5/8 14 miles Summerhaven/Mt Lemmon to Oracle

I really enjoyed the Mt Lemmon Lodge in the cold weather. This time of year, not many people here in this beautiful wood lodge so there’s no place open for dinner, just breakfast and lunch, but the general store across the street has food to heat up or you can save lunch for dinner. It all worked out.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the old AZT route ahead is good trail, has less pointless up and downs (PUDS) than the current official AZT, and exists on the AZT paper maps from 2022. It does not have anything more than a dotted line on the FarOut app. So I walked it, the Oracle Ridge Trail to the AZT to Cody Trail #9 and another 3 miles to walk into the town of Oracle where I got a room at El Rancho Robles. This stretch dropped down from the mountains into the flats and increasing heat. As I popped out on a road in town, Gary, a local trail steward, stopped his truck and offered me a lift the short distance to the rancho. When I checked in, I asked Judy where the nearest food was. She offered to fetch up a burrito and bring it back to me. When she returned she handed me Dos Equis beer with a real lime to slice. Perfect day!

5/9 13.8 miles

The combination of hauling a bunch of water weight and the increasingly hot day was a bit scary. After getting within 4 miles of the next water source, as I planned, I nearly passed out setting up my tent in a soft, sandy wash. I’m hydrated but there is no shade in this version of the desert so I really can’t cool my body temperature much except by stopping moving.

5/10 12.1 miles

The heat is hard! I started at 6:15 uphill, in wind, that helped, but by 10:30 it’s killer, no shade.There are bunnies and deer today. And cows. Hit my last water source, loaded up then walked uphill a few minutes to leave the cows and bees surrounding the water tank. I’m sitting in my tent, the only shade, sweating and waiting for the sun to set.

Stupid cholla cactus balls everywhere! They stick to my shoes. Then somehow I got 1 stuck to my wrist and watch. Painful and hard to get multiple spines out at once. My wrist is a bit inflamed and bruised.

I just can’t do the miles in this heat. I get a bit dizzy despite proper water intake.

5/11 15 miles Mother’s Day

I met hikers today! At a water source, German couple Simone and Nils were heading south to then head east on the Grand Enchantment Trail (GET) for about 3 weeks. It started cloudy and less hot and mostly flat today. I made a few more miles because it’s less effort than walking uphill. I needed to get to a junction where there was a roundtrip of 0.6 to a cow trough full of clear water.

And I’m sweating in my tent looking ahead at the options to get into the town of Kearny that has a reputation for being hiker friendly!