Start: State Line Campground, Arizona northern border
Finish: Water catchment
Daily Mileage: 16.5
AZT Mile: 13.2
Note: I am writing this journal as a stream of consciousness at the end of the day after hiking many miles. I’m not proofreading or reading what I wrote. I will do that later and revise the entries, but I do not want to spend my time on the trail working through those details. I will also write whatever I am thinking as I’m typing, so it may not make sense or offend. I am carrying extra weight in equipment to do this blog, and editing a Wordpress site on a cell phone is not ideal, to say the least, especially with the low quality wifi I expect on the trail. Please just consider the experience, and not the details. -Yeti
My start of the Arizona Trail didn’t exactly go as planned. I had a layover in Phoenix and my second flight was delayed. The plane was there but there was no explanation as to why we couldn’t leave. When we finally boarded 3 hours late, the pilot informed us that the original pilot’s wife had to go to the hospital, so I can respect that the airline let him go and flew in another pilot to take us.
We landed in Page around sunset, after a beautiful flyover of the Grand Canyon at dusk. I had planned to get some stove fuel and hitch straight to the trail tonight, but that wasn’t going to work with it being dark. Noone really hitches after dark.
So, I decided to embrace being hiker trash and got the cheapest motel I could find at $55 to spend the night in town. I checked a cardboard box on the plane as my disposable luggage for the hiking equipment I couldn’t carry on, and I strapped that bad boy to the top of my pack and waked through the city after dark to my motel. I definitely got some looks, but who cares? The motel was barely worth that rate, but good enough for me. I next set out to find stove fuel. I hadn’t had any troubles finding yellow HEET on the Hayduke last year, and was surprised that the 3 grocery stores and 4 gas stations I visited hadn’t even heard of it. I had not expected that at all since I’ve never had troubles, especially in a big town like this. There was an Ace and NAPA, but they were closed til 8am, so there was nothing I could do but drown my sorrows in a giant plate of Mexican food and go to bed exhausted from the long day of travelling.
Some research on the internet revealed that isopropyl alcohol also burns if it is a high enough percentage, so I found some 91% in the grocery store and did a larger than expected successful test burn in the parking lot in front of my room. Once again got some looks. Now that I had a solution without waiting for other stores to open, I scarfed some of the mediocre breakfast buffet and walked to the main road to start my hitch. I had hitched on this road twice before, and this time about matched my expectations with a 2 hour wait to get a ride, with tons of cars passing. An electrician picked me up and dropped me off at the gravel road to the trailhead after pointing out the tent resort for 9k per night he wired for celebrities to use.
I had thought that it would be an easy hitch to the trailhead 10 miles down since it was a popular place, the same road you take to get to The Wave. However, it took me another frustrating couple hours to get a ride. What made it even worse was I knew most of those people were hikers and many of them shrugged as if they couldn’t take me when I could clearly see the empty seats in their vehicles.
At long last, an older couple that didn’t speak much English picked me up. I think they were Russian from the few words they said and the song names in cyrillic. I just thought it was interesting that foreign tourists were the people who picked me up after all the others that passed me.
They dropped me at their trailhead which was only a mile and a half from where I was headed, so easy enough for me to walk it. I tried to explain where they could see petroglyphs from my hike on the same trail last year, but that was definitely lost in translation.
At long last, 5.5 hours from when I left my motel, I arrived at my trailhead. Since I had originally thought I was going to be here yesterday, I was a bit behind. That only mattered since I have a Grand Canyon permit starting in 4 days that I need to make. I’ll be hiking on one of the busiest National Park trails in existence, so not something I can stealth.
The sun was taking it out of me and I took a break at a water catchment 4 miles in. I decided I would shoot for the next water source as my goal to camp since it was a reasonable distance and always nicer not to have to carry as much water.
The trail was mostly rolling shallow hills through juniper and pine forest. I could occasionally catch glimpses of the scenic stuff to the east, but mostly the trail stayed buried. I just used the time to reflect, which was one of my goals for this trip. I was a bit frustrated with the issues I had just getting my hike started, but in the grand scheme of things I can still make everything work just fine, so it does not matter. I made it to the trail and have fuel, so I have everything I need.
I was getting bushed later in the day due to general exhaustion from rushing on the trail and from fatigue from travelling and not sleeping well the last couple days. However, I had to make it to the next water source because I didn’t have enough water for the night, except in an emergency. I put on an audiobook to help push through, and that helped me get to my goal just as the sun was setting. I grabbed water and found a spot nearby to set up my tent. I was so tired that I didn’t even want to do my camp chores like setting up and cooking dinner, but I made myself. I also didn’t want to write up this journal, but it gets so much harder to catch up in the future, and remember all of the details. In the end I got everything done and I’m where I need to be, so everything should be good from here. And I’m now on the trail left only to my own devices, so now my experience is now more in my hands.
