Monday May 13, 21.2mi/34.1km
Road FR144 (166.0/6580ft) to Above See Canyon TH (187.0/6500ft) (Arizona) +0.2mi new trail reroute
I woke up at 5:30am, to the sound of coyotes very nearby. Now that’s a cool alarm clock! Just after 6am I was heading down the trail, and just like yesterday it was nice and new and smooth.
Until all of a sudden, it wasn’t.
It looks like this was as far as the construction crew had advanced. From this point onward, for the rest of the day the trail alternated between quite rocky and relatively okay. The rocky bits looked like this:
Sometimes it was less rocky when I was hiking through a grassy field or through a dense pine forest. At one point I was hiking through a farm field and noticed an old chimney nearby.
Yesterday the new sections of trail had been constructed to go around all the little ups and downs, whereas today they just went right up and over each one.
At a few spots I got to walk on some slickrock benches which are always pretty cool.
Just like yesterday, I was crossing a little stream about every hour. Some were in a little slickrock gully…
….while others were in a mature forest.
On this particular stream, somebody had helpfully put down a bunch of branches as a bridge. Ha!
I stopped next to one such stream and had lunch for a while, enjoying the shade and the sound of running water.
Later in the afternoon one of the streams that I crossed had a legit bridge, made of purposely cut logs.
I had exited the burn area just before lunch, and now the mature forest was back all around me.
I was quite surprised to see this wetland creature hopping about through a dry region.
Sometimes the forest would open up, and I would get expansive views on the valley to the south.
Sometimes the character of the forest would change so suddenly, and it seemed to be related to the red soil type. It was such a contrast!
I was approaching a trailhead, and I decided to stop and camp before I reached it. I don’t like camping near drivable roads, since people bring all sorts of unpredictable-ness with them. I hunted around for a spot in an open forest, and eventually found something under a couple small juniper trees. For some reason they had thinned out (cut away) many of the nice pine trees, leaving an awkwardly sparse forest. I saw no people today, it’s pretty remote out here!