Month: April 2021

Thursday Apr 1st, 2021, 0730-1600Outskirts of Safford to Bonita Creek, mm 26122 miles We had a productive town stop, but I was anxious to get back to the trail. Looking at the maps during my trip planning, I’d noted another long road walk of about 20 miles out of town. Most was on dirt roads heading into the mountains, which I didn’t mind, but about 5 miles was leading out of town through suburbs and past cotton fields. A nice endpoint at Bonita Springs waited if we could hike a 27 mile day. Or, if we could get a ride past the blah outskirts of town, we could hike a more moderate day and still have time in the afternoon[…]

Wednesday Mar 31st, 2021, 0610-1000Marijilda canyon to Safford, mm 23014 miles I’ll make this a short one since this was mainly just a town day…pretty boring. We had about 10 miles of dirt roads to walk in the morning, which quickly heated up under the fully exposed sun. I felt like we were walking through a wasteland on the outskirts of town. There were the typical revolting scenes…illegal trash dumps, charred remains of waste, broken bottles and beer cans, and impromptu target ranges with spent shells strewn all over. Am I painting a bad enough picture? These are the realities of off-road vehicle access and mismanagement of lands in such close proximity to people. It was a disheartening walk, not[…]

Tuesday Mar 30th, 2021, 0610-1830Clark Peak Rec area to Marijilda canyon.22 miles It was another fun-packed day in the high mountains. We were off early, walking the road that’s known as Swift Trail most of the day. It was built by the CCC. The upper part was still snow-bound but it was easy to walk over the frozen crust in the morning. We skipped a north-facing trail that led to Webb peak, instead opting for a cross country route that brought us to the 10,000′ top (highest point on the GET route in AZ) with minimal snow. This peak also had a nice fire tower, with views to nearby Mt Graham at almost 11,000′. It rises 8,000′ from the desert[…]

Saturday & Sunday Mar 27-28th 2021Kane Spring to Klondyke Road, mm 17216 miles I’m combining 2 days, one of which was a zero. Day 10: we covered as much ground in half a day as in a full day the day prior. But the going was still not easy, at least not the first 5 miles. The trail went up up up and we lost it at the switchbacks numerous times. I didn’t see any footprints on this trail, #66. We saw quite a few older footprints the day before, which we could only assume were some other GET hikers that were 1-2 weeks ahead of us. But then we didn’t see any more footprints since before the cross country[…]