Superior and the Superstition Mountains

A series of alarms started blaring in the early morning as a house crammed with sixteen hikers began to come alive. Food bags crinkled underneath the percussive sound of boots and trail runners stomping about the floor. We were all getting ready to go back into the desert. I hopped aboard the afternoon shuttle so I could enjoy one more quiet morning sipping coffee and stretching out the sore parts of my now-seasoned body.

You can see Picket Post in the distance right before the storm swallowed it

The simple things are always what I think about when I’m on trail. It often consumed my mind in the desert. Weeks of solitude and labor were broken by moments of caffeinated bliss. For a few moments, I was refraining from my pursuit of Utah. While in Superior I was able to just be without any particular, quantifiable goal in mind. These moments are few and far between in the madness of my home life or the continual push of my life on trail, but I always try to appreciate them fully when they arise.

I await for my turn to head back into the mountains and wish the small mining town goodbye. The thunder clouds on the horizon let out a mighty boom as I stepped out of the car and I knew I had to make a strong pace to avoid being caught in them. The rolling ridges come and go quickly as I enter the Superstitions proper. Where I had previously been marching through sandy, apathetic desert I now stood before beautiful shrubbery and cold creeks that bubbled and rolled over the rocks in the valley. The mountains loomed overhead not like the intimidating giants I was accustomed to seeing from the desert floor, but instead like old friends beckoning me towards the summit.

I ascended through expanses of green grass and beautifully exposed rock cropping out over the cliffs of the Sups (pronounced “soups”). I stood just below the ridgeline and watched in astonishment as the storm clouds swallowed both the sun and Picket Post Mountain where I had been walking just a few days prior. Here I was on the shoulders of giants, thousands of feet above the valley floor and miles away from the violent rains flooding the distant washes of the Gila Wilderness. I was reminded once again of my smallness, and I thanked the world for the continual reeducation.

My journal entry read: “Oh, wow are the Superstitions fucking sexy.”

Roosevelt Lake

A little over 340 miles into my journey I reached Roosevelt. I distinctly remember stumbling into the bar that afternoon feeling dehydrated and worked before stumbling back out. Some flirtatious conversation with the bartender led to a belly full of free drinks, and I savored that quiet night sleeping alone on the ridge watching the sleepy town’s lights dance on the lake.

There was a road crossing the following morning, and where there are roads there is hitchhiking. This was what I thought at least, but it seemed Roosevelt wasn’t keen on hitching, so I walked the road back into town to grab myself some breakfast. The road walk ate up a little time, and the restaurant staff being late for their shifts meant we couldn’t get breakfast right away and that ate up some time as well. Combine these two events with the multitude of hikers I met and chatted with and half the day seemed gone to the wind. That day was especially hot, and the climb into the Four Peaks Wilderness was especially exposed. We hatched a plan.

With it being the hottest part of the day and us having direct access to Roosevelt Lake, we decided it best to spend the afternoon swimming and enjoying the cool water while waiting for nightfall before making our ascent. It was a full moon that night and the entire mountainside would be illuminated making the trail easy to navigate in the dark. We were all in agreement.

I hadn’t swam but one other time this whole journey. Feeling the desert sand and layers upon layers of sunscreen wash off of me was cathartic. The water was cold even with the sun glaring down upon much of the lake. It was a welcomed moment of relaxation before getting back on the long walk.

We started the climb out of Roosevelt in the afternoon sun. It was still hot, but not nearly as brutal as it had been mere hours earlier. We spoke to two hikers who walked a mile in only to find themselves defeated by the oven-like exposed mountain and turned back. Heading into the Four Peaks in this way was definitely the right call, especially considering the thousands of feet of steep, sandy ascent we’d be tackling.

We crested the first major climb right as the sun began to set. The various rivers that fed Phoenix were illuminated in a golden hue that glistened and danced within the valley below. Golden hour had blessed us with our last incredible views of the lake before we turned into the inner corridor of the mountain range and lost sight of everything in the world except the dimly lit trail in front of us and the massive glowing moon in the sky.

Notice the amount of burnt-out shrubbery

About two hours into our nightwalk we began navigating the burn-scarred segments of the wilderness. Series of microclimates would blast us with chilling winds only for pockets of bizarre warmth to greet us merely ten feet further down trail. The temperature swings between these microclimates was probably ten degrees or greater, and that, combined with our unending banter and laughter at how steep and shoddy this section of the trail was, kept us engaged for most of the night. We often discussed mileage and elevation gain as thru-hikers do, but moments like these were also what allowed me the privilege to hear my companion’s stories. One had just completed his master’s and the other was still dealing with some very personal loss. While one was embracing a last hoorah before stepping into the “adult” world of jobs and mortgages and other various responsibilities, the other was talking about how he wanted to tour Japan on a bike and stay in temples as often as he could. In all honesty we were three pretty different guys, but we were all brought together on this long walk and able to share some of the journey together.

By the time we had made it into the Four Peaks proper it was almost midnight and we were all starting to slow down. We set up camp on the exposed ridge by Chillicut Trail junction and barely made it through dinner before passing out on our cowboy camp setups.

Morning brought our first view of the mighty four peaks. Side by side stood four giants delicately glistening in the morning sun. They stood burn-scarred and over 7,000 feet tall. The peaks loomed easily an entire mile above the valley floor. This was our next destination; a mighty range of mountainous wilderness reduced to rock and ash by the previous year’s fire season.

Pine and My Side Canyoneering Adventure

I was riding pretty high on the “trail provides” train after two hikers snatched up me for a ride into town on a rough day. One of my shoes were blown out on the side which meant the constant need for emptying sand and gravel from them as well as the final deathblow to my socks which were now resembling ankle warmers instead of foot protection. I was surprisingly hydrated after a long day marching through burnt-out Four Peaks Wilderness, but the exposure cooked me and had me feeling less than ideal. The ride I had lined up to get me into town bailed and the shuttle service I contacted wanted nearly $180 roundtrip for the job that they wouldn’t come out to provide until the next day anyways. I had just resigned myself to sleeping underneath the overpass of highway 87 when the two hikers approached me. It was the simple things as it always was. I slept in a bed, had a real meal, snagged some new shoes and socks, and cleaned my entire kit before stepping back out into the desert. For the next few days I felt unstoppable, and even though my town stop put me behind the rest of the class, I caught up to everyone in two days and we all walked into the town of Pine together.

The bad part of Pine: my replacement sleeping pad that was scheduled to arrive days before I came into town never made it, and I pushed harder than necessary to make it into town.

The good part of Pine: a banging breakfast and an opportunity to call up one of my old friends from the Appalachian Trail for an Easter weekend of adventure.

Within two hours of calling my friend Spreadsheet he arrived in Pine to sneak me out to Flagstaff to teach me the art of canyoneering. We threw down on some loaded pizzas in town before heading out the next morning towards Sedona. For the sake of protecting these incredible places I will not be listing the names of the canyons or regions we canyoneered in, but I will still share the story.

Day one consisted of a fairly steep but quick climb up the side of a red, sandy cliff that resulted in a number of “spicy” rappels off multiple cliff edges. Footholds on this route were few and far between, and while we continually joked about how “spicy” the rappel starts were, everything came and went rather easily. The only time things didn’t go smoothly was a rookie error on my part where I reached for the rope above me while cresting over the ledge and I sucked my hand between the rope and the rock. With my full bodyweight adding pressure to my unprotected hand on the rugged cliff’s edge it was no wonder I ripped it wide open. I am writing this two months later and it only just finished healing, albeit permanently scarred.

Day two brought us to a less “spicy” (that will never not be funny to me) series of rappels that sent us deep through native lands. A massive series of rockfalls meant we had to circumnavigate the intended approach and traverse the outer rim of the canyon instead. Good for us because this alternate route sent us through a beautiful cliffside ruin that we assumed to be an old soldier’s lookout. While I never previously had any interest in rappelling out East there is something incredibly appealing about dangling hundreds of feet off the ground and sliding down a rope into these sacred, hard to reach places.

After our weekend of canyoneering Spreadsheet to me back to Pine where my package still hadn’t arrived, and I resigned myself to sleeping on the ground until I walked back to Flagstaff and could get a new pad from an outfitter.

The people I meet during my travels make them more than worth it

The Big Push to Flagstaff

Somewhere along my week in solitude for reasons that I cannot seem to find anymore, I decided to try for my biggest mileage day ever. My previous 24-hour record was 55 miles, and my previous single-push record was 77 miles. While it was unlikely I’d push into the high 70s for any reason, I found it an entertaining thought to breeze past the painfully flat section atop the Mogollon Rim by pushing myself into at least a 60-mile day.

Summitting the rim was a beautiful moment because it signified my entrance into the high desert and my final goodbye to the sandy heat trap of the low desert in Southern Arizona. From this point onward it would be pine forests, the Grand Canyon, and my final objective; the Utah Border. I saw miles upon miles of meandering flat track as the trail parallelled the old railway that used to run through this region, and where there is flat track there is easy mileage.

I pushed steadily throughout the day, and aside from a quick hitch in and back out from the general store, I moved with the utmost consistency. Three miles an hour was my pace for the whole day, and by nightfall I was already over 40 miles in. I passed a hiker who generously gave me some spare batteries for my headlamp and I marched into the night.

My closest water was frustratingly far off trail, almost a full mile, and while I wasn’t in the mood to waste time, I had learned my lesson about hydrating more than enough times by this point to get the message. Railroad Tank wasn’t really marked, and I blazed passed the first turnoff by a quarter-mile before I realized what I had done. I turned around and marched through the woods toward the tank when a story I had been told came back into my mind. I had been told once or twice that this part of Arizona was wolf territory, but I hadn’t really seen anything to make me pay it much mind. No one in our class had seen signs of wolf and there weren’t many locals to chat with who could give me an update on where they roam. It was either the fourth or the fifth consecutive elk skeleton I had passed that made me think about the wolves (or was it the sixth? I suppose I can’t quite remember), and while the hairs were beginning to stand up on my neck I’ve always had a plan in place for animal encounters. The first step was to switch my headlamp to S.O.S. mode wherein it would start aggressively strobing. This would blind the animal as long as it was looking in my direction. Secondly, I would take my trekking poles and slap them together as I started yelling at the creature with the occasional thrown rock if the situation justified it. Lastly, I would maintain my distance from the creature as I circumvented the area and made my way out of its residence. This worked all the time with coyotes on the East Coast, and I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work with wolves.

Something about wolves and the apathy of the desert

I marched calf-deep in sticky mud at the Railroad Tank and began filtering liters of murky water when I saw two illuminate eyes staring at me from the woodline. There are a few things that made this situation tricky, and that was my need to pack up my water and water filtration kit, the deep mud that often caused me to stumble about while moving, and the fact that the area I had to return to was the same stretch of woods where the canine was standing. Just so we’re clear, I have probably seen a hundred coyotes in my lifetime of playing in the mountains. I have come face to face with them a half-dozen times on hiking trips as well. If this creature was a coyote, it is for damn sure the largest coyote I have ever seen in my entire life and much, much more steadfast than any I’ve ever encountered

While the situation made my work more difficult, the response was still the same. First, the blinding strobe. Second, loud noises. Third, get outta dodge. It took me a while to get out of there, and I moved significantly slower with the extra pounds of mud caked onto my legs and shoes, but I came out of there without the beast in tow… at least not as far as I could tell.

I appreciated the encounter for no other reason than the fact that I was now wide awake during the night stretch of my trek. I had plenty of water and my spare batter…… except I didn’t have my spare batteries. My headlamp was dying and it had now become apparent to me that the only thing which would keep my only viable light source alive was buried in mud miles back in a wolf’s watering hole. It was a new moon, and while the great Western starlight was awe-inspiring it did jack shit for navigation. The decision was made for me. I layed down on the ground and drifted to sleep on a grassy ridge with 50-miles under my belt for the day. I was too tired to really have an opinion on the matter, and it wasn’t like how I felt about not accomplishing my goal could help me navigate a pitch-black trail anyways. I gave myself a pat on the back for the effort, relished the fact that the next day I’d wobble into Flagstaff and enjoy my last couple days of rest before finishing the Arizona Trail.

The Grand Canyon

Among all the names and locations along the Arizona Trail, there is no place more widely recognized than the Grand Canyon. It only took me three days after leaving Flagstaff to reach the big ditch, and this would be my first time ever standing atop either of its great rims. Per usual, I wanted to experience the canyon on my terms, and by “my terms” I mean completing a single day rim-to-rim traverse from South Kaibab to North Kaibab. While my instincts actually begged me to try for a rim-to-rim-to-rim (bucket list, you know?) wherein I would turn around and complete another crossing of the canyon the next day, I, alas, abandoned the idea in the name of logistics. My plane home was already booked for the following week, and I had nothing to prove except that I had finished the trail.

My walk started just shy of 5:00 AM as I descended over 5,000 feet toward the Colorado River. It was almost two hours before I saw that crystalline blue/green stream rushing through the bottom of the canyon, and at least another hour before I touched it. I had a real issue where my ankle swelled up against my sand-gaiters and I lost circulation to my foot. This was a kind of pain I had never felt before, even with the thousands of times I’ve probably rolled my ankles or fallen on a long hike. The pain was horrid and only through gritting my teeth and cursing could I make any discernible progress toward the North Rim. I sat in the Colorado River massaging my leg until the swelling finally began to drop, and after an hour of resting I loosely tied my shoe back up and continued limping North without my gaiter on. I’d be lying if I said this event didn’t ruin my entire day in the canyon, and when I look back at my photos from that day I only think about how miserable my ankle felt. For all of you future Grand Canyon visitors, listen to me when I say LOOSEN YOUR SHOES. Your feet will swell after dropping so far so fast, and you want to make the most of your time in the canyon.

I finished my ascent of the canyon, took a million photos of myself on the other side (25 miles and 6,000+ feet of gain from where I had started) and was mollywhopped by the fact that I was actually almost done with this thing. All I had been doing for over a month was working towards the finish, and now I didn’t even want to be there anymore.

Humphreys Peak can just be spotted in the background

Utah and the Northern Terminus

On the 39th day of my journey through the desert, I walked alone through a series of grassy fields near the Utah border. Most of that morning just felt like another day of hiking, but somewhere in the early afternoon things changed for me. The area I was set to walk through was rerouted due to fire damage, and while this was marked on the GPS map, the turnoff was completely wrong and the bad map data added nearly three miles to my final day. I had a deadline to meet if I was going to meet my ride out of the wilderness, and more generally I just hate being late to things. I NEEDED to be at the terminus by 7:00, and that’s exactly what I intended on doing.

I threw on my old running playlist and moved at a hearty jog for the next three hours. Manchester Orchestra’s “I Know How to Speak” was blaring in my headphones (as well as their song “The Silence”) as I glided along the dirt track. I counted down every mile and every song that kept me separated from Utah. I hadn’t moved this fast the entire journey, and the pace brought all my senses to an apex. I felt how strong my legs had grown after 800 miles of walking with my life on my back, after summitting Mica Mountain, after traversing hundreds of miles of desert, after all the highs and lows that came with endless weeks of raw solitude. I felt it all boil up inside me as I sprinted down the canyon. I actually got ahead of schedule after a while, and I could nearly taste that cold, fresh, Appalachian spring water on my tongue after sipping from cow tanks for months. I saw myself hugging my brother in the airport parking lot as he picked me up from my flight home. I envisioned writing this very piece you’re reading now; combing over every interesting detail of my long walk and where it might leave me next. I was already hungry for what came next, and I was so grateful for everything that the Arizona Trail had brought me.

The small ridge came into the view, and I knew behind the rock stood the terminus. This was the result of months of planning and nearly 40 days of execution. I blazed down toward the rock, swept past it, and leapt onto the pedestal which signified the end of my journey. I hugged the rock which felt cool in the setting sun, and all at once I felt nothing. Not a journey completed. Not some great crescendo toward the goal I had been working toward. It was just..over? I felt nothing but my own heavy breathing and a moment of reflection. I truly felt nothing at the border, not even relief. It wasn’t at all how I anticipated my finish feeling.

I relished in the fact that I had made it ahead of schedule at least. I looked down at my watch and realized the northern terminus was in a different time zone from the rest of the trail… I was thirty minutes late in Utah time. Fuck Me.

The Arizona Trail (Part 2): Superior to Utah