March 29, 2022
- Start: Winslow, AZ (50 miles off the AZT)
- End: Winslow, AZ
- Distance: 0 miles
The generous lady who us a ride all the way to Winslow, Arizona, last night was a godsend. I’d expected to sleep in my tent or the lobby of the Mogollon Rim ranger station. But instead, I was sharing a hotel room with Elliot and Volt as we binged on dinner fare from Taco Bell.
According to the local news though, the town of Happy Jack (near where we’d left the trail) got four inches of snow last night and early into the early morning!! That was more bad weather than I’d needed to deal with, if I’m being honest, and I was grateful to ride it out somewhere safe and warm.
We didn’t get to bed until after midnight, but the three of us were wide awake around 7 am this morning. So we set off for the hotel lobby in search of their free breakfast before we decided how (and when) we were getting back on trail.
Unfortunately, the hotel’s breakfast was about as crummy as they get. They were completely out of coffee (at 7 a.m.!?!) and the food was limited to some pre-packaged mini muffins or freezer-burned breakfast burritos. Ugh!
Lucky for us, there was a McDonald’s right across the road and so the three of us skedaddled over there to eagerly fill our bellies with hot coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and hash browns amid the morning rush of fast food customers.
We checked the weather again as we sat eating our food inside McDonald’s. Today’s forecast showed another inch of snow was supposed to fall near the trail, and the high temperature was only supposed to get up to 35°F. That news sucked!
Did we really want to head back out to freeze out butts off in the tail end of the storm today? And who was possibly going to pick up three hikers heading out to the trail in this weather?
It didn’t take much arm twisting or all three of us all to agree that we needed to just stay put in Winslow and take a zero. We could do some laundry. And resupply. And go to the brewery in town for lunch. It was going to 48°F here in town. So why not stay put in Winslow instead of trudging through the snow and mud? The Arizona Trail would still be there tomorrow when it was dry and sunny.
With that decision made, our first order of business was to change hotels. The place we’d stayed last night was a complete dump. The towel bars in the bathroom were falling off the wall. The air vents were covered in clumps or dust that would make a healthy person wheeze. And a bathroom vanity looked as if it might fall apart if you even leaned against it. We were heading to the Motel 6 instead – which was both cheaper and nicer.
As we waited for our laundry to wash and dry, we also were able to get a hold of Mad Max. He told us he’d made it up to Flagstaff right as the storm was rolling in. But the news wasn’t 100% good.
According to Mad Max, our next 80 miles of trail from Highway 87 to Flagstaff were pretty gnarly. It was filled with a ton more mud, postholing in snow, and the trail was occasionally difficult to navigate. And this abysmal assessment came before this new storm dumped a bunch more snow on the trail last night. Sigh. Mad Max’s warning wasn’t the news any of us wanted to hear!
So we went to lunch at Relic Brewing Company down to cheer ourselves back up, and walked along historic Route 66 before stopping to see the infamous Standin’ on the Corner statue. It was crazy that we were able to walk through downtown Winslow in our sandals, but barely 50 miles to our west it was still snowing and cold! That’s what a few thousand feet of elevation will do!
After lunch, Volt and Elliot went to the barber to get haircuts, then it was back to the hotel, where we hung out drinking wine and simply hanging out as we whiled the remainder or our zero day away.
Highlights
- I hadn’t planned on taking any zero days between Kearny (mile 257) until Flagstaff (mile 561), but I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse about getting off trail and going into Winslow. I would have been absolutely miserable hiking today.
- Changing hotels was a major bonus. The Motel 6 was newly remodeled, and it was 100% nicer than our first hotel.
- Having lunch with Volt and Elliot at the brewery was the best part of my day. You know I love my microbreweries.
Challenges
- The news from Mad Max about the upcoming trail conditions left me with a bit of anxiety. If he was postholing a few days ago, what is it going to be like for us after 4-5” of fresh snow?
- In hindsight, I should have gone to the post office in Winslow and mailed a few things home from my pack to make it lighter (e.g., the shorts I’m not wearing and a few other things). That was a lost opportunity, for sure.