21.8 miles
254.7 AZT mile marker
It was cold last night and I woke to frost on my tent, but it didn’t feel as cold as it was supposed to be. I slept pretty well and was warm enough without using my insulating layers, so I should have enough to stay warm this trip.
We camped on the edge of a mesa, before the pine trees gave way to more open terrain. It was definitely colder when we stepped out onto the mesa, so we made the right choice in staying in the trees.
The ground was still wet from the storm that passed in Flagstaff, but it was frozen solid allowing us to crunch over it. Otherwise it would have been a muddy mess.
We set out across the mesa where we would be for most of the day. We quickly came to a dry lake and had some good views back to the snowy San Francisco peaks, but we kept moving due to the temperature. I like to hike cold, which doesn’t allow me much room to stop sometimes or I would get too cold. With the temperature being around freezing, all I was wearing to hike were my normal clothes plus a shell and gloves.
We passed an observatory and saw a big herd of elk, running to get away from us. Shortly thereafter, there was the skeleton of an elk that had tried to jump one of the many cow fences and got its leg caught and died right there. There wasn’t much left of it. Too bad.
The day warmed up a little; it was probably in the 40s for much of the day. However, that turned out to be a bad thing. The formerly frozen trail turned to mud. Not squishy mud, but clay mud that stuck to our shoes. More stuck with each progressive step until there was a massive ball of mud we were dragging along on the bottom of our shoes. My shoes were able to shed the mud after it got big enough, but not so for Breaks; she had to constantly stop and manually clear off her shoes. It was definitely not an enjoyable part of the day.
There were 2 long stretches of trail that were bad with the mud, but thankfully it was not the whole day.
For a good part of the day, the trail followed an old railroad grade. Some of the old ties were still there which is unusual. It always amazes me the amount of work people put into some of these projects 100 years ago with a lot less of the machinery we have today. It must have been a ton of work to put the railroad together, and it was only used for a few years before it was abandoned when it became unprofitable.
We had a good long lunch break where we thawed and dried our tents, which is becoming an almost daily occurrence. As long as I can hop into a dry tent at night though, it’s all good.
We wound around Mormon Mountain at the end of the day and set up camp in a closed Forest Service campground. Though it is closed, there is one open privy and a dumpster which is luxurious. There is a flowing stream through the camp, which is bizarre out here, and one of the only flowing water sources I’ve seen out here. Nice to get water from that instead of a muddy cow pond.
We strategized on how to get to the next town before our food runs out and we came up with a plan.
It is cold in the camp, probably around freezing just at dusk. It should be another cold night; it feels like it will be colder than last night. We’ll see how it goes.