The AZT: Section 1: Mexico to Patagonia. I put this moment, here

Mexico border to Patagonia 51 miles.

March 18th – Transit (f%^#£g aeroplanes)

The last week at home was a rush. I have a  natural (annoying) tendancy for moving at 100 mph, but,  I do that by choice. I’m not a fan of compulsory unavoidable rushing. However all tasks were completed,  my four ‘to-do’ lists were completed. Winnie the poodle was safely deposited with her brother, Bertie, my hair was lopped off, our mother-placating SPOT tracker service was purchased; and the last minute need for COVID vaccination paperwork was discovered to be necessary, and frantically obtained.

I’m terrified of planes, not of the plane itself  you understand but being on one, in the air. It seems to be getting worse and no amount of learning about how planes work seems to make it any better. I decided to watch ‘Free Solo’ (again) on the flight, Alex Honnold free soloing El Capitan did a lot to reassure me that I could be in a lost worse a situation than being on a plane.

San Francisco Airport sits right on San Francisco Bay, it was a horrendous, alarming, terrifying decent in which I genuinely thought we were crashing into the bay before the runway appeared just in time to avoid my passing out in terror. I really, really hate flying.

Another tiny, rickety, unkempt looking plane took us the 3hrs to Tucson. Heading back in time zones meant our day had been doubled in length, and, after a 20 minute taxi to our Airbnb, the last thing we wanted was a lengthy, detailed, never-ending tour of our tiny apartment by our host, Pamela. But, that wasn’t to be. Grand tour over, bed came 7.30pm.

March 19th: Orientation and Resupply

After a solid 10.5 hr sleep we woke at 6am and drank copious amounts of coffee as the tea here generally tastes like bum. We emptied our packs, performed a quick shakedown in which I discovered a rouge solo glove had made it along for the ride, as well as a now useless UK plug adapter. Snakes had accidentally relived herself of £135 in exchange for a heavy bottle of perfume in Heathrow airport and all of these useless things needed to not be carried by us to Utah.

But, we must prioritise. By 8.30 we’d walked to the nearest Diner, Bisbee Breakfast Club, where I devoured the greatest Burito since the last time I was in Tucson. The flight may have actually been worth the breakfast. 

We worked out the logistics of the next few days while we ate and just as the food coma was starting to take over, we curbed it by moving cautiously until the digestion process begun.

Off to Walmart for our first food supply, in which we also purchased food for our first (of two) resupply boxes which we’ll mail up the trail to a spot which won’t have good food options. Today, the Lords Day, post offices are closed. But, as always, the trail provides and a local chap, Peter, is not only taking us across town to the airport, where we meet our shuttle tomorrow, but, he also drove over to our accommodation with a box, tape and some camping gas for us, then refused to accept any money. He’ll pick us up at 6am tomorrow and we’ll mail our box on route to the border.

We walked home in the increasing heat with full rucksacks and sorted our food box and food for the first 3 day section from the border to patagonia. This involves removing all heavy packaging, decanting into zip lock bags and storing in my new jazzy green food bag.

We spent the remainder of the day meggling about (meggling: if you don’t already know, I’m afraid you’ll just have to learn throughout the blog). We completed a few logistical errands from a horizontal position with beer nearby. Snakes watched a documentary about an almost nuclear explosion in the 70’s (really weird choice of television).

We went to find dinner and Snakes almost wouldn’t enter on account of how awful we both looked. As any of you who read the kit list knows, we’ve packed light. A handful of people have already commented on how ridiculously small out packs are. We’ve both chosen to travel in an outfit that’s way past its best (my jeans have two whopping great crotch holes and Snakes’ trousers are pilling to the point shes calling them ‘pube trousers’). We do this so we can bin said outfit prior to donning our hiking clothes tomorrow which will be our only set of clothes (excluding thermals) for the next 7 weeks. Nice. With all that said I waltzed confidently into the much better than we deserve restaurant, crotch holes and all, and naturally all was well. The portion sizes were individually larger than my van and we were both, yet again struck with utter overindulgence and lethargy.

We really need to start walking.

March 20th: Day 1. Border to Sunnyside Canyon

Today begun without error. Our new pal Peter picked us up at 6am and drove us the 16 minutes across town to the airport hotel, in which we made ourselves comfortable and helped ourself to the buffet breakfast. We were early arrivals anyway, then we were informed our pre-booked shuttle was running late. In the mean time, hikers Joe, Molly, Teeg, and Elliot (with a pack bigger than me), Erica and Tick Tock turned up also awaiting the shuttle. We made it through pleasantries then got to the nitty-gritty,  lifting everyone’s pack to see who’s was the heaviest.

At 7.30am we were met by two gals in trucks. We went with Suzanne and she drove us the 2 hrs to the border, via the post office where we mailed our box ahead to colossal cave (and Snakes mailed her perfume). We innocently told the post man that we had wine in our box and he made us take it out (we didn’t realise we were suppose to lie about it). Disgusted by the idea of carrying it up a massive hill today, Suzanne offered to deliver it to us in our first town stop. What a gal!

The last few off-road miles up to Montezuma pass were lumpy ones. Suzanne was excellent entertainment throughout. We caught impressive glimpses of Trump’s stupid wall, the construction of which has now stopped, bar a party of Trump supporters who are trying to continue with the construction at a cost to themselves and are making the wall now out of ugly shipping containers. Idiots.

On arrival we 8 hikers left our packs in the shelter, something I told Snakes I wasn’t prepared to do but changed my mind when I saw everyone else was doing it. We then decsended the 1.8 miles down to the border to begin our hike at the southern terminus.

The terminus sits in Mexico, and the wall abruptly and conveniently ends just before it, then turns into a low level barbed wire fence, easily and illegally crossed by hikers (and immigrants) to have their photos taken (or escape Mexico).

It was a swift walk back up the hill to the pass and to our unharmed packs. Phew.

We stuffed some nuts in our face, then were the first of the 8 to hike on, North and onto one of the supposedly more challenging climbs of the hike.

When groups of hikers blather on about how hard something is online, it’s rarely accurate, this time it was. It was a mere 6.2 miles to the top, but over 1300m of accent, our packs were heavily laiden and the wind was relentless on the south side of the ridge, which we frequently kept crossing to.

Prior to this hike I’d been suffering with a cough for what felt like 8 years, but what was actually 3 weeks. The silly thinning air, wind and sudden unfamiliar feeling of exercise exaserbated this massively. Snakes was wreching as soon as she hit altitude and felt too sick to eat. The wind made it impossible to stop so we made the ascent  (stupidly) in a one’er.

We had donned almost all our hiking layers and were, at this point, absolutely wondering what the f^*k we were doing here. Snow came just after the summit,  I made the effort to put on my micro spikes, not necessarily essential for safety, but most certainly sped up the process. Snakes progress had slowed drastically due to her sickness and lack of sustenance, but she couldn’t eat until the sickness subsided so the only thing to do was descend.

We came apon Bathtub Spring, which was a bathtub, with a spring poking out of it. We were pretty cold and exhausted by this point. A rejuvenating tea, and a fruit pouch made all the difference though and before long we were both feeling better. Our 6 other hiker pals eventually descended to the spring, and another hiker, Atlas had already set up Camp. We made the decision to push on the last 5 miles to the next water in Sunnyside Canyon.

We were the last to leave the spring, a small amount of fairly unwelcome uphill was followed by a long, steep decsent. We soon passed our new pals and made it to the spring by 6 ish.

We’re inefficient in our camp systems just now, so setting up camp and reminding ourselves where everything goes is slower than usual and took us at least ten full minutes. Before long though, we’d scooped water from the river, boiled it up and made our daily special of ramen and instant mash. I’ve brought along some spring onion, hot sauce, seasoning and (vegetarian) bacon bits to liven up this already perfect meal. Sleep arrived at 7.30 to collect us.

Trail miles 13.3. Actual miles 15.1

March 21st: Day 2: Sunnyside Canyon to Canelo Pass Teailhead

We both felt surprisingly well today. We had a lie in until 6.30 and were on trail by 6.50. The 6 hikers from yesterday passed us as we were packing, one of them eating breakfast as he hiked, which I think ungainly.

Today’s trail is much kinder than yesterday, though that wouldn’t be hard. We mainly descended through desert chapperel, low pines and shrubland. We crossed dry river beds and some wet ones too. Water was never too far today, or too gross. Currently we’re just chemically treating it, though, thats mainly due to our filter having slowed to a constipated nothing.

We yo’yo’d those 6 hikers throughout the day, occasionally stopping together. Snakes and I had our usual breakfast break 5 miles in and gorged on a double portion of Cinnamon squares and milk then coffee. At 13 miles we stopped for lunch, just before the high point of the day and after a gentle couple of climbs. We’re moving through the knolls of these sky islands and are slowly coming down to the desert floor.

My lunch wraps are impressive, cheese, hot sauce, tomatoes, bacon bits and spring onions, with a few cheese goldfish to add some crunch.

We pushed on 4.8 more miles to the next water, exhausted on arrival we ate a waffle and mustered the last remaining bits of energy to climb the last 2.2mi climb of the day and descended 1.8 mi steeply to the trailhead where, some kind stranger had left gallons and gallons of fresh water in a bear box. Good lad ! We topped up, and set up Camp about 3m from the water.

21 miles on the day. Phew.

March 22nd: Day 3: Canelo Pass Trailhead to Patagonia

After a long ass sleep, we woke early and were on trail by 6.15. My knees were pretty pissed off at me, and an old injury had clearly been awoken by a surprise smack back into steep terrain.

The trail was pretty nice and gently undulated through the interlocking knolls, never seemingly going anywhere. We hiked a very swift 5 miles to a river bed where we indulged in cinnamon squares and coffee.

Soon our new pals Tick Tock and Erica, who we’ve named Camel on account of the ridiculous amounts of water she insists on carrying short distances between reliable water sources, joined us. We hiked on together as a four for the next 5 miles.

Here we took the cut off to the town of Patagonia Arizona, our first resupply stop on trail, 6 more miles on and our first 2.7 mile road walk. 2.7 miles on the road and I can’t imagine any more. We reminiced about a 36 mile road walk into Rawlins Wyoming, a younger, more foolish me.

15.7 miles on the day.