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Arizona - The Long Way

The Arizona Trail traverses from Mexico to Utah across desert and mountains

By Ann Gates Weaver

Found in: | Outside | Hiking |

Hiking the Arizona Trail

INFORMATION: For trail conditions and more: Arizona Trail Association (aztrail.org).

WATER: Water sources in desert areas are intermittent and unpredictable. Be prepared to dry camp.

BORDER ISSUES: The AZT travels one of the largest illegal border crossings of the United States and a major drug trafficking route. To bypass this section, start farther north in Patagonia or near Tucson.

Cruising across the Grand Canyon state in climate-controlled cars makes it easy to forget that Spanish explorers and early Arizona residents had to negotiate the state's rough terrain by foot or on horseback. In our time-managed era, Americans generally prefer to arrive at destinations quickly and efficiently, surveying just the landscapes that happen to slide past the car window at 65 miles an hour. However, for cross-country travelers who want to experience a non-motorized Arizona at a slower pace either on foot, horse or bike, crossing the state has a new route. The Arizona Trail (AZT), one of the nation's newest National Scenic Trails, is open for business. It received its national designation in 2009.

In 1968, when president Lyndon Johnson signed the National Trails System Act, he stated, "We can and should have an abundance of trails for walking, cycling, and horseback riding in and close to our cities." That same year, the first two National Scenic Trails, the Appalachian and Pacific Crest, were established, providing impetus for adventurers to enjoy a new style of experiencing their homeland.

In 1974, one of those adventurers, a young Dale Shewalter, moved to Arizona from Illinois in hopes of finding employment and saving enough money to hike the Appalachian Trail. However, after exploring Arizona's backcountry, his priorities changed. "I saw the Sonoran Desert and I was instantly converted," he says in Tom Lorang Jones' book, Arizona Trail: The Official Guide.

In the late 1970s while exploring the Santa Rita range around Tucson, Shewalter set to dreaming about a national trail across Arizona. Fifteen years later, he tested with success a tentative 750-mile route from Nogales, Mexico, to Fredonia, Utah. Seeing his dream as a possibility, Shewalter took a year off from teaching elementary school to promote the AZT. He traveled extensively around the state to meet with key groups and individuals. While government agencies embraced the idea of an official trail that would connect Arizona's prominent canyons, mountain corridors, and desert places, several land-use details stood in its way. Then, in 1988, the Kaibab National Forest hired Shewalter as coordinator of the AZT project - and the effort got legs. Within months, the first seven miles from the Utah border through the Kaibab were dedicated and the trail was opened to the public. The work continued, and within a year the trail grew to 50 miles - the first major leg of the AZT was complete. However, the leg represented just 6 percent of the 817-mile proposed trail. A lot of work lay ahead.

Prior to federal funding of any national trail, local groups rallied volunteers to blaze trails and construct them. The creation of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, for example, was instrumental in the creation of the Appalachian Trail. Following in that tradition, in 1994 the Arizona Trail Association (ATA) sprouted and was quickly an incorporated nonprofit. Through the ATA, an array of volunteers - hikers, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers and even llama packers - from across Arizona were brought together to connect a diversity of landscapes.

Sharing Shewalter's passion, they built the AZT by sharing route information, raising money for land-use agreements, providing GPS coordinates for the location of water sources, and literally hacking trail from the ground with picks and shovels. Finally, in March of 2009, 95 percent complete, the AZT was stamped by Congress as an official National Scenic Trail. It was one of three national trails to receive the designation in 23 years.

After adding the AZT to his hiking portfolio, Bart Smith (the first person to hike all 11 National Scenic Trails) told The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., that he "was surprised at how physically demanding it is."

To travel the trail is to become intimately acquainted with wild Arizona. While most people are familiar with quintessential images of Arizona seen on postcards and tourism ads - red rock monoliths, gaping views of the Grand Canyon, prickly pears, desert wildlife, Hopi mesas - those images are hardly representative of the picture a backcountry explorer will see along the AZT. Through-hikers of the trail start at Arizona's southern border in saguaro and end on the north in pine trees, traversing the rise and fall between mountains and desert. The trail skirts Phoenix and Tucson. Flagstaff and the small hippy town of Patagonia are the only two official communities that the trail intersects. In addition to the expected desertscapes, the trail also crosses seven mountain ranges, traverses four national parks, fords four rivers, and includes altitude changes of 1,600 to 9,600 feet. It passes through 13 biomes, even alpine tundra. "[The trail] connected such a variety of landscapes - from fields of wildflowers to grasslands and barren desert scrub, to the biggest ponderosa pine forest in the United States," describes Tucson native and through-hiker Dave Baker. "I was surprised by what I didn't know about Arizona."

The primary challenges of hiking the AZT are in adequate preparation, good trail fitness, and being flexible enough to handle the environmental diversity that Arizona can dish out, including wild fires, inconsistent water sources, and flash floods. In his 2002 memoir Crossing Arizona, Chris Townsend writes of an unexpected night camping in the snow. He had been so worried about running into situations of drought and extreme heat that he was surprised by the challenge of keeping warm and melting snow into drinking water. Mountain bikers face an additional challenge of rerouting around the Grand Canyon or disassembling their bikes and carrying them on their backs across it. Mountain biking is not permitted on the park trails crossing the Grand Canyon.

In addition to providing lessons in toughness and topography, the AZT also provides history lessons about the old West. Commonly following recreational trails across government land, National Scenic Trails also tap into preexisting infrastructure that connects to ancient aquaducts and old ranch roads. The AZT is no exception. Travelers are in frequent contact with remnants of Arizona's early history, visiting cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon, the ruins of the Moqui Stage Coach Station, old Kentucky Mining camp, and immigration trails near the Mexico border that remain in use today. "Hiking along the trail you see how it connects not only diverse landscapes, but also diverse people and communities, both now and throughout time," says ATA member Teri Gay who is intimately familiar with the trail.

The trail is official but it is 35 miles from being completed. In January - months after it achieved national status - Shewalter passed away, succumbing to cancer. However, his dream is very much alive. Shortly after his passing, Jan Hancock of the ATA stated, "Those of us he has touched know his passion, and we share it. In life, and now in death, Dale has passed his hiking staff and the reins of his horse onto those he trusts will continue to cherish this pathway - and help to preserve it for those who follow us."

The volunteers of the ATA will continue Shewalter's work, preserving and maintaining the established trail and finishing it just in time for Arizona's centennial in 2012.

Ann Gates Weaver writes from Brighton, Utah.