Friday October 20, 41.5km/25.8mi

Wallace Spring (259.2/7370ft) to Jct to Daves Tank (285.0/6970ft) (AZ)

I left camp at 6:30 like usual and TopShelf was not far behind me. The morning hiking is my favorite part of the day, especially when the forest is glowing orange from the sunrise.

Just another relaxing morning hiking among the ponderosa pines.

For part of the morning the trail seemed to follow an old railroad bed, which was used by logging companies in the 1800s. The railroad tracks had long ago been removed.

TopShelf and I met up at a water source a couple hours after leaving camp, and we also met another hiker, Beer Goddess. I already knew her, we had hiked part of the PCT together in 2015 and also crossed paths a few more times since then on various trails. It was fun to walk and reminisce as we hiked through an easy trail.

Later in the morning we entered the final part of the Coconino National Forest, which is the Mogollon Rim area.

The three of us stopped for lunch at the same spot, and had a fun conversation about different trails in the US. After lunch it was pretty uneventful hiking, but the air did become a little more smokey as we continued. Eventually we came to our final water source for the day and there were already three other northbound hikers gathered there. It was a little challenging getting water from the murky pond, and each of us celebrated our triumphant return without getting our feet wet.

The view of the pond and the terrain to the south.

As we were packing up to leave, two more hikers showed up and now there were eight people gathered here… it was quite a large crowd.

We had a couple more hours of hiking to do, so we took off around 4pm to make our final miles for the day.

Some other hiker with a clever and twisted sense of humor arranged some old cow bones to spell out AZT….haha!

A little while later I stumbled across a few of these very large critters, which I tend to avoid if I can. Tarantula!

Topshelf and I reunited just before 6pm, and then hiked on another mile and a half into the darkness. It was a little more challenging than usual to find a campsite that was flat and non-rocky. Eventually we found a spot, arriving at our site at 6:45, the latest we have hiked into the night (except for the Grand Canyon day). Long day!