Camped at 8600 ft we were expecting a frosty morning. But the winds blew all night and morning arrived at 40 degrees! Yahoo! A long descent on a smooth trail in the shade of conifers is the stuff of hiking dreams. We left the towering groves of aspen, trading them for pinion and junipers and a few cacti. Flycatchers and pinion jays flitted between them. A helicopter broke the stillness, circling back and forth, searching for what?

Small herds of deer remained warily distant. Mountain lion tracks and scat began to decorate the trail. We were hoping to spot an elk herd, but saw only tracks, along with footprints of hikers moving in front of us. The sun was blazing, so we tried to deploy the umbrella on Deb’s pack, but the wind was too gusty. Maybe tomorrow.

Because tomorrow, we start a 35 mile section with no water, we stashed water at this site several days ago. We will need to carry about 2 1/2 gallons to last 2 days. Water is so heavy! There are occasional water caches put out for hikers by locals or even other hikers, but the upcoming stretch is too remote.

Our Uber driver didn’t want to drive down the dirt road, but we only had a mile to walk to the trail. Again we were climbing a mountain this time around the ski area of Flagstaff. We reached 9,000 on a 10 mile ascent. We were high enough for mountain winds cooled by patches of snow.

We were in the land of vanilla scented Jeffrey pines, Clark’s Nutcrackers, Loggerhead Shrikes and Rose Breasted Grosbeaks. Mountain Golden Beans, Creeping Mahonia and Mule’s ear hug the trail. The Aspen are huge and gorgeous with small leaves budding in their crowns. Colorado bristle cone hunkered low. The wind gusts and calls to us all day. Below the valley is long and quiet rimmed by the San Francisco Peaks.

Several local hikers and runners were heading back. We didn’t see any other AZT hikers. We were still in the trees when we had to call it quits. The temperature was dropping and the sun went behind the trees. We had been scanning for a flat area for two miles. It wasn’t perfect, but OK. We had ended a 16 mile day, and were sore everywhere.

Sunday morning at 6:00 am we pulled out of our driveway heading east for Flagstaff. It’s an 11 hour jaunt. Aren’t we all happy plastered behind the wheel? Cramping here and there. Stuck in the middle of mountain and desert, trailer homes and dunes.

My friend Katherine loves a road trip. She makes good sandwiches and good conversations. This is how she catches up with family and friends flying down the highway in clever conversation, no mention of pain. At the start of the century, she and I drove from CA to CA. California to Faro Yukon Canada. The ultimate road trip and the miles flew by.

Back in AZ, we arrive and settle in our room by 6 pm. We have plenty of time to get a meal, but decide trail mix is easier. An early rehearsal for what lies ahead. We’re here to hike the last 200 miles of the AZT.

On Monday we drive our resupply bag to a bear locker located 38 miles up highway 180 and four miles into a dirt road to a trailhead. The locker was hidden behind a juniper bush. Two hikers sat out of sight enjoying canned lemonade left by a trail angel. We recognized the female from Mt. Lemon.

Next we drove up to Yavapai Lodge in the Grand Canyon to leave a resupply box. This is the food that will fuel us down the South rim of the Grand Canyon, across the Grand Canyon and up the north rim hiking on to Lake Jacob. We will stay at the lodge on May 1st or 2nd. We reserved both nights being unsure of our speed. We’ll cancel one of the rooms.

We were going to drive to the trail’s finish at the Utah border, but turned at highway 89 because of driving fatigue heading back to Flagstaff. This is the highway that was closed, owing to the Tunnel fire. It’s open now and we saw little evidence of the disaster.

We leave our car at the motel in Flagstaff Tuesday and resume our hike. Clear weather, 34 degrees. Stay turned.

We spent two days with our friend, Debbie, from our AK days. She now lives in Star Valley AZ. The weather was cool there, so we had a good hike and a lots of chat. We’re now at LAX heading home to return in two weeks to do the Northern sections of the AZT. We plan for warmer weather in May.

I wanted to stay on the trail despite heat and lack of water. But Terry was convinced, we might not survive at my slow pace. The northern part will happen later. I guess we’ll return in early May.

So we rented a car from the Tucson Airport despite having no transportation to the airport. Our hosts Carol and Carl have been generous with rides for all the hikers, but Tucson is 35 miles and another 30 to the airport.

Carol came in, she literally walks in, to tell us she was making two runs to the PO. I said no problem we’re not getting back on the trail here but rather picking up a rental car in Tucson. She said, good we’re taking a run into town today, and we’ll take you. That’s super nice and lucky.

A half hour later, she returned and told us her plans had changed and they weren’t making a run into town, but Carl would drive us now. We closed up out packs and were off. About ten miles out of town, Terry said, boy, the post office is a long way out. Carl slammed on the brakes and high-tailed it back.

We had spoken nothing about where we’d get the car. Nor had we mentioned we had one reserved at the airport, so when he stopped at the closest rental, we said thanks and gave him gas money. That rental had no cars until Tuesday. We called an Uber.

I asked Terry which car rental was listed on reservation. He said Budget. There it was, the longest slowest moving line. Terry waited against the wall next to the wife of the guy behind me. It took 40 minutes to inch forward, long enough to play 7 little words, Wordle, and Worldle. So what the heck. I was happy I didn’t have impatient Terry in my view. When my turn was next, I opened my phone to discover I had ordered the car from Hertz. I turned to the guy behind me and said, I’m in the wrong line. Can you tell my husband? He said, oh man. I ain’t getting involved with that. I headed over to the Hertz count, when I heard the guy say to the representative, what? The reservation can’t be for yesterday. He looked over to his wife whose was talking to Terry. The two culprits of these egregious mistakes pretending they don’t even know us.

Off we were in the rental car blistering down the highway, with plenty of water, heading off to car camp for the night. Oh no, we forgot to pick up the umbrellas we had shipped to the PO to survive the heat. Detour back to Oracle and hoping no one sees our ineptitude again. This was a stealth retrieval, a true face saving move. In and out like pros.

Resuming the blistering pace in our Corolla. We’re free from fret. And where are we going. Someone said Globe was good. No it wasn’t. Off to Lake Roosevelt. It looked great.

The park was empty. We pulled up to a site we liked. We got out and were accosted by a women surveying all the sites for possible microwave pollution. She said she didn’t get along with microwaves and hoped we had our phones in airplane mode. We we weren’t sure we could help her with that. She left when she saw us walking about camp with our phones held high to capture bird calls.

It was the break of dawn, and we heard our biker friend from Vancouver Island fly by our tent. He had this crazy AZT bike trip planned by a friend. The day before the trip, the friend tested positive for COVID. He went for it without his buddy. This route requires lots of uphill bike pushing and downhill terror. We’ve seen other bikes limiting their trek to just the friendlier paths. But this guy was going for the gusto. We were up and packing before Colton woke. He popped his head out of the tent as we were leaving just before 7:00.

We only had six miles to go, which turned out to be eight or nine with the two mile downhill path into the small town of Oracle. Biosphere 2 lies just outside the town. Once again rocks were my enemy. I ended up on my back sliding from the rocks. My backpack made it hard to get up so I waited for Terry. He looked down at me and asked, “What are you doing?”

The houses as we came into town were big cliff hangers. The trail dumped us onto a newly asphalted road. We whipped out our phones looking for a hint of which direction to walk. A woman stopped her Honda CRV at our feet. She had just found a tortoise in the road and was calling friends about this. They were in mid-rescue we she came to our aid. She was thrilled to be of help. She called her husband who was in the middle of his two hour daily conversation with his friend who has a back injury. Nevertheless he took her call. Yes, the tortoise was being rescued, but now she had a new project, us. No, he didn’t know the number of the former trail angel, but recommended she should drive over there. So off we went.

At the trail angels, she left the car on and jumped out while the car dinged and dinged to her about taking the keys from a running car. She didn’t care and the car gave up. In the meantime, we hadn’t turned off our Garmin locator so anyone looking at it realized we were heading for town. One of our friends started texting. We had two dramas playing out at once.

No one answered the door to this small motel with little A-framed cabins. Finally she phoned and a man stepped out. We couldn’t hear their conversation, but we watched the drama. They had retired from renting these cabins, but someone else had rooms. She hugged the guy several times, and we were off to find another room.

She was excited because this was a new Air BnB. The owners appeared a bit older than us. A couple of years ago they purchased this large home— over 7,000 sq ft.— or so they say. Now it has three rentals. We took a room and we were squared away for the night waiting to pick up our food.

We didn’t feel good about the next two segments of the hike because of heat and the unpredictability of water, so we got serious about moving forward to the last section. So we worked on renting a car. Then we notified Debbie our friend in Star Valley to visit for a few days while we checked out our next move forward to the Grand Canyon and Utah. We were all set up. I said we better check on the temperature there. Every night for the next 14 days was going to be below freezing. We don’t have clothes for that.

So we cancelled everything and went back to plan A. But we still don’t know about water.

Every time we get into town, we take everything out of our packs. We need to find our dirty clothes to wash, find garbage to throw out and replace the pond scrum we’ve been drinking with clear tap water. Town trips are not relaxing. We had a 6:30 breakfast, but we weren’t ready to leave until our packs were stuffed.

We called for an Uber and we were off in his Rav 4 by 9:30 and should should have been on the trail by 10:00. The driver was listening to the hits of the sixties and complaining that they only play what are considered commercial hits when there are better songs. He asked me if I wanted him to turn the music off. The volume was so low I couldn’t make out one song. I should be happy riding with someone older than me, but now I worry about possible cataracts, or some dementia because he thinks he can hear the radio.

It was a twenty-seven mile drive to Romero Trailhead. We had to go in through a state park. We stopped to pay the fee, and I asked the ranger if we could get to Romero Pass from this park. “Not anymore. It’s closed for repairs.” The only other way to get to the trail was on the other side of town on the road we came from last night. In fact we would have to resume our hike where we left off with the eight mile climb now starting after 11:00 AM in the mounting heat. This was now impossible because if we couldn’t make it in one day, we’d be too late. We wanted to be in Oracle by Sunday evening.

So we asked the driver if he’d drive us the 29 miles up the mountain to the small town of Summerhaven. He capitulated. He seemed to regret the decision as the road slowly wound it’s way up. We passed many bicyclists conquering this steep incline. Our driver hated bicyclists and became more vocal about it as the miles mounted, along with the cost, finally reaching $116.

We were dropped off in the middle of this cute ski town, well ski town for about two days a year. He let us out at the cafe where all the hikers we had met were milling. You can imagine how we felt emerging from a car all fresh and clean as the other hikers had earned a rest and we had bought one. We left post haste with our tails between our legs.

This hike should have been been easy. It was only ten miles. After a long uphill, it’s followed by a down hill. Ha! Up we went. Sharply. Any downhill break was covered with breakneck rocks trying to take us down. And all the while the wind blasted. If our Uber driver read this he’d say, “We’ll you signed up for this.”

It seemed we should be near. In truth we had only made it four miles. When we saw a couple of flat spots we pitched the tent and whipped out the Jet Boil. It was a kale and white beans with rice night. We’d pay for this mix later. As we were cooking in the tent, hiker Colton called to us, can I share this spot with you? Sure. We had just met him at the cafe. He is an ambassador for Six Moons backpacking gear. Amazingly he’s hiking with Cystic Fibrosis. The wind was howling and continued all night.

Because we camped part way down the north side of Mica Mtn, it seemed we would have an easy, downhill sort of day. Our goal was to camp a few miles past Molino Basin campground for a 20 mile day. We hit the trail at 6:05. The weather and terrain gods would have none of it.

Rocky and treacherous, the north side of Mica was anything but fast and easy. As the morning wore on, the temp rose quickly into the 90’s. Shade was nonexistent. Every animal had crawled or slithered into some hidden pocket of agreeable conditions, except a few miserable hikers. Hey did I mention seeing a long (5-6 ft) green snake laying across the trail a few days ago? When it became aware of our presence, it launched off the trail and up into the branches of a palo verde tree in the blink of eye. It’s eyes showed total focus and I wondered what actions it might be considering.

There was no guaranteed water source, forcing us to carry a couple of gallons, which we replenished at one mudhole and one hiker box along the way. By 3:00 the final ascent began. It took over an hour to climb 3/4 mile. We stopped once so Deb could replace her spent caffeine. Five o’clock found us in the Molina campground parking lot, totally exhausted and super thirsty. What to do? We put out our thumbs and hitched a ride into town for a night in a hotel. We’ll return to the trail tomorrow….

We hiked uphill the whole morning and left the desert well behind. The trees were sugar pines and Jeffery pines. It looked like the woods around Tahoe. There was even a stream with water. The air was cool, and the winds swirled around us. Despite being a trudge, it was pleasant. We climbed about 4000 feet to 8900.

We were happy to start the decent. We flew down hoping to make the progress we needed. If we were going to be in Oracle by Sunday, we needed to get in a fifteen mile day. It seemed possible. Maybe we could do Seventeen miles. And then the trail narrowed until we needed to push through the prickly bramble. Rocks of small bolder size to pea gravel covered the trail tripping us up and sliding us down. No. Falls but lots of slips it was painful, slow and maddening.

We stopped at 5:30 by a stream to get water. Our last source in 30 miles. Our packs will be heavy with water tomorrow. We were fortunate to find a flat spot to pitch our tent. We ate dinner with a Scott’s oriole flitting around and serenading. We only made it 13 miles. Will start before sunup tomorrow.

The day started with a sit-down hot breakfast in our hotel. We called an Uber and fifteen minutes later we were headed for Hope Creek Trailhead 27 miles away. The last mile or two was on a dirt road. Our driver was cool about the whole drive even when his Uber app lead us astray, and Terry directed him with his iPhone Maps.

We hiked down 2.5 miles to reach the official AZT. We had another 8 miles before we’d arrive at our campground named Grass Shack. We had reserved a spot here on Recreation.gov last night. We were heading into Saguaro National Park, and you can only camp in one of their camps.

It was a hot 93 degrees. I was dragging my feet and the rest of me. We entered the park and the magnificent saguaros appeared everywhere. We identified the song of the Gila Woodpecker, the Cristal Thrasher and the White-Winged Dove, new birds for us.

And then the climbing began. With the added heat, it was torturous. Whine, whine. Shade was very occasional. Terry met a couple of hikers at the hotel. He was sure they were older than us. We found them tucked into the supreme shady spot of this area. They were very gracious and offered the spot to us, but we declined. I was pissed we had, when they passed us later skipping along up the incline.

We were well above the saguaro before a few trees started to dot the landscape. I felt I couldn’t take another step. At our last trip to the grocery store last night, I found my favorite pick-me-up, 4 oz cans of double shot espresso. I made room for two of them in my pack. Terry said it was time to use one. After downing one, I, too, skipped up the trail the last three miles. When we got to the camp the other couple and a single man were set up and visiting.

We found a great site out of view of the others. We’re on a babbling stream. Despite the babbling we heard a desperate cry of what we believed to be a baby bird waiting for parents to return. The app identified it as a Cooper’s Hawk. Next we heard low chat, chat, chat, chat persisting. This was a Yellow-breasted Chat. Both the calls to this chat and an Elf Owl lingered into our dreams.

Cristal thrasher, gila woodpecker, yellow-breasted chat, Coopers Hawk, white winged dove elf owl