Sunday October 15, 35.6km/22.1mi

Near 500kV powerlines (154.3/6430ft) to Borrego Trick Tank (176.4/7440ft) (AZ)

I was awake at the usual time and left camp at 7am, TopShelf still getting packed up and left a little while behind me.

These desert warnings are cold, so we don’t wait around at camp, we need to start walking to get warm.

All morning the trail remained pretty flat, and weaved through some desert grasslands.

I caught up to Tweaky, who had walked by our campsite while we were still getting packed up. I hiked for a while and then took a long break next to a fence, where she leapfrogged ahead of me. Two other hikers named “One more” and “Headlamp”, from Alaska, also passed me later. Eventually TopShelf came by and I followed behind for a while. An hour later I came to a massive pond, which they hilariously call a “tank” here.

The shoreline was full of cowshit, so there was no way I wanted to drink that water. The other three hikers had stopped to take a break here, but it was too windy for me so I kept going. Pretty soon the trail turned onto a dirt road, which we stayed on for the rest of the morning.

After an hour I left the road and went by a water cache which was unfortunately empty.

I waited for a few minutes to let TopShelf know about the empty water cache, and then we both hiked a mile further to the next water source in a cattle pasture. Hi cows!

This water source was in a metal tank and it was actually very clean, so we filled up all of our bottles.

By now it was around noon, so we found a shady spot under a nearby juniper tree and ate lunch. Tweaky joined us a few minutes later, and then as we were leaving, Lizard had arrived to the water source. Much of the rest of the afternoon was walking on old dirt roads, which climbed over several small passes. I got one last photo behind me, before the view to the north disappeared.

The temperatures had warmed up to almost 80F/27C in the afternoon and it was quite warm on the road.

Humphrey’s Peak was getting ever closer, we will hike by it tomorrow.

Tweaky, TopShelf and I all played Leapfrog all afternoon, since we took breaks at different times. Tweaky just ahead here:

Just before the end of the day we left the road and returned to a trail. We had been steadily climbing all afternoon, so by now the trees had reappeared at this elevation.

We planned to camp near the Borrego trick tank, which was a little difficult (some would say tricky) to find since it was a half mile off the trail and in a maze of old dirt roads. Eventually we found it and came across another hiker from Georgia, who was already there getting water.

We had seen four other southbound hikers today, which seems like a very social trail! It was funny to see all the backpacks lined up against the fence near the water.

After we filled our water bottles, we walked a couple minutes away to a flat spot in the trees to camp. Another easy day!