Saturday October 7, 26.2km/16.3mi
Stateline Trailhead (0.0mi/4990ft) to Navajo Trail Jct (16.3mi/6740ft) (AZ)
After spending the night at the house of trail angels Deena & Steve, she drove us an hour to the start of the Arizona trail. It was already pretty warm when we arrived at 10am, and TopShelf and I got a few starting photos at the monument.
Everyone loves a desert selfie.
The trail started off with a big but gradual climb up onto a wide plateau.
An hour later we were at the top enjoying the view down to the valley to the east.
As we progressed up onto the plateau, we left the open scrublands and entered a sparse forest, which thankfully had some shade.
Sometimes the trail would walk up a small wash, and I had flashbacks to the Hayduke trail from this past spring.
Pretty soon we came upon a guzzler, which sounds like a Dr Seuss name. It’s a water collection system unique to Arizona, where a large flat roof collects water in the rainy season, and stores it in a tank underneath.
It was some good water, especially by desert standards! We filled up a liter and continued onward. My hiking partner, TopShelf, loves juniper trees and we stopped to admire a few.
It was an uneventful afternoon on a mostly flat and easy trail. We did encounter this neat little geode next to the trail.
As it got hotter, the miles seemed to come more slowly. It felt like it was in the upper 70s (25C) in the sun.
In mid-afternoon we passed by the Winter Road trailhead, which supposedly had a water cache but all the bottles were empty. It did have a couple cool signs though.
It showed the entire Arizona trail! The nearby gate was also pretty unique, with the trail symbol on it.
We walked along easy trail all afternoon, which alternated between shady juniper trees and open meadows.
The flowers were very brightly colored, more than a photo can show. I’ll have to download a book of desert wildflowers…
With our later start today, we stopped to camp after only 16 miles. Plus, the next section is in an old burn area, where it can be difficult to find safe campsites. We setup under some juniper trees, and within a few minutes it was dark.
Now that we switched to Pacific time (Arizona is on Pacific time most of the year, and mountain time in the winter), the sun sets at 6pm. We made our dinners and I was in bed reading my book (“Mud, Rocks, Blazes”) by 7pm. We will have an “early” wakeup tomorrow morning at 6am when the sun rises. Though the time on my watch is relatively meaningless out here, we basically have 12 hours of daylight for hiking….