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 really only directly hitting my from about 11:30 pm to 2 am. The rest of the time it was just noisy. And so 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 here. And since we only had 17 miles to Highway 87, I strongly doubted that Volt would catch us. It might just be the two of us heading into Payson tonight.
Mad Max had to help me this morning work the zipper on my rain jacket so it would close. It’s degraded these past three weeks from an ‘almost functional’ status and 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 this thru-hike. The material is so worn it barely keeps me dry. The zipper had been problematic for over a year now. I’m not sure why I was attempting to put 800 more miles on it.
It’s probably just because I absolutely love the jacket’s bright pink color, which just makes me feel happy every time I wear it. The color has since been discontinued and replaced with boring options like black, navy blue, and forest green. But it’s time to face reality. Like it or not, I’m going to 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 that you’re enduring, and you 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 who you never would have looked at twice back home suddenly become instant friends in a matter of hours or days.
Around 10 am, we caught up to the Three Amigos, a trio in their 60s who were also thru-hiking the AZT. I’d been on their heels for weeks now, gradually closing the gap just a little more each day. So it was nice to finally put some faces to the names.
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 single track trail again. I figured this was my best chance at cell reception. So I took my phone out and sent a text to Volt letting him know 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 in front of us, so I supposed there’s always a chance we will reunite and be our own version of the ‘three amigos’ as we headed 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 down 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 of my rain jacket. Now I was on the opposite end of the spectrum and feeling as it I was overheating under the hot desert sun.
I figured the best remedy for the heat would be to douse my sun shirt in the water just as I had back in the Superstitions. So stripped my sun gloves off (to keep them from get soaked in the process) 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 just couldn’t figure it 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 so I could catch back up to Mad Max. Our plan was to get to the Sunflower cross at Highway 87 this afternoon, and 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 going back 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 see to close the gap. He was hiking like a machine on this terrain.
I lost sight of him entirely as 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 to myself how the heck these cars got out to this desolate spot miles from anything.
The cars were completely stripped down and all the glass in the window was long gone. Given their vintage, these cars could have been sitting out here for 70 years. Perhaps there was a road out here 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. I know 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 seems to spiderweb out to a number of flat tent sites, and it was clear this area had been used by hikers 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 heck the real trail disappeared to 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 cut myself off 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 the 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 in 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 as 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 we sat there, the two of us started talking about Payson and getting into town this evening. I had no clue how much traffic would be running 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 my phone immediately chimed with a text message from Volt. It turns out he’d 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
The three of us 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 and there wasn’t a real trailhead. As we would see was a small road heading into a business called Sunflower Towing. But even that 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 come get us from Payson, but that was a fools 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 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!
It was after 5 pm when we finally made it to Payson, and far too late to get 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, 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 some really cool 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 did have 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 on 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 own needs and priorities.