Sunday, October 15, 2023
Miles: 36.56
Elevation gain/loss: 2966’/3927′
I was up at 4:55am and hiking by 5:20am. Early on, I heard coyotes playing, and needed to make some noise when the trail turned toward them, to keep us from being surprised. In the first few hours, I started to smell smoke. I knew I was heading towards the fire closure/reroute, but I wasn’t sure if anything had changed. The smoke was thick enough that I put on my KN95 for an hour or so, before the wind changed and the smoke thinned out.
The trail popped out on a gravel forest road, and I started the reroute. I stopped at the ranger station for water I didn’t need to filter and a toilet. The fire closure lead me down a very hot, busy dirt road for 10+ miles, being covered in grit and dust every time a truck roared by. Later in the fire closure, after I was back on some trails, I met Butterfingers. After the closure, the trail head me to the Mogollon Rim, where AZT hikers drop 1000′ down to a rolling trail paralleling the edge of this amazing geological feature.
Towards the end of my day, as I was getting out my headlamp, I ran into Otherworld. We hiked together for a few miles and then I kept going when she said she really didn’t want to dry camp (though the water source was a sprinkler/geysir). She’s hiking the AZT slowly, and was considering stopping in Pine; she lives off the grid in HI when she’s not hiking, and interrupted me when I tried to talk about my work, explicitly bringing the conversation away from how we each pay our bills. All of her behavior led me to believe that she’s the child of rich parents and feels very guilty about it. I hiked another mile or two, stopping at 7:40pm, and as I set up camp, she arrived to camp nearby me. It was a much warmer night, and I was happy for a more moderate temperature though it was an indication of the record-breaking heat to come.
Transcending Mountains 