AZT 32 – Babbitt Ranch

Daily miles 24
Total miles 634
Camp elevation 6400 feet

Breezy night last night. Our tarps were a bit noisy most of the night. The morning started out pretty cold and stayed cold. We all had our down jackets on for the morning. The sun was out and the skies were blue, beautiful day. The wind was strong all day long. It may have been a warm day without it, but it was so strong and cool we had our wind shirts on at a minimum and had our down on at most breaks.

We only had one water source today. A couple of the tanks that we had hoped to fill up at were non existent. After 22 miles we came to a water source that was about 1/4 mile off trail. It was a tank. The tank was dry, but we could see a pipe going up Hill from the tank. Qball and Beardoh followed the pipe up until Qball saw a coyote, and subsequently saw water seeping out of a small span of pipe (the coyote had been there for the water as well). The water was very clear. We used the bottom of a Chex Cereal package to collect the water as it was dribbling out of the pipe without good access using a water bottle. We filled up our containers as our next semi reliable water is 18 miles away. We ended up building cairns and writing instructions for other hikers to find do the water…. Hopefully it will help.

The trail was largely flat and sloping downhill for the entire day, making for easy and fast walking. We were also on forest service roads for the whole afternoon. We probably would have squeezed more miles in, but dealing with the water took over an hour and a half, and we stopped a bit early in an area that had the last visible trees. We had views of Mt Humfries for much of the day. We feel like we have gone nearly 3/4ths of the way around the mountain. There is a lot of snow on the west side still, making the peak look majestic.

At lunch Beardoh found a wood tick on his sock.   That is the first in all the west coast hiking we have done.

Tonight, we are camped at the edge of a wash. SweetPea is in the wash, Beardoh is on the edge, and Qball is at the end of it. Another hiker, Cameron rolled in at the end of the day and is camped right at the top. It was tricky to find suitable hammock hangs. The trees are largely juniper, and the branches extend in a bushy manner, making them a difficult tree to use. We found a couple that will work, tolerably. We have our tarps up for the wind tonight. Beardohs is hung just as a wind block on one side, since the space in between didn’t work to hang it normally. Since we are down lower tonight, temps should be warmer. They feel that way as we lay in our hammocks at 7:30pm.