Following our hot traversal on the desert floor yesterday, rain arrived overnight, and quite a lot.

We still had well over 3000′ to climb to Manning camp to perform, and it turned out that everything just a few hundred feet above us was snow covered to a couple of inches.

Unlike the sweating temperatures of yesterday it was sub zero a good part of the day, and never really warm even after we descended thousands of feet to the valley.

Definitely the toughest climb since the first day.

Most of the day we traversed a vast desert plain with numerous saguaro cacti some measuring 4 or 5 times my height! Lots of pictures taken.

We entered the Saguaro National Park and not too long after entered a long, tiring climb.

Our day was determined by national park regulations which stipulated two possible campgrounds (literally just flat ground we are allowed to pitch our tents on), and we went for Grass Shack.

For some reason we all hit a bit of a wall and the last 2 miles was tough!

Into Vail for a near zero – food and a visit to Colossal Cave.

Camped in the La Selvilla picnic area – water and flat ground!

Had some lovely coyote chorus to entertain us during the night, which was much milder than the previous few.

Got up really early and were on trail early as we knew we had a few miles to put in.

Turns out this was a traversal of a flat plain of various cacti and while lovely was shadeless and hot.

We’d done 17 miles when we accessed a water cache (a life saver!) and siestad in a highway underpass. On leaving once the worst of the heat had gone, found a really nice campsite.

Altogether rather successful.

Addendum: slow puncture in sleeping mat! Lasts one hour. Midnight pickup from Fleur and fixed up for next day.

A really nice Nero where Fleur picked us up 0.5 miles off the trail and we headed for Sonoita for a quick resupply, breakfast but most importantly cuddles.

Just relaxed for the morning and walked a few miles in the afternoon – we were restricted as getting a good campsite any further along would have been 8 more miles.

We set up on a very large, flat site with a bunch of friendly hikers. It seems we’re destined to repeat the skunk story for the next 700 miles!!

Nice easy day (well as easy as it gets on trail, still hard!)

The temperature was -3° when I woke, so it took some effort to get up. Cold fingers for quite a bit.

It’s the usual thing of begging the sun to come up to warm me up, only to beg it to go away later in the day! Got up to maybe 24° so a modest swing of 27°!

Lunch, however, was at the Kentucky Lodge, an old building originally built for the gold mining push in this area. Made a great place to break, and it had water, somewhere to charge and a pit toilet.

The night was pretty cold, -2°C with snow and hail! Humidity at 92%. So everyone had condensation in their tents, given there was no wind.

By the time we took the shuttle to the trail head at 8.30 the sun was out, and it turned out to be great walking weather, peaking at about 18° with a cooling wind.

This was very much like a PCT day, with big contours and switchbacks visible from far giving a view of your next few miles. Lots of undulating so got some good climbs in. Legs are feeling much better today.

Camped near a water source, nice spot.

We hiked a few miles to the Harshaw Road side trail, then onwards to the trail head to be picked up by Fleur and ferried to Patagonia.

Rain came down hard and it was pretty cold, but we knew we only had 8.5 miles to do so it was ok.

Patagonia is a lovely little town, had second breakfast and dinner at the Stage Stop Inn, really nice.

We camped at Terra Sol campground, which is set up beautifully for through hikers. They have everything we need and are very friendly. A little gem.

So nice to see Fleur and even got a cuddle, and believe me I wouldn’t have cuddled myself the way I smelt.

Well, what a day.

Woke up in the early hours to the rattling of my cookpot outside my tent inner. Got my headlamp to see what critter was there, and a nose poked through the tiny 1 inch gap I left in my zip.

Before I knew it, my new guest has wiggled the zip open, and I was face to face with a lovely looking skunk!

I opened the door and threw my sleeping bag and pad outside and called for help! We managed to coax it out but in shooing it away (‘get away you stinky bastard’ in Freddy’s words), it sprayed between our tents.

Well I’ve got the stink out of most of my stuff now, thank god.

Freddy has video evidence

Last night’s campsite, despite being covered in spiky grass, was pretty flat so I got a decent sleep.

Managed to eat porridge for breakfast so the jet lag is fading.

More importantly for me I seem to be getting some trail legs back – managed a combined ascent of over 3000 feet ok.

Terrain was undulating and we actually got a running stream to filter out of! So I went to town on that and took 4.3 litres.

There’s a real dearth of good sites towards the end of this section, but we found something passable with no cow pats!

Tomorrow 4.5 miles to the Harshaw side trail, then the same again to the trailhead.

And Fleur 🤩