The Meeting of the Deserts

This section between Oracle and Patagonia was our longest (six days) and most diverse. It’s a unique stretch because of its ecological convergence — where the Sonoran and Chihuahuandeserts meet the Sky Islands. The Sky Islands are massive mountain ranges rising from the desert lowlands, each creating its own unique ecosystem. One day you walk among cacti and spiky shrubs, the next you traverse pine forests, and the third is a blend of it all.

Oracle and Mount Lemmon

We come to one of those green gates right outside Oracle. I turn around and see a brown butt jump off a rock. It can’t be a dog. It didn’t look like a deer either. I can’t leave it uninvestigated, so I take a few steps back on the trail, look into the thick roadside greenery, and there it is — a bobcat, staring back at me, completely unperturbed. I snap a picture and it’s still there, looking bored. I go back to the gate while the bobcat peacefully walks through the bush, steps onto the trail, and hikes NOBO.

The little bobcat, just staring at me, half-bored

The trail to Summerhaven is brutal. At times it is just a 4WD road of boulders going straight up.

The bouldery steep climbs to Mount Lemmonn.

But once you get there, the general store is full of cold drinks — exactly what you crave after that climb. I go inside for sparkling water and buy an orange to squeeze into it. The non-Fanta sparkling orange drink has now become a permanent craving, stuck to my brain like a barnacle. Squeezing an orange into a tiny bottle neck turns out to be quite the challenge, so I eat the orange instead and go back for orange juice.

When I come out, Thunderbird — who we keep bumping into — is swooshing his pink ice cream in a Wingardium Leviosa motion at an Alaskan girl who stopped to chat. I assume he’s animating the story rather than trying to make her levitate, but I’m too late to tune in, so I focus on perfecting my soda–orange juice ratio.

We then visit the “Cookie Cabin” for a chocolate chip cookie and a coffee. Weirdly, they don’t do coffee — but the cookie is great.

Marshall Gulch

Right out of town, you enter a place called Marshall Gulch. It still holds all the fall colors. You walk up big stone steps through crimson, purple, orange, and yellow maple leaves — on the ground, on the trees, everywhere. If I didn’t know I was in Arizona, I’d guess Japan.

Wilderness of Rocks

As soon as the maple trees end, the Wilderness of Rocks begins — and it’s equally mind-blowing. Giant boulders are stacked on top of each other like stone snowmen.

We camp on a ridge, the lights of Tucson peacefully shimmering below us. We start walking at 5 a.m., and the boulders glisten in the full moon. It feels like a frosty winter morning, even though it’s pleasantly warm.

We’ve been doing fairly big miles lately — we’re so close to the border that we just want to get there faster.

Saguaro National Park

Our next big day is through Saguaro National Park, and we have to do it in one go because you can’t camp there without permits — and, of course, we didn’t secure any in advance. It’s 17 miles through the park over Mica Mountain, plus 7 miles just to reach the boundary. The uphill is tough, but most of it is shaded, and as soon as you gain elevation, pine trees appear. Suddenly, it not only feels good — it smells good too.

Kez and I both notice how, in the desert, the treeline seems reversed: instead of trees disappearing the higher you go, they only start growing the higher you go.

Descending the mountain, we enter a different kind of forest — a saguaro forest. There are just so many of them! Wildflowers bloom and butterflies flutter among the giant cacti. Sometimes you walk through whole corridors of ocotillo shrubs that look almost like underwater kelp.

Colossal Cave

We make the mistake of camping too close to a stream. 0.2 miles seemed far enough, but we wake up with the tent soaked from condensation. We pack up to the sound of multiple coyote packs and walk to Colossal Cave to pick up the only resupply box we mailed to ourselves — just so we wouldn’t have to hitch to Vail.

That place is so hiker-friendly! They let us hang our tents and sleeping bags on the walls to dry, charge our electronics, and take over all the back tables. They come over to chat, show us the hiker box, and feed us delicious food we can’t stop ordering.

The next section was supposed to take three days, but we blitzed through it in two and reached the town of Patagonia by 3 p.m. — ready for a shower, food, and resupply.

All I remember is a lot of up and downs, a surprising amount of shooting (literally heard bullets wheezing by while having lunch at Helvetia resupply box), and a big rattlesnake in the corner of a visitor’s centre in Kentucky Farm.

My shoes are completely useless by now, and I constantly feel like Harry and Marv in that scene from Home Alone — slipping on toy cars. Every time I go downhill on that tightly packed gravel, I slide. With each slide, my joints and muscles ache. I am so ready for comfortable, real beds and long, hot showers.

Tomorrow is our last section — the one that will take us to the border and, eventually, back to civilised existence.

Oracle to Patagonia. Bobcat, Big Miles and Ecological Cauldron.

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