5/1 8.8 miles

Because of the requirement to camp at designated campgrounds in Saguaro National Park, the extreme heat and the 14 miles of relentless, steep uphill, I decided to camp just before the park boundary.

I also carried 5 L of water again. Today was flat. Tomorrow begins more insane ups like Day 1. I plan on 5 days to Mt Lemmon and the southernmost ski area in the US @ 9000’ where it is reputedly always much cooler than Tucson.

5/2 9.3 miles

Well shit, camped early again, too much uphill! But for the first time on this trail, I camped near other people. On the way up I met Dawn, a section hiker! We camped at Grass Hut CG and found the few remaining pools of water to refill our bottles.

5/3 15.6 miles, 6:15-5:30

I was woken at 9:30 pm last night by headlamps and loud voices, a couple had just hiked in to the campground in the dark and obviously didn’t see my tent slightly tucked away. “I’m trying to sleep!” I yelled after a while. A woman’s voice started babbling apologies about not seeing me and I just let her run out of steam and then they quietly finished setting up camp. I had to walk by them in the morning to get on the trail so I tiptoed by. Dawn had gone by before me anyway.

It was another brutal day. 6 more miles uphill past the other designated Saguaro NP campground, Manning Camp, another beautiful, historic set of buildings. Then the rest of the day was pretty much downhill on loose rock and gravel. At least I could breathe while slipping my way down to the lifesaving water cache at Redington Road. I gathered my usual 5 L to get me through tonight and tomorrow, walked across the road and found a lovely cow flattened tent site with some wind breaking thorn trees. Not too much noise from the road, and just a little gunfire in the distance.

2 miles before the water cache, I walked down into a sandy wash as a ranch truck towing a horse trailer was backing up to the trail crossing. Simultaneously, a burro bellowed and got to her feet. I’d been following a set of smallish horseshoe prints and a large trail runner shoe print since the other side of Saguaro NP. 6 cowboys got out of the truck and said she’d collapsed earlier and refused to get back up and go on. Her human (who didn’t ride the burro, but walked alongside her) called for help so they were going to load her up and help her recover.

5/4 10.4 miles

I’m worn out! I got to Molino Basin CG where the trail crosses a highway running between Tucson and Mt Lemmon/Summerhaven (way uphill). The campground is closed for the summer because it’s supposed to be too hot to camp. Of course today the weather has been threatening rain and cold, with near freezing temperatures predicted higher up the trail, as was the weather prediction days ago. As I walked, I kept devising plans and alternate plans. My first idea was to camp at the campground, then hitch up to Summerhaven in the morning and take a double zero to recover and let the weather ease up. Or second, hitch down to Tucson and Uber up tomorrow. Nowhere in my plots was I going to keep hiking straight uphill into weather.

I wandered a bit and Wally, the CG host, thought it’d be a lot easier to hitch into Tucson than uphill. So it took a while but finally Michael, who’d been day hiking while nursing a climbing injury, came back to his parked car and gave me a ride downhill. I googled a $99 hotel, washed up, put on warm clothes, ate dinner at the hotel, and scheduled an Uber for checkout time the next day. Platinum blazing again, what a wimp.

5/5 zero

I checked in to my 3rd floor room at gorgeous Mt Lemmon Lodge and watched the snow fall from the window.