Arizona Trail: Passage 40

Kaibab Plateau--South

We hiked this passage in two trips: on June 7-8, 2008, with Richard and my nephew Brandon, from Telegraph Hill to Dog Lake/East Rim Overlook, and on May 19, 2012, with Richard, and Brandon's brother Justin.  Here are the notes from the two trips:

6-7-08

Off at 9:30 [from Telegraph Hill], walked through burn for the first hour.  After the burn area, it was a lovely spruce/Ponderosa/Aspen forest, with great meadows and lakes.  At 12:15, the temperature was about 70 degrees.  There was still snow on the ground (see above).  At the 6/7 camp, there are seep tanks circa 1/8 mile west of the trail, with better water than the "cloudy pond" mentioned in the trail description.  Night temperatures below 50 degrees (estimated), with little wind.

6-8

After camping for the night near a seep (panorama above), we continued through the evergreen forest, with a highest elevation reached of 8860 feet.  The evergreen forest was interspersed with stands of aspen. The trail has relatively little elevation change, but the altitude (from Phoenix at 1000 feet) makes the hiking harder.  There are beautiful meadows with tanks and lakes, though at inconvenient intervals for backpacking camps.  The view of the northeastern side canyon of the Grand Canyon is spectacular.

We left the Arizona Trail at Crystal Spring to deal with Brandon's severe blisters.

June 18-19, 2012

We got into the East Rim Viewpoint camp (Forest Road 611) about 6:30 p.m.on a windy, cool day.  Made camp (it looks legal) near the AZT, a mile and a half or two from where we had to bug out with Brandon.

We'd had a good trip up, with a stop at Navajo Bridge.  We had a great dinner at Jacob Lake, and pulled in at about 6:15. . . . My night seemed OK, but I woke up nauseous. . . . I decided to hike anyway, actually starting from the National Park entrance ranger station, where we left the red truck. It was a great hike, first going to a fire tower, then down into parks and forests.  Interestingly, the forests are kind of messy, even after an old burn. It looks as though people have spent a fair amount of chainsaw time logging the burnt forest.

But the parks (meadows) are great--and it's deceptive how big they are.  You can go for 1/2-3/4 of a mile through just one park. . . . [problems with nausea, here and later in camp]

But our campsite is great, right next to the AZT, maybe 30 yards from the rim, with morning light.  You can see into Marble Canyon.

Here's the passage map:  https://aztrail.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/40_KaibabPlateauSouth.pdf