Day 21, Battleground Ridge to Geronimo Spring

With lifted spirits, I started hiking this morning at 6:20. I felt no dread for the trail ahead. Tree Hugger’s words about changes in the landscape and water quality had already become true. I knew there would be more changes today.

The trail would descend from the Mogollon Rim, leaving the Ponderosa forests of Northern Arizona and entering an entirely different landscape, a much more desert-like terrain.

The trail would also go through the area closed by a wildfire. Until yesterday, I thought I would be forced to follow a bypass on a road around that section. Before I knew of the detour, I thought I'd have to pay for a ride around it, skipping the area entirely. That was before I learned I could safely walk through the fire zone.

I still didn’t know where I could camp, but that wasn’t a burdensome worry like the others.

I didn't walk far this morning before the trail began a descent. This one was short compared to the drop from the Mogollon Rim that would come later today. The trail dropped less than 300 feet into General Springs Canyon.

At first, it looked as if a stream was flowing in the canyon. I soon discovered the water was a series of shallow pools with dry gaps between them. The source was a spring near the rim, about three miles away.

I was tempted to collect some of the water, but the FarOut app said a reliable source was about five miles away. I still had more than two liters, which was more than enough to get me there.

Even though I didn't collect any, it was satisfying to see the small pools of clear water. They weren't muddy or polluted.

I stopped near one of the pools anyway to eat breakfast. The morning air was still chilly because I was in the shade of the canyon’s walls, and there was a slight breeze. I didn’t take off my insulated jacket while I ate.

The rest of the way through the canyon was a gradual ascent toward the area of General Springs.

An old cabin stood near a meadow in the area of the springs. It was built around 1914 by the U.S. Forest Service and used as a ranger outpost for about 50 years.

Oddly, the FarOut app didn’t mark this as a water source, but if I needed any, I could have collected and filtered some. Instead, I kept to my plan to refill my water bottles when I reached a stream below the rim.

A short distance beyond the cabin, and just before the rim’s edge, I saw a crew doing some maintenance work on utility poles. They were moving their trucks on the road where I needed to walk, but they told me it was okay for me to walk between them.

The trail left the road where it crested the rim, then began a steep descent on a rocky footpath. At first, the extremely rugged route wasn't well marked. At one point, I discovered I wasn’t on the trail and had to bushwhack my way back to it.

The route went down the escarpment slope through a deep drainage slot. The next two miles dropped 1,100 feet, and that wasn’t the full distance to the desert floor at the bottom of the rim.

The first water I came to was a small stream that crossed the trail, but I didn’t get water there because much of the area was covered in cow poop.

This was the headwaters of East Verde River, which is a tributary of the Verde River, one of Arizona's largest perennial streams.

A little farther down, the trail crossed the same stream on a small footbridge. Despite the cow poop a short distance upstream, I decided to collect and filter three liters here. Finding a shady spot with flowing, cold, and refreshing water could not be passed up.

The Mogollon Rim serves as the southwest edge of the Colorado Plateau. As I continued down the slope along the rocky trail, I began to see proof that I had entered a new environment. The tall, slender pines on the plateau were gone. Instead, there were short, scrubby shrubs and trees.

Among these were manzanita, with their very familiar twisted branches and smooth, reddish bark. I had seen plenty of these on my hikes in the deserts of Southern California and New Mexico.

Occasionally, I could see views of the landscape ahead, which included the Mazatzal Mountains. The trail was heading toward those mountains.

According to trail reports, the Washington Park trailhead was where the trail was closed because of the West Fire, which started burning about five weeks ago. Until yesterday, this is where I thought I would have to get a ride or start a road-walk detour.

Today, there were no signs announcing a closure when I stopped here. I took this as further evidence that it was okay to remain on the trail. Before I started walking again, however, I stayed for a 35-minute lunch break.

Instead of continuing to descend the escarpment, the trail turned at the Washington Park trailhead and followed a path just below craggy limestone and sandstone cliffs.

Even though the trail's condition wasn’t ideal, I was pleased it didn't slow me down much. I wanted to get to Pine tomorrow with plenty of time for town chores, and it now appeared that would happen.

There were fewer trees below the rim, and because of that, there wasn’t much shade. Unlike the Ponderosa forests, this terrain allowed me to see much more of the sky. By 3:15 p.m., I noticed heavy clouds beginning to form over the rim, and I wondered if they would bring some rain.

That didn’t happen, however. Soon, I realized the clouds were evaporating where they hit drier, warmer air at the edge of the rim.

Before long, I entered an area that had burned in the West Fire, and I was surprised to find cattle grazing here. They were having difficulty finding anything to eat because the fire had destroyed every living plant.

For the rest of the day, the trail passed through swaths of burnt ground. Soon after leaving one, I could see another one ahead. Because there were sections that hadn't burned in the fire, I was hopeful I could find a place to camp that wasn’t charred.

On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I would find any flat ground. The trail remained on the slope just below the rim. If there was any flat ground, it was probably going to be covered by small shrubs and large rocks.

With barely more than an hour of daylight left, the trail entered another wide, burnt area. I began to think I would be setting up camp among blackened remains of manzanita.

I finally saw a sign about the trail closure at 4:30 p.m. Oddly, it appeared after I had already walked through several large burnt sections. The sign was lying on the ground, perhaps knocked over by a cow.

I paid no attention to what the sign said, because I knew by now the fire conditions posed no danger.

The late afternoon sun on the cliffs above me made a lovely view, but it also told me that sunset wasn’t far away. I began to look more intently for a place to camp.

I found a spot at 6 p.m., which was already past sunset. Thankfully, it was not in a burned area, and was just beyond Geromino Spring. Because of the time, I decided to put off getting water until the morning, but I still had enough light to set up camp. I needed my headlamp to prepare dinner.

When I started on the trail this morning, I hoped to complete 20 miles today. Although I didn’t quite reach that, it was still a satisfying day. The trail was rugged for much of the time, and my breaks took longer when I had to filter extra water, yet I completed 19 miles.

The day ended up about the way I expected most days would be on this trail. It was challenging yet beautiful. Any problem that cropped up was easily solved. It was lonely, but I didn't regret the solitude.

Until yesterday morning, I didn’t expect to have any more days on the trail. Now, I was looking forward to tomorrow being another day like today, as well as many more to come.

I’m less than 500 miles away from the Mexican border. For the first time in several days, I think I will get there.