13 miles
601.5 AZT mile marker
My camp on the road worked and no one tried to get by in the night. It was a cold night and my tent was completely frosted over in the morning, inside and out. Nothing I can do about that now, so I just rolled up the frozen tent and shoved it in my pack.
It was less than a mile to High Jinks Ranch where I was going to pick up a resupply package and get some water. I tried to arrange an early pickup time with them last night but I didn’t get a response. I arrived around 7 and rang the bell and no one answered. I had the barest glimmer of occasional cell signal and it was really hard to get a call to connect. I stood outside the gate of the ranch for an hour alternating ringing the bell and trying to call before a call finally went through and my package came out. I was upset about the delay, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I still had plenty of time for my hiking today. I got a new pair of shoes as my old pair was getting quite flat after 33 days of use and almost 600 miles.
The trail today was a big climb up to Mt. Lemmon. It was a climb of about 3,000 feet, but there were also some descents and additional climbing in there.
The trail alternated between 4×4 tracks and trail, but regardless a lot of it was pretty steep. The trail pretty much went straight up a spine of the mountain, then followed a ridge as it further climbed.
It was a great change of pace to get above the desert plain below, and it was quickly disappearing in the distance as I ascended.
The rock of the mountain was pretty cool. A lot of it was white, and there was even a section of pure white marble. Some was freshly broken from making a road and it seemed like the whitest white possible.
The surrounding mountainous landscape was great, and the different ridges of the mountain even looked unique. One ridge was almost pure rock in contrast to the mixed forest on the other ridges.
I was trying to get up the mountain quickly to get to a pizza place on top before it closed, but after 4,000 feet of cumulative climbing I had to take a break for a few minutes. That gave me the energy to knock out the rest of the climb and I had 5,000 feet total ascent when I finally made it to the top.
I was greeted by a biker who had just biked up the mountain from Tucson. She was laying spread eagle on the pavement. I’m sure it was a tough climb. She offered me a coke and cookies, and I took just a coke to save room for pizza.
I ran into Hiep heading to the pizza place and we stopped to charge our stuff at the general store. Moving onto the pizza place, I got an overpriced 16” pizza for myself and devoured it easily. They also had head size cookies which they are famous for, but the pizza was enough for me.
There aren’t good lodging options on Mt. Lemmon and it was supposed to be in the 20s that night. We decided to set up camp inside the Post Office which allows hikers to stay overnight. Kevin showed up as we were setting up and he joined as well.
The only downside to the heated Post Office was that the lights can’t be turned off, so we had to try to sleep under those. I tied my thermals around my head to see if I could get to sleep.