Friday November 3, 36.4km/22.6mi

Mineral Creek (531.0/1760ft) to Best Gate in Arizona (553.6/3720ft) (AZ)

After having a pizza dinner last night and getting to bed late, we started later at 6:30am. I said goodbye to Lil Jon, who is taking a rest day in town, and then left camp. Immediately there was a railroad crossing, which was funny to see in the middle of nowhere.

There was a couple hours of steady climbing to leave the Gila River valley, and soon enough I was on top of a ridgeline taking a break.

TopShelf caught up and we hiked together for a bit, enjoying the low desert landscape.

There were occasional small descents, usually into a valley of Saguaros.

In the afternoon, we followed some old dirt roads for awhile, heading steadily southward.

A set of high-voltage powerlines soon joined us, and I could hear the buzzing of the electricity overhead.

There was also some noise happening on the ground too, when this snake started rattling at me. I carefully stepped around, giving him a wide area.

I filled up my water at a guzzler tank, which was being repaired by two employees of AZ Fish&Game. I was glad I did, because the next water source wasn’t operational. The water pump didn’t have power, as the generator wasn’t working. We tried various things to get it started, including adjusting the choke, but nothing worked. Oh well.

We hiked onwards for another hour, entering an area with weird little rock formations.

And pretty soon it was sunset.

Another hiker, Zackwards, joined us at our camp spot among some of the boulder formations. It was a pretty neat little spot.