Arizona Trail Border to Patagonia

I started the Arizona Trail thru-hike with some great trail magic. Trail magic and trail angels are things and people that make a long hike memorable. Gaila and I traveled down near the border to a Forest Service campground I have always wondered about. I could never find any solid information on whether there was a hard road all the way to the campground. It was as close to the border in this part of Arizona as I could find. We drove through Fort Huachuca (Oldest Indian Fighting Fort still in operation), and headed south. The road turned out to be challenging, but paved. The last few hairpin, switchback curves got my attention. When we arrived it was a beautifully maintained primitive campground overlooking Parker Canyon Lake. What a gem. I studied the map and still could not figure out how to get to the border and feel comfortable with leaving Gaila to drive back 18 miles on a dirt road. The area is swarming with Border Patrol, but I just didn’t want to be on the trail worrying about whether she made it back to the campground. The campground was safe, plenty of other campers and two full-time camp hosts. We decided to take a walk through the campground and see if we might find someone planning a side trip to visit the Coronado National Monument which is down the dirt road near the border. The first people we ran into turned out to be Arizona Trail members. They were section hiking the trail. The next morning they were going down to the border to start hiking the first 22.7 miles back to this campground. They had hired a shuttle service from Tucson to take them to the border. They said, “Show up at eight in the morning. We are almost sure he will have extra room.” It worked out perfectly. Great people. Good information. John, the shuttle operator did mostly mountain bike tours, but wanted to check out this road and start offering a hiker shuttle. He couldn’t have been nicer.

 My new hiking friends had already hiked the short section to the border and back on a previous trip from Montezuma Pass where the bus dropped us off. I started south alone into a canyon (1.9 miles) to touch the small monument at the border fence. There I took my first “Selfie”, turned around and headed for Utah.

 The first half of the day was mostly upstroke to the 9,000 foot Miller Peak. These are sky islands. Rising land masses in the middle of rather flat terrain. I could see for miles in all directions early in the day, but by noon a valley dust storm had obscured much of the views. I started up the half-mile spur trail to the very top of Miller Peak but decided quickly that the views would not be worth the price of admission. I like to hike about 25 miles a day, but that is a bit more challenging this time of year. It is all about “time and space.” I like to hike about 2 mph, which includes rest stops and food breaks. That is a pretty easy pace and makes possible the 25 mile day if you have enough daylight. This time of year the sun is on a shorter flight path. I did my 25 that first day, but I finished a half-hour after sunset. I have a good twelve hours of light at this time, and I can squeeze in another half-hour after sunset. In this part of Arizona I wanted to hike until dark-thirty and stealth camp off the trail a distance. That way if illegals were passing through at night, they wouldn’t hear me snoring. Gaila says I snore. I personally have never heard it. The trail is broken up into 43 Passages. When I joined the Arizona Trail Association, I purchased their Arizona National Scenic Trail guidebook that seems, so far, very accurate. I also bought a Garmin Etrex 20 GPS. I was told there were many illegal traffic trails along the southern sections that looked more well-worn than the actual Arizona Trail. The GPS would keep me on the right path. I found that information not accurate. I never needed the GPS the first 25 miles. Never saw a trail that looked confusing or squirrelly. Everything seemed well-marked and made sense when matched to the guidebook data. Water was another concern. So far that has not been a problem. Even though it has been an abnormally hot winter down here, there had been a couple inches of rain the week before I started. I found pools of water in most canyons. The other advantage of hiking 25 mile days is the fact that you find three times the water sources of those hiking 8-10 mile days. I have been carrying about 3 liters of water and so far always have a couple liters left when I find a good water source and top off.

Bathtub Spring--Biggest decision of the day, bathe first or drink first?

The second day I knocked out most of two passages. I did have some route finding issues, but not because of illegal traffic trails. I found myself a couple times hiking with the heifers. Cattle make trails that clone the Arizona Trail. Often they blend so seamlessly you are lulled right into them. Never take obvious for granted. Because I’m blind in one eye I missed the turn in the trail and ended up a half mile down a canyon before realizing I was on a cowpath. I am learning to love my new GPS. It has thousands of waypoints and all 43 tracks of the Arizona Trail downloaded to it. The waypoints will give me various water resources and the tracks will tell me immediately when I am off the trail. You can often hike a couple miles or more without any official trail signage. It is a great feeling to pull the GPS out and know you are still on the correct route. Daniel Boone would be simply amazed.

All during the second day I could hear what I assumed was a drone flying around the many canyons ahead of me. At one high point I took some time to spot it, but it and the sound was illusive. I also spotted a few electronic devices with my good eye. They were attached to fenceposts. Big Brother is definitely watching this geography down here. I made a great investment this fall that is paying off handsomely now. I bought a lot of new high-tech gear that allowed me to lose at least 11 lbs. of ugly gear. My pack base weight dropped from 27 pounds to 16 pounds. What a difference. It has also allowed me to carry more (heavy) water, without much effort. Hiking last year in Colorado with a bunch of young CDT hikers I started picking their brains about gear. Some were carrying as little as 7 pounds base weight. Yes, you read that right. (One guy, trail name Raisins, was appropriately named because that’s all he ate.) I’m not there yet. Probably never will be. They admit they are often miserable, but the trade-off is the ability to hike 30-35 mile days. There are things I still refuse to give up: Hot food, ground sleeping pad, zippered sleeping bag and enclosed tent. My tent is a Hilleberg, Akto. It is a bomb shelter. It weighs 3 lbs 13 oz., at least twice what ultra lightweight backpackers carry, theirs only being a tarp. But I sleep like a baby. Like Charleston Heston said about his rifle, they are going to have to take my Akto tent, “From my cold, dead hand.”

Who's the best looking guy on the trail? "The shadow knows!"

Knowing I was going to meet Gaila at the Gathering Grounds cafe in Patagonia, AZ for breakfast I was a little impatient for sunrise. I started packing up in the dark about five o’clock. I had another six trail miles into town and I didn’t want to keep my bacon and eggs waiting. I used my little headlamp to follow tread until the sun began peeking over the peaks. Great trail so far, beautiful country, lots of wildlife. As my good friend Mike Schlins would say, “This is sucking the juice out of life.”
--Keep Smilin’