Onwards To Flagstaff

-

 My resupply package was waiting for me at the Grand Canyon post office just as planned. I packed everything into my backpack and left. I chose a slightly different route than the official Arizona Trail to stay near the rim a little longer and explore the areas around Yaki Point and Shoshone Point.

Yaki Point

Shoshone Point


I re-joined the official route at a fire lookout tower that provided nice views over the Coconino Rim.


Fire Lookout

Coconino Rim


The following days were long and relatively hard hiking days as water again became scarce and water sources were an average of 20 miles apart.


Setting up in the moonlight 


That defined my daily mileage as I didn’t want to carry more than four liters of water on top of everything else.


Glorious Sunsets 


The landscape was pretty in a low key way, changing from ponderosa pine forest to more open juniper trees and eventually open grassland, perfect for equestrians.



Later it was getting mountainous again as I reached the San Francisco Mountains with Humphrey’s Peak. There is also the Arizona Ski Bowl resort and temperatures in that area dropped markedly.


These clouds mean wind…


Around the time I reached this area I felt that my physical transformation from “office worker who occasionally hikes” to “full time hiker” was finally complete. I had lost some weight, but not too much, my legs got strong enough to hike an average of 20 miles a day and my stomach was now able to process enough food to provide the necessary energy as long as I set my pace accordingly.


First Fall Colors


As I got closer to Flagstaff I started looking forward to “town food”, a hot shower (my last one was in Jacob Lake, about two weeks earlier) and laundry, especially as there were no rivers or big lakes to rinse off in. I decided to take my first real “zero” day in Flagstaff and stay there for two nights.


Near Flagstaff 


And just like that, one third of my hike was already over.

I added about 100 miles in Utah


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Finally Made A Bucket List

-
Image
 It actually turned out to be exactly five buckets, 20 gallon each. I hope I'm doing this right... Planning the types and quantity of food was relatively easy as I could draw from my experiences preparing for and completing the Pacific Crest Trail and the Arizona Trail. I estimate the Hayduke to take about two months. Unlike for the much longer PCT, I decided not to do any cooking and dehydrating and will rely on commercially available foods only. The Buckets And The Stuff That Goes Into Them My breakfasts will be based on overnight oats, just like during my previous thru-hikes. I add chia seeds, different kinds of nuts as well as dried cranberries or raisins to create variety. The mix goes into individual ziplock bags that I will also use for overnight soaking. The moistened mix is a favorite for rodents, so the bag goes into my cooking pot during the night and will be firmly secured with a metal lid. I eat directly out of the ziplock bag, eliminating the need for cleaning any dis...
Read more

Hello, Hayduke!

-
Image
 Today I received a long awaited email from a backcountry ranger at Grand Canyon National Park. "Hello Michael, I drew up a permit for you...". That was the moment my next thru-hiking adventure started to feel real. It's been two and a half years since my last long hike, the Arizona Trail. Back then, I had added roughly 100 miles through southern Utah, more out of convenience than anything else. By starting my hike in Bryce Canyon instead of the Arizona border I could just take a bus from Las Vegas instead of scrambling to find transportation to the official terminus. I ended up liking this part of the hike more than most sections of the official trail and started looking into hiking the complete route. Overlooking Grand Gulch in Capitol Reef National Park At first, it sounded too daunting. The Hayduke is an 800–850-mile, mostly off-trail route linking Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks across the Colorado Plateau. All my...
Read more

The Route

-
Image
One of the skills I had to improve on while preparing for the Hayduke was making routes on maps. While the route exists on CalTopo and AllTrails, updates and alternates are missing. Many underlying maps are pretty old and do not reflect developments in recent years or even decades. I found, for example, that a rockslide closed part of the Zion route and I had to look into detour options. I’m sure I will discover more changes as I continue my preparations and also along the hike.  I started looking into my preferred route last year already, but worked out most details in the last few weeks. While the process of working on those maps can be pretty tedious, I enjoy imagining hiking the routes I created. Current State Of My Route With Some Alternates I learned the hard way during the hike in 2023 that marked water sources like springs can be really unreliable. Luckily I found a spreadsheet online that showed known water sources along the route, but the last updates were from 2022. I su...
Read more