Thru-Hike #2: The Grand Canyon State

Thru-hike number two: 788 miles on the Arizona National Scenic Trail. It seems only logical that my next thru-hike travel through my home state. Outside of brief adventures in New Mexico and Australia, I lived all twenty-four years of my life in Arizona. I love everything about Arizona’s landscapes and I’m apparently obsessed with challenges, so the AZT seems like the perfect trail to add to my hiking resume.

I knew before I even finished the Pacific Crest Trail that I had to do more thru-hikes and that thru-hike number two would most likely be the Arizona Trail. I needed something shorter that didn’t require the summer season for completion as my summer free time is almost non-existent working as a wildland firefighter. I originally planned to hike the AZT in the spring of 2020, but I decided this past spring I didn’t want to wait that long and a fall hike wouldn’t have me pushing a work start date in April or May for the 2020 fire season.

While I may not have known it at the time, I’ve been on or near the AZT for many previous adventures. My first backpacking trip was in the Superstition Mountains and followed by other trips with my Venture Crew. I helped with my brother’s Eagle Scout project doing trail maintenance on the trail near Sunflower, AZ. I ran on the trail while I went to school in Flagstaff and while I worked on the North Kaibab at Jacob Lake. I’ve burned off the trail for prescribed burns while working in Happy Jack, AZ. I’ve done a “rim to rim to rim” twice and other day trips in the Grand Canyon. Arizona is where all my adventures started, adventures continue, and where my life currently revolves. I fell in love with desert landscapes first before all other landscapes and Arizona will always have a special place in my heart.

I am traveling primarily as a solo hiker this time around, headed south bound (SOBO) from Utah to Mexico. The official start for the trail is the State Line trail head, east of Fredonia, AZ to the U.S./Mexico border, about 1.5 miles south of Montezuma Pass. I’m expecting this trip to take about a month and a half. I have some friends and family joining for up to week periods at a time, but in between those visits I’ll be on my own.

I’m equally excited and terrified to be a solo hiker. Typical me, nervous about everything, has a very long list of everything that could wrong and that I’m afraid of. Number one on the list is the dark, two, mountain lions, and then three, mountain lions hiding in the dark; it’s terrifying, I know. After that we can add the list of running out of water, getting kidnapped while hitchhiking, poorly handling loneliness at camp and on the trail, and I could go on and on. I’m trying not to think on all of that though because it would be a shame to miss what the trail has to offer.

I have a couple new, major pieces of gear for this trip. I’m slowly but surely making my way toward an ultralight hiker (kind of). At the recommendation of my PCT hiking partner, I got a new pack, the Granite Gear Crown X60. This was really the only new piece of gear I actually needed as my Osprey Ariel’s, the pack I took on the PCT, frame has ripped out of the pack twice. I also decided to get a UGQ Bandit Quilt. My old sleeping bag is from high school and has been on every trip since, including the PCT and thus is starting to lose some of its down feathers. It is also quite heavy and with some long water carries coming up I wanted to save on as much weight as possible. My new pack weight comes in at about thirty-five pounds, including four liters of water and about five days of food. That’s about ten pounds off my pack weight that I had for most of the PCT, so like I said, slowly, but surely making my way towards ultra-light status.

I’m starting out with a hiking partner, my friend Colin, who has done his own thru-hikes on the John Muir Trail and the Colorado Trail. He’s also done many day hiking adventures with me throughout Northern Arizona. He will be hiking with me to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and then I’ll be continuing on solo from there.

This will be a mini blog series and while I’ll strive to make each post as detailed as my PCT posts, I won’t be stopping as much as I did on the PCT, so blog post time will be limited. Though that being said, I loved doing the PCT blog, so I’ll probably get sucked into this one as well.

For now, here’s to looking forward to rugged mountains, cacti as far as the eye can see, ponderosa pine forests, long water carries, and stunning Arizona sunsets!