Category: Free Roaming Photography

Day 8

As Twix, Salsa, Olive Oyl and I were packing up to head out for the morning, Sheriff Woody and Bill Murray (don’t get too excited – both just trail names) strolled by and waited for us to finish up so we could all head out together. Awaiting us was a steep 2000 foot climb toward the base of Mount Wrightson, the highest peak in the Santa Rita Mountains.

The trail followed the same dirt road that brought us out of Patagonia and quite a distance up until reaching another trailhead where it forked off into an actual trail, eventually climaxing at a saddle at just over 6500 feet.

I was hiking alone at that point, but in between the two groups of Sheriff Woody and Bill Murray and Twix, Olive Oyl, and Salsa. At the saddle I caught up with the former and unloaded for lunch and also checked on a blister which wasn’t doing great. I left my sock off and started on a large lunch, chatting with the others and welcoming up the group behind me when they arrived.

After a good meal and rest,  we started our descent down the mountains. It was easy going as the ponderosa pine gave way to oaks and juniper. The trail rarely ascended, so we all made good time to Gardner Canyon. The trail forks and crosses a creek, which was still flowing well, shortly before the end of the passage where we found a great campsite that even had a swing!

We each set up our own camps and gathered around an unlit firepit to eat dinner. As the skies grew darker and the coolness set in, some went to bed, and others like myself stayed up for the night sky.

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Day 7 (continued)

After saying goodbye to Giggles, I spent most of the day running errands and getting in some blogging at the local library.

I developed a fond admiration for the small town of Patagonia. It has a real sense of community and seemed to genuinely care about the nature around it. I would have liked to have stayed another night.

On my way out, I noticed the reliable signs for the AZT began to disappear. There was one sign pointing down the highway, but none showing where to turn off. On more than one occasion I had to double check my route to be sure I was going on the right direction. Once sure I was on the right dirt road out of town, it was just a long haul to an actual Arizona Trail trailhead.

The views in the grassy hills outside of town offered up some breathtaking panoramic vistas of the surrounding mountains, and even dramatic views of the Canelo Hills and Miller Peak in the distance. Ahead, Mount Wrightson dominated the landscape.

The trail soon dropped into Temporal Gulch, a pretty area, but not one I was keen on camping in. I pushed on and found a great ridge with perfect views in every direction, but couldn’t find a good place for a tent. I went a bit father down the road and wound up joining Salsa, Twix, and Olive Oyl at the trailhead.

The sun had already set so as they were brushing their teeth, I grabbed a quick dinner and made camp. We stayed up for a bit to do a bit of stargazing before I jumped into some night photography. I missed having Giggles’ knowledge of the universe there. I also missed hearing her giggles along the trail.

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Day 5

Most sites along the AZT are rocky. It’s highly recommended that hikers bring a light foam pad to put under their air pads to avoid springing a leak. We didn’t do that. As a result, my pad sprung a leak the night before, and while I still slept ok regardless, it could have been much better.

Outside the tent, some clouds had rolled in overnight that didn’t threaten any weather, but broke up the blue sky nicely. The others got on our their way and we weren’t too long in following.

After a few miles of hiking, we were feeling good and Tatiana had even begun to teach me some Spanish. We were laughing and enjoying our hike when we once again caught up with the other group at a water tank. It was a little bit dirty, but we filtered it easily enough. As we approached though, they gave Tatiana her new trail name: Giggles. They said they could hear her coming for quite a distance. They went on their way and again, we weren’t long after them, except when we reached another water source, we began to get confused.

We had assumed the previous was one on a map, which made us believe we missed an unmarked turn that wasn’t signed. We backtracked for .25-.5 miles and scoped it out, but it clearly wasn’t the right way. Concerned, we headed back down the trail, past the new water source, and found another AZT sign. The water source we had stopped at that we thought was mapped wasn’t mapped at all. The one we were only just now getting to was the one we were looking for.

Giggles’ leg began to act up a bit again, slowing us down slightly. We stopped for a lunch in Middle Canyon in the hopes that a short rest would help it out, but as we crested one hill after the other, it only began to bother her more. For a distraction, she put on her headphones and began listening to podcasts, which oddly enough, seemed to help. Our spirits lifted once again as we dropped down to the end of Passage 2, where shortly into Passage 3, ran into the group who already had camp up. Since we were both still feeling good, and seeing that there was a nice sunset in the works, we continued up the trail for another mile or so to watch sunset from a small pass where we would also have dinner. We both agreed on it and it turned out to be an excellent decision.

With daylight fading, we picked up our things and began the long descent down Passage 3 to find a campsite. We dropped through a small canyon which brought us out to open, grasslands hills. As we hiked on for another mile or two, the stars began to pop out overhead. It was quiet, peaceful, and sublime. We found a campsite soon enough and took our longest time to set up the tent since we were both completely distracted by the stars. As we crawled into our tent, a pack of coyotes began to howl only a few hundred yards away.

Day 6

I never could get my sleeping pad patched, so it was another uncomfortable night for me, though I still got enough sleep. Plus, once we got going, it was slow from the start because Giggles’ leg was now becoming a problem. We were descending into Red Rock Canyon, another subtly beautiful area of the Canelo Hills, when our pace came to a screeching halt around lunchtime where the emotional stress of the injury caught up with her. We plopped down under a tree for a siesta with bees buzzing around the top of the budding tree and cows staring at us just a few dozen yards away.

After a brief rest, we were both feeling better and were easily making up miles again. During another rest later in the afternoon, I discovered that we were doing much better than we ever thought would have been possible. Apparently my slow-and-steady pace was actually paying off. All of a sudden we were determined to make it to the end of Passage 3 that night, the end of it being the town of Patagonia. The thoughts of pizza, beer, and other foods were getting us even more motivated. Giggles had discovered a limp that she could do that wouldn’t hurt it as bad, but would still allow her to make progress.

We crossed the last pass about 30 minutes after sunset. All that remained was about a mile to a road that was two miles away from town. We took our time on the descent and sure enough, reached the road. We stepped to the side to refill water and were just about to begin the home stretch when Border Patrol passed by and turned around to ask us if we were ok. Before I could even open my mouth, Giggles went to the car and quickly said, “I have a hurt leg can you drive us to town!?” He accepted, and we were on our way to meet up with the others at the Patagonia RV Park. Awaiting us were two leftover slices of pizza, and more food than I would ever normally eat thanks to my first trail angel experience. We can’t thank Charles and Paulette enough. They were camped in the RV park visiting from Virginia and had been quail hunting from Montana to southern Arizona. Their generosity was the exclamation point on our arrival.

Day 7 (so far)

We woke up and joined Charles and Paulette for an amazing breakfast at the Wagon Wheel Saloon, and then bid them our farewells back at camp before packing up. Happy Tree was also having pain issues, so her and Giggles decided to head back to Tucson to rest up. I’ve just completed some errands in Patagonia and will be back on the trail shortly. Patagonia is easily one of the cutest towns I’ve ever visited. Everyone is overly friendly, and there are all kinds of galleries and shops. As the trail passes through town, it even goes by a Butterfly Garden, where I stopped to talk with a resident who reflected everything I was admiring about the town.

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Day 3

We woke up to frost all over the tent. Tatiana checked the thermometer and inside the tent it was 20 degrees F, with the wind still howling outside. I checked it a short time after the sun had finally risen and began lighting our tent and it had already jumped to 35 degrees F, a good sign indeed. The lack of sleep and challenges of the previous days were beginning to get to us and were affecting our pace, so we talked through a few things and managed to pick each other back up to make for a much smoother day.

We played a few different games as our spirits lifted while the trail maintained a steady downhill pace from expansive ponderosa pine forests to oak-lined canyons. With constant sunlight as well, it began to feel much more like what an ideal hiking day should. Cool temperatures, warm sunshine, and lots of fun and laughing. Earlier that day I even saw a brief glimpse of wildlife: a deer’s rear running into the woods.

The trail brought us farther and farther down Sunnyside Canyon and even out of Coronado National Forest where, looking back at the kiosk at the boundary, noticed a bear warning sign. Up to this point, we had been sleeping with our food in the tent. Leave it to a couple of Jacksonians to overestimate the bear danger in other areas. In addition, with recent weather and apparently a good winter, every water source appeared very healthy and reliable.

We found a nice place to camp at, as the guidebook puts it, “a confusing series of dirt roads.”

Day 4

Both of us woke up feeling much better after a quiet, restful night of great sleep. We both slept from 8:30pm the night before to 6:30am that morning. Though it was a little chilly outside, it wasn’t unbearably cold, partly due to dropping in elevation and partly due to no wind. We began along the “confusing series of dirt roads” only to find that they weren’t so confusing thanks to the trail being incredibly well signed, something that made me start to regret wanting a picture of every AZT sign.

Though we were getting a bit low on water, and the guidebook said that the next passage was scarce on water, we decided to skip the Parker Lake Store since the water everywhere else was so reliable. Besides, the next water source was the Parker Lake runoff, which appeared to have plenty of water. A few miles down the trail, and sure enough, the runoff was an excellent place to not only fill up on more water, but also to have lunch.

While filling up, four other hikers in a group caught up with us. Four other female hikers came excitedly down the trail at the sight of fresh water. We chatted with them while we both topped off our water supplies and had some food. Tatiana and I were a bit out of place since they all had trail names and we didn’t. There was Happy Tree who was from Hawai’i who was along with Olive Oyl who had met Twix and her mother, Salsa, on the Appalachian Trail. They were all out to conquer the AZT together and were promoting the Wild at Heart Raptor Center in Cave Creek, Arizona. They got going into the Canelo Hills before we had gotten everything back together, which made us realize just how long we had been lingering there.

Once we were back on our way, Tatiana began to notice an odd sensation in her right leg. She had a hard time describing it, so it limited anything that I could do to help other than just trying to motivate her. We climbed higher and higher into the Canelo Hills which, as the guidebook described, don’t get much love. It’s very easy to overlook them. There’s nothing grand or dramatic about them, especially when looking on them from the outside, but once immersed on the inside, there’s a constant pleasantness and peacefulness that is very relaxing. The hills are amazingly scenic and Tatiana remarked more than once about how they reminded her of Spain.

As the day went on, her pain intensified and dramatically slowed down our pace. Our imaginations began to worry about different scenarios and symptoms, and we agreed that all we could do is just press on. I was eager to find us a campsite as well so that we could just get her off the trail and rest.

It didn’t take long before we caught up with the others who had already set up camp at a spacious site. We camped with them that night where they put our minds at ease saying it’s probably just her “hiker legs” breaking in.

We relaxed much more once camp was set up and enjoyed socializing with the others. We even got in a bit of stargazing before the moon came up where I was able to finally do some night shots thanks to the pleasant weather.

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