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| Hiking | 14.40 Miles |
1,108 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.40 Miles | 6 Hrs | | 2.40 mph |
| 1,108 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | The ride in was a bigger adventure than the actual hike. I talked my buddy Ted into joining me on this one. Once I mentioned cooler weather, level hike and pines, he was all in.
My intent was to drive in to Gonzalez Tank where the AZT intersects FR93 and hike southbound to where I left off last month. Once FR93 takes a sharp right turn from the main graded road, things changed. The road is very rocky, and the recent rains this week made it even dicier to drive with the huge puddles and mud bogs. Adding to this was the fact that my tires are over 4 years old and getting thin on the tread on the rear ones. The last 2-3 miles was very slow going. Google Maps said we were 0.3 miles from the waypoint I dropped when I decided that was enough and we could walk to the trail. We walked over a quarter mile and weren't halfway to the trail, so we bushwhacked across a meadow and thru some pines to the trail, which was just another jeep road.
The whole hike was just hiking along various jeep roads, which I didn't mind at all. They were still pretty faint roads, and I was happy to be taking a nice leisurely walk thru the pines in some cooler weather. Early on we saw a herd of elk running thru the trees, but they were too far away and moving too fast to even try to get any pictures. The only other wildlife we saw was a tarantula towards the end of the hike.
Once we got back to where we would turn back to the car, I talked Ted into hiking a little further north on the AZT until it junctioned with another jeep road that took us back to the car. This turned an 11+ mile hike into a 14+ mile hike. I was very satisfied to do this, Ted not as much. the only single track section of the trail on this hike was on this part of the hike where it connected 2 jeep roads. It started nice and level and then descended. Pretty soon the trail got faint and very rocky. The lava rock is very prevalent throughout this passage of the AZT. The oddest part was where the trail crossed a barbed wire fence and there was no gate. There was a section where the barbed wire was replaced with regular wire, allowing us to climb over the fence. The fence was taut enough to support our weight as we did this, which was surprising. Looks like the maintenance on this passage hasn't gotten this far north for the nice heavy duty swing gates with the slide bolt locks.
We got back to the car and got back home without incident. Getting back on the pavement felt just as good as finally sitting down once we were done hiking. |
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