AZT Day 19- Mogollon Rim

Miles Hiked: 24.5
Total AZT Progress: 480.7
Pine AZ to General Springs Cabin

This morning I slept in until 7:30am since I accidentally stayed up way too late last night just not able to sleep and doing town chores in my room. The first thing I did was walk to the market to see if they had coffee which they didn’t so I just walked straight to the Early Bird Cafe and got the Early Bird breakfast of two eggs, hash browns, a piece of cantaloupe and a delicious pancake with unlimited coffee all for $8. I ate breakfast with Late Start, Moon Beam and two other hikers it was a lot of fun. Immediately after breakfast I walked around town and got a pair of light warmer leggings from the thrift store for $3, found a pair of cactus earrings that I’ve been looking for the whole time, and got some honey at the honey stand which I mailed home with some rocks I have collected along the way. I got a few of my blog posts published before checking out of my room and treating myself to one last meal before leaving town. I heard that the best pizza in all of Arizona was in Pine so of course I had to try it. I went to the Old Town Inn and got a smoked Poblano Margarita as well as a pizza with pepperoni, special mozzarella, and hot honey per the servers recommendation. I honestly think it may have been the best pizza I’ve ever had. I was very graciously sent a Venmo for some town food. Thanks Matt! I wrapped up the remaining half of my pizza in foil to take on the trail.

I was back on trail at 2pm a very late start to my day but I didn’t want to rush town at all since I liked it so much and I also told myself before I got to town yesterday that I wanted 24 hours of no hiking in Pine. I hiked this section from Pine to Flagstaff in 2020 with my friend James. I’ve been looking forward to it a lot since it has so many more trees than the low desert and it’s pretty flat. So far the Arizona Trail has been very tough but it’s about to get a whole lot easier. After I got through all the active logging and construction at the Pine Trailhead, the trail was way better than I remembered it being. The tread was perfectly smooth and the grade was so easy it didn’t feel like I was going uphill even though I gained about 3k vertical in the 22 miles from town to the bottom of the rim climb. I absolutely flew through the miles. The scenery was many young skinny ponderosa pines, red rocks and dirt, and many mesas as well as the looming mogollon rim on the distance. The mogollon rim is where the Arizona Trail leaves the low desert for good and stays up on the 6-7k foot Colorado plateau for the remaining miles minus the Grand Canyon. The water sources were plentiful and I stopped to fill my bottles one last time before dark. I ended the day with three hours of night hiking until 10pm. The rim climb wasn’t bad at all in the dark. I really wanted to sleep up high on the rim tonight. Now all the miles between me and Flagstaff are so flat although snow may be a slight obstacle. As soon as I was up on the rim I was walking on top of a few feet of snow that had drifted but since it was so cold I didn’t post hole and I easily walked on top. I was hoping there would be other hikers here but it was just me. I slept inside the general springs cabin despite the likelihood of there being rodents that live inside it.

Happy Trails!
-Early Bird