March 22, 2022
- Start: Stealth spot off a forest road (Mile 361.7)
- End: Highway 87/Sunflower (Mile 378.7)
- Distance: 17 miles
The wind was howling all night long, but it was only directly hitting my tent from about 11:30 pm to 2 am. The rest of the time it was just noisy. And so damn cold.
I woke around 6:15 am, immediately checking whether my water froze in my bottles and then looking around to see if Volt caught up to us after dark. No dice. It was just Mad Max and I there. And since we only had 17 miles to Highway 87, I strongly doubted Volt would catch us. It could be the two of us heading into Payson tonight.
Mad Max had to help me work the zipper on my rain jacket this morning so it would close. It’s degraded these past three weeks from an “almost functional” status to its present rating of “hot mess.” The teeth on the zipper are wonky and misshapen, and I’m literally having to use duct tape to keep my jacket closed in the biting wind.
I should have replaced this 9-year-old rain jacket before heading out on this thru-hike. The material is so worn that it barely keeps me dry. The zipper has been problematic for over a year now, so I’m unsure why I was attempting to put 800 more miles on it.
It’s probably because I absolutely love the jacket’s bright pink color, which makes me feel happy every time I wear it. The color has been discontinued and the manufacturer replaced with boring options like black, navy blue, and forest green. But it’s time to face reality. Like it or not, I will need a new jacket before the end of this trail.
THREE AMIGOS
Our morning began with roadwalking along several forest roads, but there were a surprising number of ups and downs to go over. It definitely wasn’t flat, even though the Four Peaks were behind us now.
Mad Max and I hiked together for the first two hours of the day, telling each other stories about our off-trail lives and just getting to know each other better. It’s amazing how you can find something in common with just about any hiker you meet.
Thru-hiking is a bit like the military in that way. You all have this shared hardship you’re enduring and have nothing but time to kill. It becomes an intense bonding experience somehow. Each day feels like a month. Each week feels like a year. And people you never would have looked at twice back home suddenly become instant friends in hours or days.
Around 10 am, we caught up with the Three Amigos, a trio in their 60s who were also thru-hiking the AZT. I’d been on their heels for weeks, gradually closing the gap a little more each day. So it was nice to put some faces to the names finally.
Mad Max and I chatted with the guys before hiking up to our highest point for the day, where the AZT left the forest road and merged back onto a single-track trail again. I figured this was my best chance at cell reception, so I took my phone out and texted Volt our general destination and the time, just in case he was still hoping to catch us and share a ride into town.
We still had several more hours of hiking ahead of us, so I suppose there’s always a chance we will reunite and be our own version of the ‘three amigos’ as we head into Payson tonight. But I wasn’t holding my breath.
SUN GLOVES
After several hours of hiking in tandem, Mad Max and I gradually settled into our own paces and spread out for some alone time. It was still windy, but the trail was gradually dropping in elevation on its descent from nearly 6,000 feet to 3,500 feet.
Around noon, we both stopped at Boulder Pools to eat a quick lunch and refill our water. It was beginning to warm up as the morning turned to afternoon, and I’d long since stripped off my rain jacket. I was now on the opposite end of the temperature spectrum and feeling as if I was overheating under the hot desert sun.
I figured the best remedy for the heat would be to douse my sun shirt in water, just as I had done back in the Superstitions. So, I stripped my sun gloves off (to prevent them from getting soaked) and dunked my sun hoodie in a pool of water as Mad Max set off ahead of me.
My lizard brain knew something felt slightly off when I departed the pools, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. One-third of a mile later, the backs of my hands felt like they were burning under the sun and I suddenly realized I left sun gloves beside the water.
Dammit! I needed those sun gloves out here in the desert. I couldn’t afford to lose them now. And so, I turned back around and backtracked to the water while Mad Max pulled ahead even further.
VINTAGE CARS
I cursed my inattentiveness and vowed to refocus my attention to catch back up to Mad Max. We planned to get to the Sunflower Crossing at Highway 87 this afternoon, and then get a ride into Payson together. But that meant I needed to pick up the pace to make up the distance I’d just lost returning to the creek for my gloves.
I could see Mad Max’s silhouette up ahead in the distance, but no matter how much I increased my speed, I just couldn’t seem to close the gap. He was hiking like a machine on this terrain.
I lost sight of him entirely as the trail dipped down to a gulley where some rusted-out cars from the 1940s or 1950s sat jumbled in the desert. There was no road near here, and I wondered how the heck these cars got to this desolate spot, miles from anything.
The cars were completely stripped down and all the glass in the windows was long gone. Given their vintage, these cars could have been sitting here for 70 years. Perhaps there was a road in the desert once upon a time.
Or maybe there were dumped out here in the desert by gangsters or bank robbers, I thought to myself. That’s not a likely scenario, but the imagination runs wild when you have nothing else to entertain you. And there were a lot of bullet holes riddling the cars’ metal sides…
As I pondered various possibilities, I came upon a flat area with a network of social trails that braided their way through the desert. The trails seemed to spiderweb out to a number of flat tent sites, and it was clear that hikers had used this area in the past.
However, the network was also disorienting, and I completely lost the real AZT through all the equally prominent trails. For the second time in two days, I had to open my FarOut App to figure out where the real trail disappeared and get myself back on track.
Mad Max was completely out of sight now. My stomach sank and I began to catastrophize. I wasn’t going to catch him. I was feeling sluggish and slow, and just making mistake after mistake. First I left my gloves behind. Then I lost the trail. I was a mess today.
I realized what I was doing and tried to distract myself from all this defeatist talk. I didn’t have to catch Mad Max. He’d wait for me at the road crossing or he wouldn’t, but that was out of my control. Just enjoy the hike and take in the beauty of the desert.
WATER CROSSING
Fifteen miles into the day (and just two miles shy of Highway 87), I made it to Sycamore Spring, which was more of a wide river flowing in a desert wash than a spring. The water had to be 20 feet across where the AZT met it. And while the creek bottom was still visible through the clear water, it was evident that my shoes would get soaked all the way up to my ankles if I forded the water here.
I looked up and down the wash for some boulders or a fallen tree to balance on and keep my feet dry, and I was debating my options when I heard a voice. Mad Max was sitting under a giant sycamore tree directly across from me on the opposite bank. I hadn’t even seen him there initially tucked back in the shade.
He was sitting on the ground with his white bandana up to his nose again, trying to staunch yet another nosebleed. I asked where he’d crossed, and he pointed to the spot where I was standing. So I stripped off my shoes and forded the creek barefoot to join Mad Max in the shade while we waited for his nosebleed to stop.
As the two of us sat near the creek, we started talking about Payson and getting into town this evening. I had no clue how much traffic might run up and down Highway 87 on a Tuesday, and 30 miles was a pretty long hitch. But what other options did we have? I needed to look at a map.
I took my phone out of airplane mode for the second time today, and it immediately chimed with a text message from Volt. It turns out he camped about four miles behind us last night and has been hiking like a maniac since dawn to catch us.
According to his last text, he should barely be a quarter mile behind us now. He’d definitely catch us before the highway! So Mad Max and I slowed our pace to a saunter, constantly checking over our shoulders to see if we could spot Volt behind us.
Not five minutes later, Volt was upon us and moving fast. He was like a train powering through the desert and he wasn’t slowing down for anything. Town was calling!
SUNFLOWER
We reached Highway 87 around 4 pm and scrambled up the rugged slope to the asphalt road. The AZT was supposed to go under the highway through some concrete tunnels here, so there wasn’t a real trailhead or parking area where day hikers might stop and park. All we would see was a small road heading into Sunflower Towing. But even that small business seemed to be closed.
If we were banking on someone in Sunflower to give us a ride, we were out of luck. We were out here in the middle of the desert with nothing else around us. Just a highway with cars and trucks occasionally whizzing by at 60+ miles per hour.
Mad Max tried to see if we could get an Uber or Lyft to get us from Payson, but that was a fool’s errand. We had barely any cell signal, and nobody was coming out here. It was good ol’ hitching time.
I wandered out to the wide shoulder of the highway with my pack and threw out my thumb. A few cars whizzed past, and less than five minutes later a small gray Honda Civic pulled over. Sweet! I had a ride!
I asked the driver if he’d give my partners a ride too and he asked, “How many?” I responded by holding up two fingers. And he shrugged in response. As long as everyone fit in the backseat, he didn’t care.
I waved Mad Max and Volt over, and the three of us crammed into the back of this compact car with our packs on piled on top of our laps. The ride was super uncomfortable, and our driver seemed to take the curvy roads to Payson at 80 miles per hour. But it was better than sitting on the side of the road in Sunflower!
When we finally made it to Payson, it was after 5 p.m., and it was far too late to go to the town’s sole outfitter, where I hoped to get more fuel and perhaps a new rain jacket. So we headed to a hotel, cleaned up, and then went across the street to a Mexican restaurant named El Rancho for dinner. It was Taco Tuesday, and the Payson had $4.50 margaritas!! Just what the doctor ordered!!
Highlights
- Getting to know Mad Max better during the hours we’d hiked together was great. He’s a cool dude who’s lived through some wild experiences.
- Although it wasn’t flat, today was a relatively easy day of hiking. I’ll take the Four Peaks Wilderness any day over the Superstitions!
- Catching a ride into Payson was much easier than I thought—even if we had to squish our smelly bodies and packs into the tiny rear seat of a Honda Civic.
Challenges
- My jacket is undeniably ready to be replaced. I can no longer even zip it up any more, and that’s a dealbreaker on these cold and windy mornings.
- I spent a lot of unnecessary mental energy worrying about this little crew I was hiking with. Would I catch up to Mad Max? Would Volt catch the two of us? I didn’t come out here looking for a trail family and I need to remember that it’s ok to hike solo and only worry about my needs and priorities.