Long Distance Hiker

Thru Hiker's Blog and More

  • HOME
  • TRAIL JOURNALS
  • TRAIL PHOTOS
  • RESOURCES
    • Trip Planning & Debrief
    • Fitness, Food & Health
    • Gear
    • Community
    • Recommended Reading
    • Arizona Trail (AZT) – Resupply Plan
    • John Muir Trail Resupply Plan
    • Long Trail (LT) Planning Guide
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT
You are here: Home / Grand Enchantment Trail 2018 / GET Day 18: Apache National Forest

GET Day 18: Apache National Forest

April 24, 2018 by Beardoh

Daily Miles: 17

Total Miles: 316

We woke up after a long night of sleep and continued with the remainder of our Eagle Creek fords. While the water felt refreshing yesterday afternoon in the heat, this morning is just really chilled us. Some of the fords got up to the middle of SweetPea’s thigh, so not only were our socks, shoes and compression sleeves wet, half of SweetPea’s skirt was soaked too. We had probably 10-15 fords this morning, and that kind of walking always slows us down.

Eventually we came to our last ford and then stopped to clean all of the sand out of our shoes so we could start fresh.

The rest of the day was spent walking on the Painted Bluffs Trail. It started out along a drainage and was challenging (as expected from the guidebook) to follow. The trail (or whatever we were walking on) was pretty overgrown and we were regularly being scratched and poked by all the thorny bush growing into the trail.

We stopped at our final water source of the day around 11:00am. We loaded up with a total of 8 liters to get us 12 miles down the trail. The trail continued to be hard to find in places and at one point we were off the trail and had to crawl under a barbed wire fence to get back to where we figured (correctly) the trail was.

It was pretty hot today and unfortunately the afternoon was pretty much all climbing. We stopped for breaks frequently, but it was hard still, since we were limited on water and couldn’t just drink quite as much as we wanted.

Our guidebook mentioned that there were old pictographs from the Anasazi people on the painted bluffs we were walking by. Beardoh tried climbing up to them, but eventually turned back before finding them because the bushwhack was quite difficult and he kept finding himself stuck on large boulders. At least the painted bluffs themselves were nice to look at with their color changing from cream to pink to red.

As we continued to climb, we got some pretty cool views of the Morenci mining operation. We were told that it is the second biggest copper mine in the world, and it definitely looked enormous. The mine has been in operation for almost 150 years. The whole town of Morenci centers around the mine and most people in town are employed by the mine.

Shortly after these views, Beardoh saw a mountain lion! We were told there were a lot in this area, but it was cool (and a bit nerve wracking) for him to see one. We were walking down a 4WD road and the mountain lion just came into the road about 40 feet in front of Beardoh and ran down the road. We figured it was a good sign that it ran away, but nonetheless, Beardoh carried a big rock in his free hand for the next few miles.

Our Painted Bluffs Trail ended near a paved scenic road which we walked up for just under two miles to a campground. There is another couple car camping here and they were kind enough to give us some extra water, as we were still trying to conserve, since we won’t get to our next water source until tomorrow morning. It was really nice of them and they even offered to go into town and buy us more water.

We are super beat again tonight. We should have no problem being asleep before 8pm.

Morenci Mine
Morenci Mine

Filed Under: Grand Enchantment Trail 2018

« GET Day 17: Eagle Creek
GET Day 19: Apache National Forest »

Questions or thoughts on this article? Please leave them below: Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join our email list to be updated of our latest posts.

All Slovenia Mountain Trail 2022 Posts

Buffalo Roamer Podcast Image

Buffalo Roamer Podcast Feature

2021 Gear Lists – CDT and John Muir Trail

Don’t Patreon Us, Donate to these guys instead

Special Thanks To:


Top Posts & Pages

  • Thoughts and Advice for Hiking the Slovenia Mountain Trail
    Thoughts and Advice for Hiking the Slovenia Mountain Trail
  • The Grand Enchantment Trail (GET)
    The Grand Enchantment Trail (GET)
  • PCT Resupply & Town Thoughts - Part 1 (Mile 0-454)
    PCT Resupply & Town Thoughts - Part 1 (Mile 0-454)

Thru Hiker Blog

Well over 14,000 miles of our thru hiking blogs, photos of our trips and resources can all be found on this site.  We hope that the pages herein can be of help and inspiration.

Like Us On Facebook

Long Distance Hiker

Click Here for RSS Feed

Follow us on Instagram

Affilate Disclosure

Some of the links within the pages Long Distance Hiker are affiliate links.  We are discontinuing the addition of affiliate links to new pages as of February 2019.

We encourage you to support the trail organizations that make hiking around the world a possibility.

Copyright © 2023 · longdistancehiker.com · Thanks for Visiting ·

Sign Up for our mailing list to get our newsletter with new posts.
This is typically emailed 1-3 times per month.

powered by MailChimp!

 

×