October 24th, 2019
HWY 87 mm 402 to mm 425.3
Distance in miles: 23.3
0950-1730
I really didn’t want to get back on the trail for some reason. I think it was because I enjoyed resting and relaxing at Jon and Laurel’s place so much the year before. At that point, I was done with the PCT. Now, I was still facing 400 miles of not so easy trail through the desert. I was kind of ready to be done with hiking this season. It had been a long year.
At least this day brought cool winds and a forecasted high of only 80 degrees. The next few days were supposed to be even cooler, so that was good. Jon drove me back to the trailhead and I was on way. I snapped out of my trail-reluctance funk pretty quickly and enjoyed climbing through the valley and onto the ridges. There were great views of the Phoenix valley and suburbs to the west, the Four Peaks to the north (the mountain profile on the AZ license plate) and of Lake Roosevelt to the east. I could even see all the way back to the Mogollon Rim. I reminisced about the road trip I took with Jon around the lake the year before. We went to see the nearby cave dwellings.
I met a NOBO at the last water source of the day. He said he was going northbound to avoid the bubble of hikers going south. This struck me as pretty funny and ironic. Even though I was in or close to the bubble, I was lucky to see anyone all day. There were probably less than 50 people even thru-hiking the whole AZT this fall. By going NOBO, this hiker was actually running into a lot more people. But clearly he liked his solitude, so we went our separate ways.
I walked for another hour to a site that has some flattish spots. Earlier, I had passed on a much better site near the spring, but it was too early to stop then. You take what you can get when you’re trying to make use of the daylight. My site was pretty slanted, but it worked out ok. There were nice views down to the reservoir, at least.
