March 17, 2022
- Start: Stealth site near Martinez Canyon (Mile 276)
- End: Picketpost Trailhead (Mile 294.3)
- Distance: 18.3 miles
My original notion when I set up camp last night was to sleep in my tent without using the rainfly. But that didn’t amount to a solid plan.
The wind continued into the night, eventually turning the air chilly and blowing dust into my tent. And the full moon was like a headlamp shining into my tent. I wasn’t going to ever fall asleep with that super bright orb shining down. And so, I ended up putting the rainfly on around midnight just so I could get some sleep.
CONTINUING THE CLIMB
I was up early, and I had my campsite broken down by 6:20 am. This was one of those incredible mornings, with the sun coming over the vermillion rocks and catching the landscape in the most ideal light. I wish every sunrise could be this beautiful.
About a mile further up the canyon, I spotted Volt’s Gossamer Gear tent about 100 yards off the trail. I’m not sure how I didn’t see him pass by the trail junction where I’d camped last night. Maybe he snuck past while I was relaxing in my tent and focused on this journal.
Another tent sat about a half mile further up the canyon, and I assumed it belonged to Mad Max, or Eagle, or the Denali Ranger. But I hadn’t camped about those guys enough to know what type of tents they used. Nonetheless, it was an incredibly sweet spot, nestled into the cactus on a bit of a ledge with views of the desert below.
The first six miles of the day were all uphill toward a rainwater collector out in the middle of the desert. The climbing kept me warm, even when the trail snuck into the shadows between peaks where the sun had yet to shine onto.
I was nearing a saddle where a trio of bike packers had their mountain bikes sitting outside their tent and that’s when I ran into Eagle sitting on the trail. Like Volt, he’d been able to slingshot past my spot at the trail junction last night without me even noticing.
I’d intended walk right past and continue the climb, but then he started mumbling a question about moonwalking. I momentarily stopped to trying to figure out what the heck he was trying to say. Did he just asking me if I knew how to moonwalk?!
He repeated himself, and that’s when I realized he wasn’t referencing the Michael Jackson dance move from the 1980s. He was trying to tell me that he’d been out walking under the full moon last night. That’s why I hadn’t seen him go past my tent. He’d been hiking the trail sometime after dark, and under the full moon.
Then he pulled out a machete-style blade to show me how these beetles he’d been inspecting on the ground liked to stand on their heads. He picked one up and raised the large blade to shoulder level and extended the bug toward me.
I feigned some interest, took a photo with my camera, and then said a quick goodbye. Each interaction with him gets just a little weirder. And I didn’t feel all that comfortable around a spaced-out guy with a giant knife.
IS THIS YOURS?
I wasn’t moving very fast during the rest of the climb, and I kept giving the occasional glance back over my shoulder just to make sure Eagle wasn’t sneaking up behind me while I wasn’t looking. He seemed harmless, but there was just something weird about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. And I felt it was better to trust my gut on this one and put some distance between us.
Once I got over the pass ahead of me, the views continued to impress me. Every curve and bend revealed something even prettier than the last one, and I found myself stopping over and over to take photos of it all.
A little before 9 am, I’d made it to the dirt road leading to the rainwater collector, and that’s where I finally spotted Mad Max. It hadn’t been him in then tent with the epic views. He’d been ahead of me this entire time.
I dropped my pack, and pulled out the blood-stained white bandana I’d collected from the cat claw down by the Gila River yesterday. “Was this his bandana?” I asked.
An immediate smile crept over Mad Max’s face. He’d had no clue where he’d lost it, and that bandana had some sentimental value. It had been with him on a lot backpacking trips and this dry air seemed to be giving him daily nosebleeds.
He thanked me profusely for finding and returning his beloved bandana, and promised to buy me a beer when we got to Superior this afternoon! What a guy.
LUCKY LARRY
After a brief reunion, Mad Max and I parted ways once again. He’d already collected his water, but I still needed to head over to the brown, alien-looking rainwater collector on top of the hill.
Historically, the stretch between the Gila River and Superior was one of the most remote and driest section of the AZT. But a grant from the National Environmental Education Foundation in 2019 helped the Arizona Trail Association develop this extra water resource on the trail.
A local metalsmith helped design and build the device, which consists of steel apron that catches the rainwater during the summer monsoon season and a 1,500 gallon storage tank beneath it. And now, hikers simply use the spigot on the the side of the tank to fill their bottles (though you still need to filter the water, as it may have been sitting there for weeks or months).
Another hiker named Lucky Larry was already filling his bottles when I let myself into the fenced perimeter surrounding the rainwater collector. When I told him my trail name, he immediately asked if I was Finnish.
Lucky Larry was a Yooper (as the residents of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula call themselves), so he was already quite familiar with Sisu and its origins. Many of the Yoopers come from a Finnish background, so sisu is just another foreign word in their local lexicon.
What I found most impressive about Lucky Larry though, wasn’t his knowledge of Finnish language, but his tiny pack. He was definitely part of the ultralight crowd, and his backpack looked to barely be 28 liters in size with a base weight was probably in the 6-8 pound range.
That’s was far too light for my comfort, but he was making big miles and moving fast out here. So clearly it was working for him.
WILDFLOWER BINGO
I still had 11 more miles after the rainwater collector until I’d get to the Picketpost Trailhead, past lots of rolling hills and exposed desert. At one point, I found myself distracts by watching a pair of OHVs appeared, slowly rumbling in a wash over boulders that were half buried in the soft sand.
Then I walked past and area that seemed to be alive with swatches of lavender wildflowers and butterflies. I’d later learn this native shrub was called verbena, and the clusters of purple flowers served both as a vibrant ground cover and an excellent source of nectar for butterflies.
That’s not to say that that the rest of the desert was dry and brown. Far from it. This bit between Kearny and Superior was the most colorful stretch of the AZT yet with small flowers blooming everywhere in mid-March.
I stopped to take a photo here and a photo there, slowly compiling a sort of AZT wildflower bingo card of sorts. Reds, purples, oranges, yellows, and white discretely popped up around each new bend of the trail. None of them was as abundant as the verbena flowers, but the desert was definitely alive and in bloom this week.
GOING TO MJ’S
As I continued to follow the AZT north, the scorching sun pounded down on my head and shoulders. I thanked my lucky stars I was hiking through here early in the season, because who knows how hot this stretch of desert would be once the bubble of thru-hikers got here in a few week’s time.
There was nowhere to hide from the sun either. And no shade from the spindly trees or the tall cactus. This trail was the exact opposite of the Appalachian Trail’s green tunnel. And while I loved being able to see for miles in any direction, it also felt like a dry sauna.
The constant, unrelenting heat seemed to be draining my body of energy. And, I felt as if I was slowly dragging my body through the desert, moving slower and slower with each mile.
I crossed paths with another southbound GET hiker, and then found a tiny bit of shade under the one of few trees I’d seen all day and I stopped to relax for a bit of lunch.
I was still about 4.5 miles out from the Picketpost Trailhead, but I turned on my phone to check whether I had any cell service. I still needed to text a trail angel named MJ so see she could provide a ride from the trailhead into Superior.
I’d gone into Kearny a few days ago with the intention of hiking all the way to my next resupply box at Roosevelt Lake. But during my zero, Max Max convinced me that it would be easier to make an additional stop in Superior on the way. I could leave Kearny with less food weight, and reserve that energy for the longer water carries along this section.
That logic made a lot of sense, but there was just one issue. Superior wasn’t directly on the trail. It was a good five miles to the east. So, I’d need to hitch to town or rely on the generosity of the major trail angel in town, MJ.
MJ had quite the reputation on the AZT and GET. She maintained a large water cache at the Picketpost Trailhead and she routinely gave hikers rides to town and let them stay at her home. So, I was hoping her generosity would extend to me today.
Much to my surprise, I actually has a few bars of cell reception here. So I texted MJ and asked about availability. She responded in the affirmative, asking mefor an ETA on when I expected to arrive at the trailhead. I made my best guess (adding an extra 20 minutes to my arrival time, just in case I walked slower than anticipated). If anyone was going to wait out in the sun for our rendezvous, it should be me, not her!
EAGLE VS. DRAGON
I hiked the rest of the way to the Picketpost Trailhead as fast as I could with my umbrella overhead to block the sun’s intense rays. The hot dusty afternoon left me feeling parched, but the water sloshing around in my plastic bottles was like sipping on warm, flavorless tea. It was wet, but not very satisfying.
As I neared the trailhead, Eagle finally caught back up to me. I silently hoped that he would tell me he was continuing north, putting some space between us so we didn’t continue to overlap repeatedly. But, of course that didn’t happen. Eagle was going to Superior’s post office to pick up a pair of new shoes, and then he’d be staying the night MJ’s house. So I was stuck with him a bit longer.
When we got to the register at the trailhead, Eagle signed the log ahead of me then handed the pen over. I stepped forward, looking down at the trail log and expecting to see his name on the last line. But instead of writing “Eagle,” he’d written “Dragon.” And instead of a hometown (which he’d been creatively filling in with nonsense like Outer Space, Love, or Transmutation on prior logs), he now filled wrote “Nowhere but Here.”
I turned back to him and said, “Hey, I thought your trail name was Eagle.” He confirmed it was. Sometimes. Other times it was Dragon. Then he just stared off into space, with his odd, cringy, Elon-Musk vibe. And so, that’s how I found myself riding into Superior in the backseat of MJ’s SUV with Eagle/Dragon/Whatever-he’s-calling himself-today.
SUPERIOR
MJ’s house was already filled with a handful of other AZT hikers when we arrived, including a married couple named Ansel and Gretel and a tall section hiker named Fireman Bob (who got his name because he was a fireman up near Sequim, Washington).
I was just getting ready to hop in the shower, when MJ got a phone call from a few more hikers. It was Mad Max, Lucky Larry, and another hiker (who we’d later come to christen as ‘What About Bob’ that evening). They were on their way here!
When the three hikers walked over the threshold of MJs, I realized that I recognized What About Bob! I’d met him near Hutch’s Pool right before the climb up Mt. Lemmon. He was they guy from New Hampshire grousing about the unprepared ultralight hiker who was only carrying nine pounds of gear.
How had he’d caught up to me so darn quick? He said he’d only been hiking 14-15 miles each day. Had he been on my heels this entire time? Did my zero in Kearny allow him to make up that gap? Or had he opted to skip some miles somewhere?
In the long run, it didn’t really matter. I was merely surprised to see his face again. Sometimes you cross paths with folks for a day or two (like I had with Cheez-It and Prov) and then you never see them again the rest of the trail. Other times, you keep running into the same handful of people each time you make it into town. I’d put Bob in the first category, but who knows… maybe I’d see him over and over again.
The newly arrived hikers mingled into the existing crowd, and we spent our time catching up with each other as people waited their turn to shower or to use MJ’s laundry machine.
We were all sitting outside on the porch enjoyed some refreshing cold drinks in the shade when MJ announced she was heading back out to the trailhead (yet again) to get one more hiker.
And wouldn’t you know, when she returned, he had Volt in tow! The gang felt complete now.
As the afternoon turned to dusk, a group of us headed into downtown Superior on foot. We needed to resupply, and then we stopped at a great little burger restaurant called Porters for dinner on our way back.
We scoured the menu trying to figure out how much food would satisfy our respective levels of hiker hunger. Then Volt announced that he’d been craving a margarita for days. I agreed that sounded absolutely perfect! Max Max and Lucky Larry were in too. And even Bob capitulated to the peer pressure.
Two rounds of margaritas later, and with burgers feeling our bellies, everything was perfectly fine in the world. Lucky Larry (whose real name was actually Tom, not Larry) recounted the story of how he got his trail name on the PCT back in 2009. We all laughed and cheered as he regaled us with the tale, then we slowly made our way back to MJs on the dark, warm evening.
This was fantastic St. Patrick’s Day and I was falling even more in love with the AZT.
Highlights
- The gorgeous vermillion cliffs in the early morning sun was some of the best landscape of the trail yet, and the sheer number of butterflies and wildflowers made it even better!
- Hanging out in Superior with the other hikers (and drinking margaritas) was the absolute highlight of my day. I can’t believe I was going to original bypass this town
- MJ is the epitome of a trail angel! I cannot say enough nice things about this generous and kind woman. The AZT is lucky to have her.
Challenges
- Despite the great scenery, it was another blisteringly hot day with only a single water source (the rainwater collector). I cannot imagine how thru-hikers made it though this section before that addition!
- Trying to figure out what to make of Eagle/Dragon just makes my brain hurt.