I think I experienced every human emotion today” as I left the park and set up my camp for the night both energized and fulfilled. There was still gas in the tank but I decided it best to reserve myself for the push to and over Mount Lemmon in a couple days rather than to work myself until I felt drained.

One week later I would hear that Stringbean, the man attempting to set the speed record on the Arizona Trail, had completed Mica Mountain, the valley crossing, and the climb up and over Mount Lemmon all in the same day. As a man who has nothing but admiration for extreme endurance athletes, I shedded whatever pride I had taken in my big day and reminded myself that there would always be the next big thing to work towards and that once I returned from my journey I would do just that.

Mount Lemmon

The day following Mica Mountain was interesting in that it wasn’t particularly difficult in any one category. The mileage was big, but it wasn’t my biggest. The day was hot, but it wasn’t the hottest. The terrain was varied, but it wasn’t the most difficult. It for sure was the longest water carry so far, but it seemed to be the perfect combination of difficulty scattered across all these elements that made it suck so bad. I still regard this day as my worst on trail and certainly in my top three for worst hiking days ever.

My journal for that day was simple and concise:

“The sun was so hot, the water was so far away, and my stoke level was running so low thanks to another day drudging in the desert after I had just finally played in the mountains”

As I had mentioned in the opening of this entry, March 18 sucked. I suppose it’s better to say it sucked at first. When I came to the road crossing I was suffering obvious signs of heat exhaustion. I looked left for cars then right, but I couldn’t remember if I had seen any cars, so again I looked left and then right. For a third time I looked left and right before resigning myself to prioritizing shade and water over watching for traffic.

I came to a small gazebo by the road where I planted face-first on the cool cement and waited for my headache to go away. A gentleman I had met the night before at camp offered me some water and I soaked it into my neck gaiter before placing it on my forehead. I felt myself cooling down and then chugged half of what he had given me while saving the other half for the two hikers I knew were coming in after I was. While they were even worse at managing their water than me, I was honestly a little subdued by how well they seemed to handle the heat compared to me. They came in burning up but still laughing and cheerful. This is where the good part of the day begins.

We walked across the ridge heading north as the sun began setting. It was ten miles to Hutch’s Pool, and, dammit, I was going swimming that night.

A brilliant golden haze came upon us as the sun finished falling behind the horizon. The only things left in existence were the little bobbing streams of light that stemmed from our headlamps and the infinite grandeur of the starlit Western sky above. Our conversations quieted. Our footsteps synchronized. We were moving forward as one through the darkness.

Our solitude was occasionally broken by the passing of a campsite where folks were sitting out by a comforting fire and the passing of a few deer. The terrain was approachable. The moving was easy.

We descended onto Hutch’s Pool and broke camp with the efficiency one might expect from those who have been living out of their backpacks like we were. Lay the tent then stake the tarp. Extend my trekking poles from 115 to 125 and place the doorside pole into the grommets before tightening the guyline. Set the other pole on the backside of the tent and tighten the other guyline. I’d then climb into my tent, blow up my sleeping pad, lay out my quilt, clear the container of cold-soaked couscous like a starved animal, and then organize my gear either in stuff sacks or in the one pocket the inside of the tent had.

I went through the entire checklist in about fifteen minutes and then stepped back out into the cool night air. “Stay in your tent unless you wanna see ass” I called to my companions before nakedly running toward the river and diving in like a madman. Mere hours ago I was burning up and fighting to talk myself out of hitchhiking into the nearest town for a day of rest. Now I was cooled off, well hydrated, and shivering in the Sabino Creek. My legs were still burning and I had some residual sickness from my heat exhaustion spell earlier, but I felt at peace there in the water. I come from the land of the waterfalls, and even though I was three-thousand miles away in the desert I felt, for a moment, completely at home.

I floated on my back and saw starlight through the tree branches that hung above me. It’s amazing how the West can make you feel so small. I think it’s important to feel that way. I could do nothing right for the rest of my entire life, but those stars would still be out there in that great black abyss. Moments like these are the only times I ever feel at peace with myself. There’s nothing I could do to compete with that sky. That river expects nothing of me, and I don’t feel obligated to it when in its presence. Tomorrow I’ll be lost in my head again, but for now I could just be.

--

I woke the next morning before the sun came out in hopes of getting the day’s climb out of the way before things got hot again. Mount Lemmon was still recovering from its stint being set ablaze and some sections of the walk felt like pushing up the down escalator. I’d step onto loose, silted ground that shot back from every step I took. What trees would have provided structure to the path were incinerated and lying dead all around me. Corpses of what once may have been known as a forest.

After summiting the first segment I found myself navigating snow once again. My morning now felt like a microcosm of the push up Mica Mountain just a few days earlier. This was broken by the final segment of the climb wherein I traversed beautiful and thriving pine forests and crystal clear flowing streams that looked just like home. There would be the occasional burn-scarred trees and clear sections where I believe brush used to be, but this place felt more alive than any of the sandy, waterless oases I’d passed through in the previous weeks. I relished these moments in such a beautiful place and moved on.

The top of the mountain is where the tourist town of Summerhaven sits. Being surrounded by passing cars, families out on vacations, and long lines of motorcyclists was a drastic contrast from my long days alone trudging through the desert. It was a lot to take in, and so I did the only thing I knew I could do to calm my nerves - Dig my heels in as hiker trash.

Since I had beaten my two travel companions to town I knew I had some time to kill before they would arrive. I pulled off my sweat-drenched shirt, plugged into my headphones, and did some sun bathing and stretching right off the shoulder of the road. Hordes of vacationing families walked by me on their way to lunch spots and vistas, and every one of them stared curiously at the spectacle. Here was some sun-poisoned, foul-smelling, generally indifferent white boy half-nakedly laying out a full yoga routine using nothing but a sit pad to keep himself from cutting his knees up on the asphalt. I’ve found that when I get anxious the thing that often brings me comfort is more alienation and not less, and besides my tired calves needed a little TLC.

My friends arrived an hour or so later and we grabbed a bite, threw back some massive cookies, and stumbled full-bellied onto Oracle Ridge where we once again walked deep into the night.

Superior

The going was consistent after Oracle. Another long section of desert with not a lot going on, but at least I was better prepared with my water situation. I ducked under the road outside of Kearny before hopping over the train tracks and finding myself a ride into town for lunch. I remember the variety of new faces I was seeing out there. I had moved away from the bubble I had grown accustomed to and was now seeing upwards of fifteen new hikers I had only known of through the registers.

The real beauty of travelling is how easy it is to make friends while on the move. For days I had been walking completely alone. I would sleep in the bushes or off the trail near wherever I could find water, walk throughout the day with my regular mix of music, books, and silence that passed the time, and then repeat the process over and over again without seeing but maybe a person or two a day. Towns were gathering areas though, and I wasn’t in Kearny for more than five minutes before I found myself receiving hugs, sharing rides, and laughing with complete strangers over pizza and beer. Here were faces I might never see again, but the connection was instant. It’s always that way. The sweet relief simple luxuries like running water or hot food brings breeds a kind of instant community into those who have gone without. It’s no wonder major decisions have been made over dinner tables for centuries.

I kept moving forward though. With real lunch in my stomach, I was tempted to stop in town, but I had a few more miles before I wanted to take my first day off.

I cruised through canyons and by train tracks as the cargo haulers pummelled down the railway steady and confident. I spent a few hours that evening walking with two lovely young ladies before pushing onward into the darkness and settling by the Gila River. There was rain forecasted and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch the waters rise like they did back home. I pitched my tent on a raised embankment and stared for over an hour at the moonlit water of the Gila as it swelled and grew towards where I was laying. By dawn the river was about a foot and a half higher than when I layed down. Watching the water creep closer and closer to my tent was another sign that home is more of a feeling than a particular place. I remembered standing on the banks of the Horsepasture River when I was younger and watching the floods tear through the forest. Standing in the presence of such powerful forces makes me feel alive.

I rose the next morning and sloppily packed up my wet tent after aggressively shaking whatever water off that I could. The riverbank turned into the kind of muck that doesn’t like to let go, so after some goading and burying my entire arm in the mud I managed to get my gear to something resembling clean before stuffing it into its sack and making my way up through the canyon.

The morning was spent on rolling ledgeways that danced around Alamo Canyon. The far side of one bend would present lush, green valleys that were sprinkled with glistening dew from the previous night’s rain, and atop another were two and three-hundred-foot cliffs. Another hiker joined me at the cliff edge and we both stared in awe at how drastic this segment of the journey was. Mere hours ago the going was through segmented pastures filled with cattle and javelinas by the Gila and now were compressed onto the ledge of red and orange candy-striped canyons. I could almost throw a rock to the opposing cliff it was so close, and yet there was a sheer drop into the desert abyss separating us from those sandy towers across the way.

Much of the morning was like that. We walked up and down rolling hills that littered the end of the canyon and shot us out on the other side of Picket Post Mountain. The storms appeared to be coming back, but we weren’t terribly concerned. A friendly local who was on the mountain offered to take us into town, and a trail angel by the name of MJ was willing to put us up for the night. It was a return to the simple things again, and the town of Superior was the perfect place to take a day off after walking 300 miles.

The Arizona Trail (Part 1): Mexico to Superior

South Terminus

Mica Mountain

Mount Lemmon

Superior