Sunday May 12, 22.1mi/35.6km

Highline Trail at Geronimo Trail Jct (146.7/5640ft) to Road FR144 (166.0/6580ft) (Arizona) +2.8 gps correction

I had a good night of sleep camped under my juniper trees. As usual the sun was up at 5:30 and I was hiking just after 6am. I hiked on the Highland Trail all day today.

It’s a national recreation trail that spans for like 60 miles just below the Mogollon Rim. Sometimes I would hike through a little lush green forest…

And then it would open up to big vistas with red sandy soil.

And there were so many water sources today! Every little creek coming off of the rim crossed the path, so I saw water about once an hour.

I never carried more than a liter of water today and sometimes I carried no water at all, it was great. My favorite part was when the trail would cross these big slickrock benches.

I stopped for lunch next to a creek and a dirt forestry road, and then shortly after lunch, the Arizona Trail split off from the Highline trail.

I thought I would see at least one AZT hiker, but I think they have all come through here a couple weeks ago. In fact I only saw two people (and their dog) all day, near the Washington Park trailhead. My mind wandered all afternoon, interrupted by various amazing vistas.

One of the creeks looked like a little water slide, which was pretty neat.

A bunch of little puffy clouds arrived in the afternoon, and started making interesting shadows on the rim.

This gate was strange, it had a sign that said “fire” when clearly there hadn’t been fire here in many years. Maybe the sign should have said “burned area” instead.

Way off in the distance behind me, I could see the smoke from the Wolf fire creeping down into the valley from the rim.

Mostly just pleasant walking all afternoon.

At the end of the day I found myself in the middle of a burn area from 1990. Though it had mostly recovered, it was still difficult to find good camping amongst the charred logs and ashy soils. As I was searching the landscape, I did come across this weird looking water catchment system.

I didn’t even need water, but it made a fun puzzle to figure out how the thing worked. With the puzzle solved I went back to finding a camping spot, and I located a spot underneath some pines a few hundred meters away. Today felt unusually tiring, given how easy and flat the trail was, and then I looked at my GPS and realized that the map was off by almost 3 miles. I had actually hiked 22 miles, even though the map said it was only 19. I think the Highline Trail had been upgraded over the years, with many switchbacks added. Hopefully tomorrow the trail map is a little more accurate to reality.

Saturday May 11, 8.0mi/12.9km

Pine Trailhead (138.9/5460ft) to Highline Trail at Geronimo Trail Jct (146.7/5640ft) (Arizona) +0.2mi Pine TH connector

I was up early at 6am since I’m on my usual camping schedule. I caught up on my journal entries, took another shower, packed away all my stuff including my tent (that I had washed last night), and made a few phone calls. I packed away my food last, since I was trying to make sure I didn’t have too much.

I checked out of the motel and walked up the street toward the north end of town where I started hitching for a ride back to Pine. Within 10 minutes a nice gentleman named Ted picked me up, he says he’s always picking up AZT hikers. He’s a super interesting guy, originally from Australia, and we had a fun conversation all the way back to Pine. Once I was back at THAT Brewery, I ordered some food and waited for a friend to show up.

I had never had a grilled cheese with roasted green chiles, pulled elk, and 3 cheeses on Texas toast, it was amazing. After I finished my meal and topped up the charge on all my devices, I hit the trail at 3pm. I’m back on the Arizona Trail!

In this section the Arizona trail also coincides with the Highline Trail, which is a National Recreation Trail.

The local trail organizations have spent the last few years drastically improving the Highline trail and regrading it completely.

It’s really a very high quality trail now. After I climbed a few long switchbacks, I was halfway up to the rim again. Pretty great views to the east up ahead:

And to the South, back toward Payson.

The Highland Trail really is a very nice trail. I think it goes for almost 60 miles just below the rim.

I passed by a large bush that was blossoming with thousands of flowers, and when I looked closer I saw that it was a Manzanita.

I had never seen a Manzanita blossom before.

The Highline Trail is cut into the side of a slope almost its entire length. It makes for excellent views!

It also makes it difficult to find a camping spot when everything is on a hillside. I ended up hiking until after 6pm, which is late for me. I found a nice little spot under a couple short juniper trees. I can see the wildfire smoke in the distance, I hope the wind doesn’t shift during the night and bring it down here.

Friday May 10, 9.3mi/15.0km

Pine Creek (131.1/5920ft) to Pine Trailhead (138.9/5460ft) (Arizona) +1.5mi roadwalk into Pine

I was out of camp at 6:30am, and since I was camped right next to this little spot I decided to check it out. Tiny cave!

It was very small, the inside was like the size of a clothes dryer. I continued down the pleasantly flat and rock free trail, and then I noticed somebody had built a new road right where the trail used to be. Sad.

Fortunately that only lasted for half a mile and then I resumed on a normal trail, climbing up onto a hillside.

Normally a trail just continues down the valley into town, but since there’s a tiny parcel of private property blocking the route they had to make the trail go all the way up and around. A couple miles later, I noticed a funny junction that signed a “good enough exit”. Ha!

I hiked for a couple of hours along the hillside, and I could see the town of Pine down in the valley below me.

I came to the Pine trailhead, where the Mogollon Rim Trail intersects with the Arizona Trail, where I had hiked last fall.

I signed into the trail register, and even found my entry from last October when I was at the same spot! I immediately continued walking into Pine, and my first stop was at the Early Bird diner.

After eating breakfast number 2 (it was 10am by now), I went across the street to do my laundry.

It was very cheap, only $2, but you could tell the laundromat had not been taken care of in years, as half the machines were broken. After my laundry finished, I stood out front and hitchhiked to Payson, which only took about 5 minutes to get a ride. This was probably the oldest driver I’ve ever gotten a ride from, he was 88 years old and driving his Toyota pickup down to the casino in Payson. He dropped me right in front of my motel, which was conveniently located between a Denny’s and a Chipotle.

The guy running this motel is very hiker friendly, he gave me a special discounted rate and I settled into the huge room.

After relaxing for a few hours and taking a shower, I walked down the street to the Bashas to buy my groceries for the next section. Good timing, all the dehydrated dinners were on sale!

The store was out of a few items, so unfortunately I had to walk across the street to Walmart, which I generally try to avoid shopping at. After doing some more trip planning on my phone, I finished the evening by watching some Stephen Colbert before I fell asleep. Nice relaxing day!

Thursday May 9, 20.3mi/32.7km

Road FR679 (110.8/6320ft) to Pine Creek (131.1/5920ft) (Arizona)

At some point during the night last night, the wind had shifted and smoke from the prescribed wildfire had made its way to my camping area. It wasn’t a great night of sleep, and when I started hiking in the morning it was in a forest that looked like it was in eternal sunrise.

As the morning progressed, the winds shifted again and the air started to clear up a little bit. I passed by the first of several cow ponds and noticed a whole family of cows standing around having a breakfast of grass, of course.

After a couple of hours I picked up the Tramway Trail, which descended into the canyon of West clear Creek.

It’s a massive 700ft deep canyon and I had pretty good views, even despite the smoke.

Looking East, the views were quite a bit more smoky.

It was an impressively engineered Trail, as it seemed impossible to get down the steep cliff walls. There were a few little steep sections of trail, but overall it was a nicely graded and switchbacked trail.

At the bottom of the descent I entered into a green tunnel of lush vegetation, which must be loving all the water down here.

Once I was at the bottom of the canyon, there was no longer an official trail, but only a series of herd paths that I linked together to make progress downstream. Every time the creek went around a bend, I would have to cross it before I got cliffed out on one side or came to a deep pool of water.

But it was really fun walking in the creek for a couple hours!

I kept coming to insanely deep pools of water that were hugging the cliff faces, and created some really cool scenery.

I would follow these nice little herd paths through the riparian vegetation, most of them were actually pretty good trails.

Well this area is difficult to get to, it’s not completely undisturbed by people. I saw a few campsites with campfire seats made of rocks!

It was slow 1 mph progress through the canyon, but I didn’t mind with all the gorgeous scenery.

When the river wasn’t capturing my attention, the cool sandstone cliffs and boulders were.

And this little lush waterfall looked like it was out of a magazine.

As I was walking through the water in one of the shallower spots, I saw a couple of these tiny crayfish.

After an hour and a half of meandering through the canyon bottom, it was time to climb back up to the rim, using an official trail.

It was quite a steep trail gaining 500 ft in half a mile. I got to the top pretty quickly, and then walked some nice forestry roads through a Ponderosa Pine forest. I had just sat down for lunch, and a truck pulled up with the official emblem of the USFS.

The guy was super nice and we chatted for a while, apparently he remembered me from hiking in Northern California 4 years ago on the Bigfoot Trail. Small world! He was driving through doing a sweep of this area to make sure everybody had exited the forest, as they had just expanded the wildfire closure area yesterday to include this section. I finished my lunch and walked a couple more miles down dirt roads, exiting their official closure area. I dropped down into a much smaller canyon, which had another neat old ruins of a cabin.

Much to my excitement, I got to follow another small stream for a few miles.

This one was much smaller, so I didn’t have to get my feet wet but it’s always fun to walk next to a flowing water source under the shade of all the riparian vegetation. As I hiked upstream, eventually the water mostly disappeared and it just became a dry wash.

And for the rest of the afternoon it was just some nice forest hiking.

Though I did start to notice these strange little chevron symbols on the trees, marking some sort of trail.

I had been very gradually climbing since I left Clear Creek Canyon this morning, and by now I was up at 7200ft elevation on the plateau.

My last task for the day was to drop into Pine Canyon, which I could see very clearly from the top of the rim.

This trail goes directly to the village of Pine, and seemed quite popular as it was wide and easy to follow.

It didn’t take long to get to the bottom of the canyon, and I hiked a couple more miles to try to reduce my hiking tomorrow. I found another nice campsite underneath some Ponderosa pines!

Tomorrow, a town day!

Wednesday May 8, 20.5mi/33.0km

Apache Maid Trail (90.7/5190ft) to Road FR679 (110.8/6320ft) (Arizona) +0.4mi to water

Even though I had camped right next to the trail, I wasn’t worried about getting an early start as it seemed like nobody ever hiked this trail. Less than 10 minutes after leaving camp, I dropped off the plateau and started switchbacking down into a canyon.

It was a very well constructed trail and it was impressive how they squeezed it onto the side of a cliff to make its way down into the canyon. At the bottom of the descent, there was a little forest and I even saw a mule deer.

Pretty soon I was at a troll junction where I joined up with a much more popular trail. It was so wide!

I turned onto the Bell Trail, and entered the Wet Beaver Wilderness.

The trail followed above Wet Beaver creek for about a mile through some fantastic redrock formations.

Pretty soon the trail dropped down to the creek to cross it, and there was a little swimming spot nearby called “the crack”.

There was one other guy sitting there taking some photos, and judging by the size of his little backpack he had hiked in from somewhere close. The water was absolutely freezing. I backtracked a little ways to the spot where I could cross the creek and continue on. The crossing spot also had a little swimming hole, and it was much warm because it was in the sun. So in addition to filling my water bottles, I also took a break and swam a few laps.

The climb out of the canyon was on another well constructed trail with lots of switchbacks, and the climb went by quickly since I was distracted by all the amazing views.

Once I got to the top of the climb I was back on the plateau again. As seems to be the pattern here, the trail was difficult to find in the wide open plateau areas.

Nonetheless, I followed an extremely faint two-track through the grassy and rocky plateau.

Somewhere off in the distance to the east I noticed some smoke rising from the forest. I hope that’s a controlled burn and not a new wildfire.

Eventually my faint little two track turned into a normal rough dirt road. I passed by this strange little cabin which was quite dilapidated.

And then only a mile later, I passed by another strange spot. The remains of some stone structure sat on top of a rocky knoll.

I sat and had lunch, and noticed how the temperatures were about perfect in the sunlight when I wasn’t hiking. It seems like May is the ideal time to be here. It was slightly warm hiking in the sun, but with the slight breeze that picked up it was pretty nice.

The only wildflowers I saw up here were these little pink ones with five petals.

All afternoon was just lots of easy relaxing walking.

Towards the end of the day I passed by this massive ancient juniper tree. I put my pack next to it for size reference. Huge trunk!

I went off trail for about a quarter mile, to get to a nice water source, it was a little stream down in a rocky gully. I had passed by many cow ponds all afternoon but skipped them as they looked either silty or cow-polluted. Once I was back on route I walked another mile and then started looking for spots to set up my tent. I noticed a small forest of Ponderosa pines up ahead and decided that would be perfect, I love camping in those trees!

What a nice peaceful day, I only saw one person all day, had perfect weather and tons of good views!

Tuesday May 7, 21.4mi/34.4km

Dry Beaver Creek (70.9/3940ft) to Apache Maid Trail (90.7/5190ft) (Arizona) +1.6mi to Ranger station water

I left my cozy little camp spot just before 7am and immediately started searching for water in the creek that I was following. The few spots that I could see were dry, so I had to take a detour to the Ranger station to get water from the fountain.

I filled my water bottles and plugged my phone into the charger. While I was waiting, I noticed there were tons of hummingbirds flying around. The Ranger said the one with the red throat was called a Calliope hummingbird, which is North America’s smallest bird. Cool! I walked back to the trail, and after a half mile I found a few pools of water.

It seems my trip to the Ranger station was unnecessary, but at least I got to charge my phone and see a cool bird. I followed the wash for a little while longer and then at the point where I departed onto a trail, I saw this weird symbol in the rocks.

The description of “trail” was a little generous, as it was initially difficult to find and follow, though it did improve as I climbed up.

I spent an hour hiking slowly uphill in the increasingly warm temperatures. Near the top, the trail seemed to refuse to finish the climb, and parallelled just below the rim for like half a mile.

While I was meandering through that rocky terrain, I came across more wildlife, and this guy was very unhappy to see me.

We had a standoff, as the snake refused to leave the trail. I tried asking him nicely, telling bad jokes…but he just hissed at me more. I replied, “I know you are but what am I”. Maybe I should learn parseltongue. I eventually just scrambled up some rocks to get around him, and then simply just popped out on top of the plateau.

It was nice up on the plateau and I followed a trail called the Chaves Trail for a few hours. At one point, it approached the edge of the rim, and had a nice view spot so I stopped there for lunch.

I could see down into the valley where I had been hiking this morning.

And I got one last look at the Red rocks of Sedona.

After lunch I had another couple miles on the Chaves Trail, and then I crossed under the i-17 interstate. It’s my only freeway crossing on this trail.

I walked on a paved road for like a mile and then a couple of dirt roads, where I found this homeless encampment.

They were mostly blocking the road that I needed to walk, but I was able to get around. They seemed rather displeased to see someone just walking through their spot. About a mile later, I came to my first on-trail water source for the day.

The water actually looked pretty nice, but then I noticed the types of cows that were hanging around. Bulls!

They were approaching me, and I decided to get out of there and I ducked under the barbed wire fence and kept moving. I soon joined another dirt road but this one was so rocky, I don’t think it could be called dirt.

I love Rocky Road as ice cream, but not for walking. It’s great to eat, but not great for the feet! As the road climbed higher, the underlying geology changed and it became much less rocky.

My next water source was huge, it was called Mullican pond. It looked like a lake! And it was also surrounded by cows, though fortunately none of these were bulls.

Soon after leaving this wetland area I saw two creatures sprinting across the landscape. More wildlife!

The rest of the day was a very pleasant walk on an easy dirt road, occasionally passing by small ponds.

On my map I saw that I would soon be dropping into a massive canyon, so I decided to stop and camp just before that so I wouldn’t be committed to two more miles of walking. I found a spot amongst the rocks and junipers just barely large enough for my tent.

I think today’s final tally for wildlife is five types. Hummingbird, Rattlesnake, Wild humans, Bulls, Elk(?).

Monday May 6, 19.3mi/31.1km

Steamboat Tank (51.6/4700ft) to Dry Beaver Creek (70.9/3940ft) (Arizona)

It was super windy overnight until about 11pm and when I woke up, my sleeping bag was covered with a fine layer of sand. I ate my breakfast and then spent another 10 minutes shaking everything out. I finished packing up and noticed the view around me. Sweet.

I hiked another mile and a half on the Sedona trail network, slowly dropping down to highway 89A.

I came to the Midgley Bridge, what a cool arch single-span bridge. I downloaded a book about bridges which I’ll be reading at night in my tent.

I crossed under the road on a trail and then the trail followed the road for a mile before coming to a little day use picnic area called Grasshopper point. Brake for snakes!

There were a couple of cars at Grasshopper point, but I didn’t see any people as I continued on the trail along Oak Creek.

Pretty soon I had to cross Oak Creek, which was a real ford and was almost knee-deep in very cold water.

I took a break by the stream and refilled all my water bottles, knowing it would be the last water I would see for quite a while, probably 16 miles. From here I climbed up on a nice trail a few thousand feet up to Schnebley Hill, which was really more of a Mesa. Every so often I would look behind me and get a glimpse of the Sedona Red rocks I was leaving behind.

The trail going up wasn’t too bad with very little brush. Once I was on top of the mesa, the terrain opened up and it was easy walking with lots of basket cairns to follow.

The view from the Schnebley Hill lookout point was pretty amazing.

I saw a few other people arrive in cars, apparently it’s possible to drive this rough dirt road up to here. I hiked the rest of the morning alternating on rough roads and through nice Ponderosa pine forest.

My route basically followed the edge of this rim, so there were occasional viewpoints. A little behind me, I could see the San Francisco peaks to the north, which are the highest in the state.

And I could still see, far below me, the red rocks of the Sedona area.

I stopped for lunch at a stock pond under the shade of a juniper. I checked out the water and decided to skip this one.

I had a nice long lunch while recharging my phone with the solar panel and eventually continued on. I joined up with a trail called the “Hot Loop trail” which was easy to follow with all the basket cairns, but a little rocky. The next water source looked equally gross and skippable.

I soon dropped off of this mesa, down to a lower one called Horse Mesa. Just as I was starting the descent, I entered a new wilderness!

Horse Mesa is on the right, Pine Canyon is on the left.

The descent started off a little brushy but after only 10 minutes it cleared up and was easy walking.

I walked along Horse Mesa for a few hours, and occasionally it was slow going to try to find the vague trail amongst all the rocks. As I got toward the end of the mesa, the trail became less rocky and a little easier to follow in the grass.

It was nearing the end of the day, and I noticed this mesa was still quite rocky and it would be hard to find a camp spot. I decided to continue on the Hot Loop trail another couple of miles, where it would descend off the mesa and down into a canyon. It worked! I met up with the Dry Beaver Creek drainage, and found a nice camp spot under some junipers.

Sunday May 5, 2.9mi/4.7km

Jordan Trail TH (49.9/4480ft) to Steamboat Tank (51.6/4700ft) (Arizona) +1.2mi Sedona connector

I left camp just after 6am, and hiked the last mile of trail to the highway.

I started to see a bunch of fancy houses up on the ridge to my left, and I could hear the highway up ahead. Once I got to the highway, I had to walk along it on a sidewalk for about half a mile to get to the closest bus stop.

Sedona seems to have a pretty great bus system they run every hour and it’s only $1. But apparently I had just missed the previous bus, and the next one wouldn’t come for almost 45 minutes, so I decided to walk the last mile to town. I have planned to go directly to a diner for breakfast, but since I passed a laundromat first I decided to do my laundry and get that over with. Then, the Coffee Pot diner!

They had 101 omelets on their menu, and I tried two of them, both of which were pretty solid.

After the diner, I walked over to Safeway to buy my groceries and sit in the little cafe to charge my devices. It was a cozy little corner, and I was able to download all my maps and do my other phone chores before I left at 3pm. After Safeway, I headed across the parking lot to get some fast food and saw this tempting sign along the way.

There’s no way those places would ever want to see a hiker’s dirty feet in their spa, haha. I walked into the McDonald’s intending to buy a couple McChicken sandwiches to pack out for dinner that night, but instead I saw they had a promotion of 20 McNuggets & fries for $5 so I got that instead.

I left McDonald’s and was ready to head back to the trail. But when I checked the bus schedule, I had again just missed the bus and I would need to wait another 40 minutes. So I decided to get a Lyft to the trailhead and it was only $6. It had been really windy and cloudy all day and as I hiked along the rock formations I noticed the wind had picked up.

They were very pretty to look at though.

I had been looking for a camp spot that was sheltered from the wind, and just before 7pm I came across a spot that seemed good enough.

It was still a little windy, but it did have a pretty amazing view of the sunset amongst the clouds.

I made my dinner and was all ready for bed, when the wind really picked up and I could hear it in the treetops above me. My tent is staked in very solid, but I can feel little bits of sand coming through the mesh, so that will be a fun mess to clean up tomorrow morning.

Saturday May 4, 18.2mi/29.3km

Old Bradshaw Ranch (32.9/4580ft) to Jordan Trail TH (49.9/4480ft) (Arizona) +1.2mi Sedona connector

I left my hidden little camp spot at 6:15am, and in a few minutes I was on a roadwalk. Within a mile, I was on top of a hill and had a phone signal to call my brother for his birthday. After I descended the hill, I came around the corner and saw a couple of small animals crossing the road in the distance. Foxes!

Now that the sun was higher up in the sky, it illuminated all the nearby cliffs, the colors really glowed.

Soon I left the dirt road, and had a short section of cross country hiking through a meadow with all these purple flowers. There had to be thousands of them. Neat!

After a little while I joined a very old road, it had been taken over by grasses and shrubs but wide and flat and easy to walk.

The views never got old.

I came to a spot where a trail crossed a small residential road and somebody had defaced the sign with one of these stickers. Ugh.

Supposedly there was a pond a couple minutes up the road, but there was a gate with a bunch of private property signs, and eventually a nosy guy came around in a jeep to point out the private property signs. Sedona is beautiful, but he didn’t make a good first impression of the people here. All the trails in this area are very popular with mountain bikers, and I saw a few dozen of them today.

Some of the trails had really funny names like this one.

Canyon of Fools?!

More bikers!

The trail started off in this deeply eroded trench, which I guess mountain bikers find fun, but it was really just a very narrow hallway of dirt.

Mescal Mountain up ahead.

The trail went right up onto a slickrock shelf on the side of Mescal Mountain, which was pretty cool.

I hiked the entire slickrock traverse, and then found myself a shaded spot under a juniper tree and watched all the hikers and bikers go by.

Pretty darn good scenery today.

After another mile I left the popular trail network, and entered the Dry Creek Valley. Much to my happy surprise, I even found a couple deep pools of water, where I was able to refill my almost empty water bottles.

I very gradually climbed up out of the valley….

… Higher up my head cold use of the mountain to the south of me, Soldier Heights.

This is one of the funniest signs I’ve ever seen on trail, someone installed an entire post just to mount a tiny square of wood with a tiny arrow.

I got to the top of Brins Mesa, and had amazing views in all directions, and especially towards Sedona to the South.

It was an easy 500-ft descent toward the trailhead on a very wide and obviously popular trail.

When I got to the Jordan Trail junction, I was officially done with section 1, and I hiked a little ways on the connector trail to the town of Sedona.

I found a very nice and very hidden camp spot underneath a juniper tree. Sweet.

Tomorrow I will walk the last mile to the road, and then catch a $1 bus to town where I will do a resupply. I’ll walk out of town in the afternoon to avoid spending $500 on a motel room, it’s crazy how expensive Sedona can be.

Friday May 3, 18.8mi/30.3km

Taylor Cabin (14.3/4400ft) to Old Bradshaw Ranch (32.9/4580ft) (Arizona) +0.2mi to secret cabin

I woke up with the sun at 5:30am, and very slowly got ready and left camp at 6:15. I walked back up to the trail, and within a couple minutes it had faded to a faint track. The matter was starting to swallow the trail but it was also filled with these nice wildflowers.

According to my map, I was supposed to walk up this wash full of rocky cobbles for the next 3 miles.

My ankles didn’t like the sound of that so I searched around a little bit and found a nice but faint trail that ran parallel to the wash and occasionally crossed it.

As the sun rose, the cliffs around me started to glow orange.

I came across a water source, a giant depression where the gravel had filled in with water.

For a couple minutes I got to walk on slickrock, which is my favorite.

More wildflowers!

I followed a very faint trail that was at times difficult to follow, but fortunately it was tagged with pink flagging tape. At the very end of the wash I did have to walk in the rocks for a couple of minutes.

And then I turned onto a different trail and climbed steeply out of the wash.

By now it was almost 9am and the day was really starting to get warm. This section of trail was rumored to be overgrown and brushy, but I found hardly any problems with that. After an hour of steady pushing uphill I was up into the elevation with Ponderosa pines.

You’re the top of the climb I came to a little spot in the woods with a dilapidated cabin, Winter Cabin.

Yup, very dilapidated.

I wandered over to the nearby stream, where I refilled my water and took a nice break in the shade.

It was actually a little chilly in the shade at this elevation of 6500 feet, so I continued uphill to finish the climb through the beautiful Ponderosa pine forest.

At the top of the climb the trail ended at a trailhead and dirt road, which I followed for a few miles past several ponds.

I stopped on the side of the road to have lunch in a nice sunny spot, to keep myself warm but also to use my solar panel.

After lunch I walked another mile on the dirt roads on top of this plateau, and pretty soon I came to another cabin.

Hidden cabin wasn’t quite as dilapidated as the previous one, but it did have warning signs for hantavirus.

The rain barrel behind the cabin was full of nice clear water, but also had a dead bird floating in it. Yum.

I continued down the dirt road and soon came to the end of the road and also the trailhead for Secret Mountain. Another wilderness area!

I was about to descend into Loy canyon below, and I had a pretty good view from the trailhead.

I started down the trail and at first it was covered in fallen trees, but soon it became a well-groomed trail.

As I descended into Loy canyon, the cliffs around me started to look enormous.

The trail was actually pretty cleverly constructed, and it followed the natural contours of the land as it rapidly descended into the canyon below. Before I knew it I was in the bottom of the canyon, and back in the juniper forest.

It was a very pleasant walk for a couple of hours down the Loy Canyon Trail, which was very well maintained. Just before 6pm I arrived at the trailhead and continued across the road, to hike in the wash for a couple of miles. Unfortunately the wash was a tangled mess of branches, thorny plants, and unstable rocks. Nope!

After a little bit of back and forth on either side of the wash, I finally found some cattle tracks and followed those the rest of the way.

It was getting close to 7pm, so as soon as I left the wash I set up camp. There is a historic ranch nearby (owned by NAU) but I am pretty well hidden in my green tent in the scrub oak bushes.

I didn’t see any people at all today, or yesterday either. It’s a pretty cool feeling to be so remote and yet so close to Sedona, which is a massive tourist destination.