AZT day 12, Dan’s Saddle to Oracle, 11 miles

I sleep deeply and a bit late. The sky is full of clouds and cold. I have to blow my nose and it’s mostly dust. Yes, I slept in a road last night. Dan’s Saddle was convenient, but that’s only because it’s flat.

I have enjoyed hiking with Hobbit to keep me going and to talk to. She knows a lot of things like what the Biosphere is we’ll see today and how many different kind of cholla cactus there are. It helps when the trail gets hard, which essentially is all the AZT is. (her favorite saying is if things get easy, you’re not on the AZT)

But she lingers in the morning and I’m a get-up-and-goer and I’m fairly certain I can’t hike faster –including breaks – than two miles an hour. I also don’t trust it’s simply ’all downhill from here.’ I’d read the Oracle Ridge was hard – hard and totally dry. Getting a late start with the sun already shining hot is not going to help us today.

I carried four liters to camp, but dump one simply because I can’t drink it or carry it. It’s a risk, but there is one tank along the way. The trail, of course, goes straight up to start. It’s steep and fast and endless, pulling us over a hill to look back directly at Mount Lemmon.

We sidle for a while, but it’s mostly up and down these dry brown oak-studded hills. The views are amazing out to more ranges, but it’s exhausting work.

We take breaks in magical little shaded groves of trees and I’m always revived with water, but I have to say, this monotony is getting to me. Just when I need a break, we join a road which has an even steeper incline and filled with fist sized boulders. Each step is a brake from a wipeout.

Odd things are ’cowboy gates’ of pieces of wood held together with barbed wire and fit into metal loops. We pass an enormous mine with a zigzagging road to the top. The biosphere is huge sitting on its flat topped mountain above the desert. I have never walked over crumbling rocks this large or seen finger-like oak leaves so small and dainty.

I have little to say on my day other than it was a slog. Rough country that ate me alive. The joy and beauty of Mount Lemmon fades away as all I need is for this hike to end. Like a rollercoaster, it goes up and down from heavy breathing to jolting knees. I start to wonder if I will ever want to hike again.

We finally reach a long patch of relatively flat, contouring the mountain. This area was recently burned and is unstable. I slip often and Hobbit goes down twice.

We both are feeling wrung out. At the American Flag Ranch, Hobbit will have completed 600 miles and I will be near 200. We continue to chat as we suffer, laughing, discussing, dissecting. It makes a hard day easier.

At a final water stop, a woman comes up from behind looking fresh – no hat, no sunglasses, I’m shocked. She stops at the High Jinx Ranch and we slog two more miles to the road and Hobbit’s brother waiting with a car. I see it first, white with a blue boat and yell out.

Pictures are taken, but there’s no room in the car for me and the pack. Just then, a woman drives in dropping her husband on trail. I ask for a ride and Ellen is happy to take me in. Richard sent my lighter bag so we head right to the post office.

I know I look awful – I feel awful. And I can’t seem to find a place to stay. First things first, I collect my package then sprawl all my gear on the post office floor – in hiker lingo, that’s called a ‘garage sale.’ I have to pull out the heavier sleeping bag plus a few odds and ends to send back home. The weight might total a liter of water. A good trade!

As I go through this contortion, an older gentleman organizes his mail he’s just picked up in his post office box. Looking curious and a bit bemused, I tell him what I’m up to and that I have no place to stay. ”Can I rent a room?”

Of course Hector says yes, and as I prepare the box to send home, the post mistress offers too. What lovely people in Oracle. Hector is from Rhodesia, when it was still named Rhodesia, and worked in the San Manuel block cave copper mine. He’s a great-grandfather and ensures I get a hamburger, a few beers, my resupply and a long hot bath. We talk a long time before I start to fade.

I am so incredibly lucky to be cared for this way. I’m rested and safe and he’s even going to cheat me a few miles past this repetitive section. I forgot to mention when I pulled gear out to send home and asked should I keep the raincoat, he said, ”That’s optimistic.” Truth is, there hasn’t been enough rain. A desert bloom may very well not happen for this hiker.

Before we said goodnight, Hector told me I better like brown, man. <sigh>