Monday October 30, 36.2km/22.5mi

Pine Creek (466.3/4640ft) to Forest Road 1011 (488.8/2590ft) (AZ)

We had another early 6am start from our campsite. A weather front had moved in, and it was very windy and a little cold.

For the first hour of hiking, I could watch the moon set over the cliffs to the West.

Eventually the sun came over the horizon and turned the tops of the mountains orange.

Once I had hiked up over a saddle and back into another valley, the wind had lessened in the dense pine forest.

I walked through a valley that was called Reavis Ranch, which I think historically had been a ranch but was now reclaimed by a hundred years of regrowth and nature.

I came to Reavis Creek where I got some nice clear water.

And I dumped out the water that I had from last night, which was definitely green. It looked like a smoothie from Jamba juice, haha.

TopShelf caught up and we hiked together for a little while, passing by this massive old juniper tree. It looked mostly dead but still had some living branches.

A little later, the forest went away and we re-entered some high meadows which were very windy.

We had another descent which was on an easy trail, and we ended up in another sheltered valley with little wind.

When I got to a trailhead, I waited for this snake to move out of the trail. The snake was very slow to move, probably because it was a little cold outside.

The last hour of the morning we had a roadwalk up on a high ridge.

And we can see all the way down into the valleys, including the valley to the west where Phoenix is located.

We had lunch at a sheltered spot where the trail left the dirt road and started to make a massive descent. Even in our sheltered spot under the junipers, it was still kind of windy so we did not stay long. We started the long 3000ft descent down into Reavis Canyon.

As we got lower, the saguaro cacti started to reappear again.

We stopped by our last water source for the day, which was guarded by a bunch of wasps and a rattlesnake. Fun times.

The rest of the afternoon was on an easy trail that had only a few of the pokey plants called cat’s claw.

Among the hundreds of normal looking Saguaros, we also saw a few of the odd ones.

Just before sunset, we entered a cool little redrock canyon which we followed for a mile.

It was amazing to watch the sunset make the red cliffs even redder.

We setup camp at the end of the canyon, and in a dense little bunch of juniper trees, to try and block the wind. I hope this level of wind is not normal for this area!