Friday – 4/14/2023
- Start: Hilltop west of Dick Williams Creek
- End: 260 Trailhead
- Distance: ~17 miles
Sadly, I slept for absolute crap last night – even though my campsite was just about as good as it gets. I was perched up on a flat hill east of the Hatchery Trailhead between two creeks. There was plenty of trees and bushes blocking the wind. And it didn’t even get that cold overnight. Yet, I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep.
It was nearly 11 pm when I finally dropped off, but I found myself wide awake again at 1:25 am, and I stayed that way until 4 am. I suspect my sleeplessness was partially due to my injured big toe. It still hurt fantastically bad, even with my shoes off. And it would start throbbing anew every time it grazed the bottom of my quilt as I turned to make myself comfortable.
As I lay awake, I started catastophizing about what my injury meant for the remainder of my hike. I was less than 20 miles from the eastern terminus of the Highline Trail. I would undoubtedly finish a thru-hike of this trail, but there absolutely NO way I would be doing the yo-yo hike l’d contemplated just a few days ago.
In fact, the idea of hiking a yo-yo made me cringe just now. If this toe got infected out here, it could ruin all my summer plans. My attempt to summit Mt. Rainier in late June would be in the toilet. And so would my plan to hike the Oregon section of the PCT.
I was only heading into the third day of the 6-day adventure I’d planned. And I had no idea what I would do when I got to the end of the trail. If I cut this hike short at the trailhead, would I be able to get a hitch back into Payson? And what was I going to do once I made it back to town? Hang out in a hotel?? That was a lame idea, and the uncertainty of it all had my mind working overtime.
WILDLIFE
Another anxious thought keeping me from falling back to sleep had to do with the wildlife out here. I’d seen a sign at the Hatchery Trailhead yesterday evening saying this was bear country and recommending people hang their food.
I didn’t have a bear bag with me on this trip. I just had my food stored in an OPSAK (a type of odor proof sack). Would that barrier be enough to mask the scent of my food? Were bears lurking nearby? Did they smell my dinner of beans and rice lingering in the air like an invisible roadmap to the rest of my food?
Between these my angst about the end of the trail and the animal concerns, my mind just couldn’t relax enough for me to drift off quickly. But it must have eventually happened because I woke up for good around 5:30 am with a bunch of birds squawking loudly at each other from somewhere close by.
The wildlife’s presence in my thoughts continued even after I began hiking this morning. I was just heading out of the treeline toward a series of high voltage powers lines when some elk startled me and ran directly across my path.
I was too slow to capture them on my camera before their tan rumps were back into the trees again though. So I had to make do with a photo of the towers and power lines under the gloomy gray sky instead.
SNOW!
Not long after I got beyond the power lines, I made it to the first of two crossings of the Horton Creek. As I dropped down toward the first one – or the West Fork of Horton Creek – I got my first glimpses of snow on the trail. It wasn’t a lot, but it was most certainly snow!
The cold water rushing down from Horton Spring and the creek above was moving at a fast clip as I reached the creek crossing. Mossy rocks made it feel like it was going to be a slick crossing, so I scoured a better place to bridge the gap.
Lucky for me, two long logs had been deliberately dropped nearby to form a makeshift bridge. Cross hatches were cut on the top of them to help prevent hikers from slipping on the journey over the water, and I reveled in the fact that my feet would stay dry for a bit longer.
After the getting to the opposite side of the creek, I naively assumed it the route would be flat and remain at the same elevation until I got the East Fork of Horton Creek, but nothing could be further from the truth. The trail climbed sharply over the steep hill that separated the two creeks, and then I was dropping back down for yet another, crossing while trying to stay upright on a muddy trail.
This second crossing of Horton Creek didn’t allow me to keep my feet dry though. There was a log spanning the creek, but this one sat perched several feet above the water and it using it like tightrope to walk across the creek seemed harder than simply trying to rock hop my way through the cold water.
My damp wet shoes weren’t the most pressing problem here, because now I had to contend with the snow and mud on the opposite side of the creek. The initial patches of snow were child’s play. The true challenge came when the trail started climbing uphill on a grade that felt reminiscent of the Appalachian Trail (where I’m convinced switchbacks are barred by law).
The entire way up, my trail shoes struggled to get any sort of purchase. The mud was like hiking uphill in chocolate pudding, while slick snow was more akin trying to walking up a ski slope after an ice storm. Here I was, at barely 9:15 in the morning, and I was already feeling exhausted from the effort!
A BIG CHANGE
When I crested the top of the climb though, the struggle completely worth it. I now was at highest elevation I would reach on the entire Highline Trail, and the then entire complexion of the trail seemed to change. Though I was still walking amid tall evergreen trees, everything was smoother now. The grade was more gentle. The trail tread was luxuriously soft. It was simply fantastic!
The gray, overcast sky I’d woken up to had been replaced with a patchy blue sky and sunshine. Red rock formations and ledges started to appear on the cliffs below me. The scenery was simply breathtaking as I made each turn. Even the flora was changing – with agave and paddle cactus replacing some of the juniper and manzanita I’d been walking though the past two days.
As I stopped to take a mid-morning break, I caught sight of some squirrels that made me smile to myself. The squirrels where I live in the Pacific Northwest tend to be bushy-tailed Western Gray squirrels or Douglas squirrels with their long reddish-brown tails. But these were the adorable Abert’s squirrels.
The thing that really sets Abert’s squirrels apart from their PNW counterparts is their ears. Instead of typical round ears, these squirrels have long, furry pointy ears that stick up – so they’re sometimes called “tassel-eared” squirrels.
But just like all the elk I’ve seen the past two days, they squirrels were all too fast for me to get a close up photos, so I have nary a single photo of them. My pictures of the lovely landscape will have to suffice to fill my memories instead.
A bit further ahead, I crossed paths with a hiker named Jesse who was out for just a few days of hiking on the Highline and some of the side trails, like See Canyon (which was still up ahead).
We talked for a bit about the trail, and I warned him about the snow and slick terrain near Horton Creek. But I doubted he needed any advice from me. He seemed pretty well-prepared and was even wearing hiking boots with gaiters up to his knees.
A NEW PLAN
As I continued hiking east, the red rocks and scenery only got better and better. This stretch looked so different than the rest of the Highline Trail that I’d hiked thus far, and I started to formulate a tentative plan in my mind.
Maybe instead of heading back to Payson when I got to the 260 Trailhead, I could spend the next few days slowly exploring some of this gorgeous bit of the trail just like Jesse was doing. I didn’t have to kill myself with a yo-yo hike back to Pine, but nor did I need to bail on the outdoors and go sit in a hotel merely because I reached the end of the trail. There were quite a few trailheads out here that I could utilize once I was done.
I still had three more days to play with out here, and it toward totally feasible to slowly enjoy the details along Mogollon Rim within the physical limitations of my current condition. Three days of R&R in my tent would cost me $0, and I could hike 0 miles, or 5 miles, or 10 miles, or whatever I felt like hiking for the remainder of my time out here. I could even come back and camp near these awesome rock formations that intrigued me so much.
And with that, my morale suddenly was buoyed again. I wasn’t on a death march. I wasn’t a failure for quitting my plans to yo-yo the Highline. I was just on a backcountry adventure. And wasn’t that why I’d come back to Arizona in the first place?
JAG CORPS
As I continued hiking east, I reached a series of long switchbacks leading all the way down to See Canyon Trailhead. This must have been a more popular day hiking spot too, because unlike Washington Park and the Hatchery Trailheads that I hiked past yesterday, there was actually a pit toilet here! And there were 6-8 cars and trucks parked in the lot.
I slowly made my way a few hundred feet up the trailhead where another hiker was sitting down and enjoying his lunch on the banks of Christopher Creek. When I asked if I could join him, he agreed, and I soon discovered that Isaac was hiking the Highline Trail too – only he was heading westbound toward Pine. Today was his first day on trail, and he was already 7 miles in.
We swapped intel about what lie ahead of each of us in each direction, and I then learned that he was a law student at Arizona State University. I asked what type of law he was hoping to practice and he said military law! What a wild coincidence.
After telling him that I was a retired Army JAG officer, he immediately opened up and wanted to talk about the military. He went to OCS the prior summer for the Marine Corps, and was currently waiting for his orders for their JAG basic course after he passed the bar.
I think he was more interested in picking my brain about what it was like to be a JAG officer than any details I might provide about the 50 miles of trial that still lay ahead of him these next few days. But I didn’t mind one bit, and so it was a lovely lunch for both of us!
CHRISTOPHER CREEK
After 45 minutes of chatting, it was time to part ways. Isaac needed to get walking if he was going to finish the trail in the days he had allotted, while I had a new obstacle to deal with – namely Christopher Creek.
This was the most daunting of any of the river or creeks I’d come across this entire journey. It wasn’t that it was really that much wider than Webber Creek (from day one of this hike). The challenge here was that Christopher Creek was considerably deeper and faster.
Water was pouring over through the creek at breakneck speed and it looked to be at least 4 feet deep where the trail crossed it! There was no easy way to ford it safely, and I worried about getting swept downstream if I tried. But Isaac said someone had dropped a log upstream so people could get across the trail. That was the best place to cross, in his opinion.
As I hiked up the canyon trail that paralleled the creek, I spotted the log he must have been talking about. It was at least 20-25 feet across and the log was perched barely a foot or two above the fast moving water.
I got down to the water’s edge where the tree rested on the bank, but I was none too eager to walk across the top of it. The narrow tree looked like a round balance beam from this vantage point, getting gradually wider as it got to the other side. The bark was still on the top of the tree, making for an uneven surface. And it was just high enough that I’d feel like I was perched on a slackline where I truly need to balance. This was my least favorite type of log crossing.
How was I possibly going to make my way across this narrow obstacle? My balance was definitely off with my bum big toe, and one wrong step would send me straight into the water. I did not feel good about this. Not one bit.
In the end, I decided the safest way across – at least for me – was to straddle the tree like a horse and just use my hands to hoist myself forward in small increments. It would take quadruple the time as walking across, and I might look like a complete moron, but hopefully I wouldn’t end up soaking wet in Christopher Creek with my pack floating downstream away from me.
Ultimately my plan worked, but it wasn’t without its own issues. I’d taken my sun gloves off for lunch and hadn’t put them back on again when I started my journey across, so the bark tore up the skin on the palms of my hands. It also made a small hole on the inside of my hiking tights that I’d have to sew up once I got back to town. But, you know what? I made it across with all my gear! And that was good enough for me!
THE FINAL MILES
During lunch, Isaac told me that I still had one major climb ahead of me, so I was mentally prepared to head uphill once I got to the opposite side of the trail. But what Isaac didn’t tell me was that this wasn’t a short climb like Horton Creek. It was nearly two miles of gradual uphill terrain taking me from the low elevation of the creek up to 6,800 feet.
What’s more, there was a section of trail to navigate that was completely flooded out leaving behind sticky mud that was the consistency of peanut butter. Oh yes, I remember this mud all too well from my AZT hike last year. It clung to your shoes, making them feel 10 pounds heavier, until you found somewhere solid (like a dry rock) where you could scrape the paste of your soles.
The rest of the trail after that obstacle was a complete blur to me. I was like a horse heading to the finish line once I made it to the top of this climb. I could smell the end of the trail up ahead and I was ready to get to the 260 Trailhead, where I hoped my Ursack was still safely cached for the rest of my time out here.
I knew I was getting close to my destination when the road traffic from Highway 260 started getting louder and louder off to my right side. It’s amazing how much noise large semi trucks and motorcycles make when your ears are used to chirping of birds and the quieter sounds of the backcountry.
However, the real sign that I was getting close to the trailhead was a large tent set up in a small circle of trees. It was the size of an 8-person tent and it had to signal there had to be car campers nearby. No backpacker would carry the weight of such a giant tent for this hike.
My suspicions were soon confirmed when a group of people in their early 20s came trotting down the trail carrying plastics tubs filled with board games, chips, and a jumbo sized bottle of cheap vodka. It was Friday night and the kids were out to camp and party in the wild.
260 TRAILHEAD
I eventually made it to the parking area near the 260 trailhead around 4:15 pm as the sun was already starting to drop to the west. I’d made it to the eastern terminus in just three days, despite my foot issues.
I was now done with my thru-hike of the Highline Trail, and I’d thoroughly satisfied all the questions that cropped up in my mind about back when I was hiking the Arizona Trail last spring. I got to spend nearly 60 miles hiking below the Mogollon Rim and now knew where the Highline Trail went.
Now that I was done, it was time to find somewhere far, far away from those kids where I could set up my tent and just rest. But first I was off to find my cache. I hadn’t seen any water within more than a mile of the trailhead, and I was super thirsty. Thank goodness I’d had the forethought to hide a gallon jug of water with my Ursack so I wouldn’t have to backtrack to the last water source!
Highlights
- The vermillion rocks I passed between Horton Creek and the See Canyon Trailhead were so unique and enchanting. I really wish I could have camped near them on this hike.
- The Abert’s squirrels were so amazingly adorable with their long furry ears. I’m completely forgot about them from last year’s AZT thru-hike.
- Eating lunch with Isaac on the banks above Christopher Creek was super cool. It’s not every day I get to meet a hiker headed down the same unusual career path as me.
- Celebrating that I made it to the end of the Highline Trail in just three days’ time! It wasn’t an easy hike though, and I’d definitely recommend hiking it in the slightly easier (westbound) direction instead of the way I went.
Challenges
- This injured big toe has radically changed the my plans for the rest of my time out here in Arizona, and the anxiety of figuring out what’s next kept me up much of the night.
- Crossing Christopher Creek on the long, narrow log was not pretty, and it left me with scraped up palms and a hole in my tights. But I’m grateful I was able to stay dry.
- The lingering snow and mud slowed me down a bit today, but luckily, there were also plenty of easier spots on trail to balance it all out. And now my journey on the trail is complete.