Sunday November 5, 28.0km/17.4mi
Camp Desperation (578.3/3940ft) to American Flag Hill (595.7/4500ft) (AZ)
Our mediocre camp spot gave us a good night’s rest, and we were excited to get to town today for some real food. Our tents in the dawn light:
We had 10 easy miles to get to the road, and it was more of the classic low desert, though I’d noticed that the Saguaros had disappeared.
After an hour, I came into view of tomorrow’s objective, Mt Lemmon.
I was walking along, and all of a sudden my legs hurt. I had kicked up a piece of cholla cactus with my right foot, and it landed on my left leg. Ouch.
After 10 minutes of figuring out how to pull it out, I got all 8 spines out of my skin, which was now temporarily numb. I think those cacti have a mild neurotoxin, which seems to wear off after 15 minutes. The rest of the morning was uneventful.
Well, except I saw another Javelina. They kinda look like small wild pigs, but aren’t at all related to swine.
I arrived at the trailhead at 9:45, and TopShelf was there 15 minutes later. We walked a mile to the main paved highway, and hitched into the town of Oracle. Our ride was two hunters, out scoping for deer. They also gave us cold refreshing beverages!
We immediately went to the Mexican restaurant for lunch, and it was an amazing quantity of food.
After lunch we walked across the street to a Circle-K convenience store to buy some more hiking food. It was a big store, kinda like a Stewart’s or a Sheetz, so they had almost everything I would want. They also had big cinnamon rolls! Ali ate an entire one herself.
We hitched a ride back to the trail at 3pm, and rested for a little while in the shade, in a tunnel where the trail passes under the road.
Eventually we started hiking, and it was still warm but now there was more shade. We spent a couple of hours traveling thru Oracle State Park, which was mostly grassy knolls.
We did walk thru a wash briefly, which felt pretty hot, as the sand was radiating heat.
The trail gradually climbed up for the last hour, and I had a unique view of the sunset on the surrounding mountains.
We hiked until 6:15, which meant we used headlamps for 15 minutes. Eventually we found a very nice flat spot to camp, on an old section of the Arizona trail (it was rerouted a few years ago). Tomorrow is our big climb up to Mt Lemmon, which sits at an elevation of 8,000ft.