Day 27, McFarland Canyon to Payson

Historians aren’t sure how McFarland Canyon, where I camped last night, got its name. Most likely, McFarland was a prospector.

I left my campsite at 6:30. Right away, I was making a steep climb for the first two miles. On the way up, I stopped to look back toward the mountains I descended yesterday. Sheep Mountain (6,932 feet) was one I didn’t get a good view of yesterday while hiking along its flank.

Today, the mountain was in glowing in copper and crimson from the morning sun. Seeing the mountain was a vivid reminder of how rugged and irregular these slopes can be.

Fourteen years ago, a 68-year-old retiree named Joe Domin decided to hike up to the top of Sheep Mountain. He was an avid, experienced hiker and was known to his friends as GPS Joe. On that day, he couldn’t find anyone to hike with him, so he headed up the mountain alone.

It took eight days before people started wondering why they hadn’t heard from Domin. A search team was sent to the area, where they found his SUV at a trailhead. Soon, a helicopter and two canine units were added to the search.

GPS Joe was never found.

While I stopped to look at the mountain, I was still within the canyon’s shade. The temperature there remained chilly. It took another 30 minutes before I was warm enough to remove my puffy jacket.

Soon, another mountain came into view. It was Saddle Mountain, standing at 6,539 feet.

I was again crossing the area burned by the Sunflower Fire, the one started several years ago by an idiot with an incendiary shotgun shell. The vegetation was scrubby, still recovering from that disaster.

I might not have noticed the plant life was sparse until I looked across hills and mountains to the east. A few miles from here, the terrain had a noticeable difference in color and texture. It looked downright verdant.

The top of the climb was where the trail crossed a ridge at an elevation of 5,522 feet. That was the start of a gradual descent that would take me out of the Mazatzal Mountains. The next 11 miles dropped 3,200 feet.

Just before heading down, I noticed the number 400 arranged in rocks. A hiker put that there to mark the trail’s mileage. The AZT trail is roughly 800 miles long. That makes this spot about the halfway point of the trail.

Of course, you can’t put much faith in the accuracy of any mile marker on a long-distance trail. Most trails get partially rerouted every year. That makes updating the signs an impossible task, as well as little rock markers like this one.

Another point to remember: My mileage was slightly different here because I was required to follow detours around prescribed burns.

Soon after starting the descent, I began to notice a change in the terrain, particularly in the vegetation. It was still inside of the area destroyed in the Sunflower Fire. The difference was that I now saw little evidence of a fire.

Lower down the mountain was a desert chaparral landscape, with fewer shrubs and more grasses. There were no burnt tree stumps. Trees didn't grow here before the fire.

Cacti and agave plants were now appearing in far greater numbers. Among them were barrel cacti. They are fast growers, which explains why some were four feet tall despite the devastating fire just 12 years ago.

In the spring, barrel cacti have bright yellow, orange, or sometimes pink flowers that grow on top.

I exited Mazatzal Wilderness just before 10 a.m. As the trail continued its long descent, I saw more vegetation I hadn't seen before, including a large, bushy agave called a narrow leaf century plant.

About halfway down the descent, I found an unexpectedly different terrain. The trail entered a canyon formed by a fork of Sycamore Creek. The creek was dry, but there were some seeps.

Western Sycamore trees created some shade, so I stopped to take a break.

Where the descent began to level out, the landscape changed again. Here, the ground was a light tan-colored sandstone. There were many small rocks and a few larger outcrops. It was rough terrain, inhospitable to all but the most hardy grasses and small trees.

The trail joined a rutted old road before crossing a bridge over Beeline Highway. There was no way to hike down to the highway from here.

I had to keep walking another 4/10 mile until I arrived at the side trail to the highway. Even though this route has been used by thousands of hikers, it was poorly marked and difficult to follow.

The area was called Sunflower, and it looked beat up. Learning about the history explained why. It’s seen a lot of heavy use.

The site was called Camp O’Connell in the 1860s. It was a temporary camp and water station on a U.S. Cavalry road between Fort McDowell, near Phoenix, and Camp Reno, a remote outpost east of here.

According to a 1908 topographical map, this was the site of Sunflower Ranch, and that name has been used ever since.

In October 1911, a Phoenix prospector named E.H. Bowman came to Sunflower looking for gold. What he found instead was a rich deposit of cinnabar (mercury sulfide). Within two years, Bowman opened a mine.

The scarlet-red ore was broken into fine particles and burned to produce a gas. Cooling the gas resulted in pure mercury, sometimes called quicksilver. Bowman's and other mines near Sunflower produced 95 percent of the mercury extracted in Arizona. Gold, silver and copper were also mined in the area.

Sunflower started as a mining camp. As production began to decline in the 1940s, it became a small community, with a post office and general store. There wasn't much here today except for a couple of houses and a garage for a towing company.

One reason the area looked battered as I walked through it today was because of floods in Sycamore Creek. The worst of these happened in 1970, when the remnants of Tropical Storm Norma dumped 8-11 inches of rain on Arizona.

A bridge on Beeline Highway was washed away when Sycamore Creek flooded it banks. A state highway patrolman was called to investigate, and when he arrived, his car was swept into the rushing waters, drowning him.

The Sunflower area was also in poor shape because it was overused by ATV riders. Eventually, the Forest Service had to close access to the site.

I struggled to pick my way over downed trees and navigate across the creek before reaching Beeline Highway at 1:30 p.m. I’d read that hikers have mixed results hitchhiking here, so I looked for the most advantageous spot for a driver to see me.

Thankfully, a driver stopped in under 10 minutes. He was a young man named Max, who told me he had recently moved to Arizona from New Jersey. I tried to give him some gas money for the 30-mile trip, but he refused to take it.

Max dropped me off at the Comfort Inn, the hotel where I failed to make reservations when I ordered my shoes. I was still annoyed with myself about that.

As I hoped, I now had plenty of time for town chores and relaxing. First, I talked to Kim for several minutes, then took a shower. For dinner, I walked next door to a Mexican restaurant. That kind of food has not always worked well for me on hikes, but it seemed like a better choice than the nearby fast food options.

Next, I walked down the street to Walmart and bought the food I needed for the next trail section. By the time I got back to my hotel room, I was too tired to repack my food. That would have to wait until morning.

Sometime tomorrow after I return to the trail, I will have to walk fewer miles to Mexico than what I've already walked from Utah. It's easy to forget now, but I almost didn't make it this far. I didn't quit, though, and that feels like its own kind of success.

But here's the thing about the trail ahead: Success on a thru-hike is a poor predictor of what comes next. Much like quicksilver, it tends to scatter the moment you think you've got it well under control.