Slacker Girl

In Tucson, I sat pondering my conundrum:  I was about to enter Saguaro National Park. You need a back-country permit to camp within the park boundaries. Though I had filled out a form, I had never heard back about the permit. When I began the hike, I just figured that I'd just put in a long day and go in and out of the park in one day. Now, it had become clear that this was not a viable option. After my hard first day, where I got fatigued and disoriented and lost and the hard climb where I walked only 13 miles in one day, I was seeing that this trail was harder than I had anticipated. And those sections were rated as "moderate" in the trail guide. The upcoming section was rated as "strenuous" and I would have to hike 22 miles straight up and then straight back down in order to get in and out of the park in one day. That was just not going to happen. I was in a pickle.
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**** Later on,  I learned that I really didn't need to get so worked up. It seems that the rangers in Saguaro are fairly lenient when it comes to thru hikers. We thru-hikers roll into camp at sundown, set up camp, eat and go right to sleep. Then, camp is packed up and we are out of there before sunrise.  Plus, I would have been in the park on a Sunday night, not traditionally a high volume day for campsites. Other hikers had just printed out their permit request, even though they didn't have the actual permit to show rangers. Oh well. I was in full-blown freak out mode, though, so I made a different decision. *******

 I decided to slack pack the next section. 

I took a shuttle back up to Cottonwood Storage, got the jeep out of storage, and spent the next section doing  out-and-in hikes with just a day pack. The trail guide had nice suggestions for turn around points (I usually tried to go a couple miles beyond the turn around points) as well as directions to trail heads and parking spots to begin and end the sections.  

In some ways, I felt like I was cheating. I wasn't hiking every single mile of trail (though I was generally hiking MORE miles than if I had just hiked straight through). On the other hand, I was having a really good time. 

When I was just hiking through, I wasn't really meeting many thru hikers. I saw people on the trail, sure. I saw day hikers and mountain bikers and equestrians and, of course, border patrol agents. Just not many thru hikers. When I started the out and back slack pack hikes, I started meeting thru hikers. 

Plus, I think this helped with my lack of conditioning. By putting high miles with low weight on my feet for the next several days, I built up my endurance on the steep sections, without killing myself. 

After hiking up and back down Mica mountain in Saguaro National Park, I drove around to Mount Lemon where I set up camp in a fairly busy campsite for two nights. I walked south from the campsite on day one ( I ended up hiking almost the entire section in and out) and then north from the campsite day two out and back. Plus, I didn't have to break down the tent. And I had some nice camping neighbors who shared chocolate with me! 

It was interesting. As I came into contact with other thru-hikers, they all were saying the same thing: "Wow, this is kind of a lonely trail."  Even though I met 4-5 hikers, they were all about a half day apart. Just far enough to not encounter one another on the trail. 

I kind of feel like, had I not been slack packing, I would have been a bit down in the dumps, myself. I would have been right in the middle of the half-day-in-between-hikers bubble and I would not have met Bill and Mike and Dan and Steve and the other Bill. I would have ben a lot more lonely than I was as a slack packer. 

So even though my execution of the hike over Mica Mountain and Mount Lemon was NOT what I had originally planned, I think it was the right decision for me. 

Maybe I should always be a slacker-girl!