Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Miles: 34.19
Elevation gain/loss: 1916’/1775′
After a decent night of sleep at the hotel, I was up at 4:55am and hiking by 5:30am. I’d hoped to hike down a dirt road and connect to the AZT by way of a mountain bike trail, but when I got to the end of the dirt road by headlamp, I found barbed wire fences and ‘private property’ signs. I turned around and went further up the main street, and then tried to cross over to the trail and was again thwarted by a fence, though I could see the mountain bike trail on the other side. I paralled the trail on the road until I found a closed gate where I could squeeze through a gap. I was glad for the cover of darkness; I really didn’t want to retrace my steps all the way back to the AZT and then walk extra distance that paralleled where I’d walked through town already. Within 5 minutes of hopping on the bike trail, I was back on the AZT.
It was a flat kind of day, and I was relatively bored with the terrain, especially after the contrast of the Grand Canyon the day before. I did get to see my first tarantula; it was sleepy and slow-moving, and I found it remarkably cute, all things considered. The temperature was relatively cool, and so the long water carries weren’t as bad as they could have been. I was aiming to get to Flagstaff in ~3 days, to take advantage of my extra miles other days to get myself a whole day ahead of schedule. I was very nervous about the mountains I needed to covered the last 4 days, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to keep up my high mileage days through that section.
At one of the few water sources, I arrived to find two other thru-hikers talking about politics. The two men ignored me for 20 minutes, while I filtered 3L of water, ate a snack, and drank one of those liters. They didn’t acknowledge me until I was about to leave; then the only thing they said to me was, “So where did you start your day?” Most often, I find that men ask this to compare who is tougher/more manly through the blunt instrument of ‘who is doing the most miles.’ Some men get aggressive with me after I answer a much larger number than them, which I think is impacted by their perception of me as small and more feminine/gay. I know this experience is not unique – it happens most often to women who thru-hike. I gave a vague answer, much to their dissatisfaction, and headed back out. I ended up seeing them again later that day, separately – their trail names were Psy and Kidnapper.
I also met two older men, Jon and Mike, nearby their personal water cache; they lived around Flagstaff and were hiking a ~40 mile section. They offered me water from their next cache so I wouldn’t have to filter 2L at the next water source. I carried water through a 19-mile dry stretch today; perhaps 1 in 6 hypothetical caches had any public water – I never relied on them for water but an extra 0.5L here and there was nice.
I stopped at 6:15pm (the earliest for my entire trip) since I’d found a nice flat campsite within 0.5mi of my goal miles for the day with a hair of cell service. Psy passed me a bit after dark; we talked for a minute, me saying that I had passed Kidnapper and Psy saying that he hadn’t seen Kidnapper but that Kidnapper’s wife had told him not to hike with Psy because Psy was pushing big miles. Psy headed out to push on for a few more miles.
Transcending Mountains 